For almost two weeks now, the British tabloids have been dumping on Prince Harry and Meghan Markle for flying on private jets on holiday. This has been as big of or an even bigger scandal than Prince Andrew being BFF with and namechecked in a lawsuit against a registered sex offender who died under mysterious circumstances in federal custody while being investigated for sex trafficking. People are mad that Harry and Meghan claim to be all about the environment, pointing to his recent comments about not having more than two children, and then getting on a private plane twice in two weeks. Mad enough that it’s been front page coverage for days. And juuuuuust when the story may have been finally losing some steam…
Yesterday, somehow, and we’ll come back to this, the Daily Mail, which has been hammering House Sussex every day for a week, gets hold of a video of House Cambridge, Prince William, Kate, and their three children, boarding a commercial flight to Scotland to join the Queen at Balmoral. Balmoral, by the way, is where Prince Andrew was when news broke that Jeffrey Epstein had “died by suicide”. Remember when Andrew brought Jeffrey Epstein to Balmoral all those years ago, contaminating the Queen’s summer residence with his perverted friends?
Anyway, the Cambridges’ responsible flying, naturally, was compared to the Sussexes’ lavish flying – Will and Kate look great and Harry and Meghan look like scum. There’s a lot to unpack here, so let’s start with the private jets, because they all do it. In fact, in 2013, a couple of months after Big G was born, Will and Kate made the same trip to Balmoral on the Duke of Westminster’s private jet.
Amazingly, this trip, in 2013, happened just five days after Prince William talked about raising Big G to be passionate about conservation efforts and the environment. Big G was so young though, a newborn, so perhaps flying private, at the time, was easier for all of them, just like…you know… it would be for Harry, Meghan, and Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor.
Here’s another similarity. Prince Harry’s comments about having two children for the environment came out of his interview with Dr Jane Goodall in the September 2019 issue of British Vogue guest-edited by Meghan Markle. For context, because context is important, this is how the conversation went:
Prince Harry: It does make it different. I think, weirdly, because of the people that I’ve met and the places that I’ve been fortunate enough to go to, I’ve always had a connection and a love for nature. I view it differently now, without question. But I’ve always wanted to try and ensure that, even before having a child and hoping to have children…
Dr Goodall: Not too many! [Laughs]
Prince Harry: Two, maximum! But I’ve always thought: this place is borrowed. And, surely, being as intelligent as we all are, or as evolved as we all are supposed to be, we should be able to leave something better behind for the next generation.
Dr Goodall is actually the one who told Harry to not have “too many” children. His response, in reaction to her, is that he only wants “two, maximum”. This response though has been characterised as a “lecture” which… I mean… it doesn’t read that way in the actual flow of the discussion. But even if he was “lecturing”, he wouldn’t be the first.
But back in November 2017, Prince William actually gave a lecture! It was at the Tusk Trust gala. In his speech, at the podium, William warned that the “world’s rapidly expanding population is ruining the natural environment”. And at the time? Kate was pregnant with their third child. Prince Louis was born five months later and, since then, even though they flew commercial this week to Balmoral, they’ve all been on several private jets, including just a few weeks ago when they went on holiday to Mustique. So.
As I wrote the other day, there is a worthwhile conversation to be had about royal travel and royal hypocrisy. It’s an important conversation and it should be a fair and broad conversation. There isn’t just one royal couple promoting environmental concern while flying on private jets. Prince William has promoted environmental concern and flown on private jets. This isn’t a hypocrisy that is unique to Harry and Meghan. That they are being singled out for it is the problem. Drag them all for the thing they are all doing.
And then there’s the gossip.
House Sussex is taking so much sh-t for this private jet business… and the Daily Mail finds Will and Kate and their kids on a budget flight to Scotland…
Coincidence or conspiracy?
There’s a case to be made, sure, that after all the heat that Harry and Meghan are getting for their flights, Will and Kate simply did the smart thing and decided not to become heatscores themselves and accidently the Daily Mail was able to get video of it. There’s also a case to be made that they wanted to be seen in contrast to Harry and Meghan and score some brownie points at their expense. And if you believe that that indeed is how it went down, that William exploited his brother’s situation to make himself look good…
Isn’t that kind of a dick move?
Or was it Harry’s dick move to begin with when he said he only wanted two kids and William took it as a personal insult?
And doesn’t that tell us, once again, that the conflict between House Cambridge and House Sussex is not about the women of the household but that the men are the ones being petty and small?
