Harry and Meghan don’t want to get rid of the monarchy — but their story proves we should

On Sunday night, Meghan and Harry — the Duchess and Duke of Sussex — sat down to speak with Oprah Winfrey about their experiences as former senior members of the British Royal Family.

Throughout the two-hour interview, the couple shared that the Royal Family had prevented her from seeking mental healthcare for suicidal ideation, and that Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge, had made her cry while the press to spun the situation, transforming Meghan into the aggressor and Kate into the victim. We learned that someone — or perhaps multiple people — in the family expressed concerns that Meghan and Harry’s son Archie would be too dark-skinned.

There was also the revelation that the family had broken with centuries of tradition, denying Archie a title and a security detail, leaving the unborn child stripped of the protection and position that his white cousins enjoy.

After hearing these allegations, the internet erupted into disbelief and fury. Lashing out at the Windsors is the appropriate response, but it’s my hope that those who were outraged at hearing how Meghan was treated will further interrogate the nature of this institution, and become radicalized into being anti-monarchists and anti-imperialists.

It’s important to stress that these aren’t the Sussexes’ political stances. In the interview, they repeatedly stressed they were willing to serve the Crown, but were prevented from doing so either directly or through a pervasive lack of support. For them, it seems to be a situation of hurt feelings, severed family ties they would one day like to repair, and a desire for some reforms within the system. But there is nothing to indicate that they’d like to abolish the system.

However, the public doesn’t need to share their view. If that interview chilled us, we should examine whether we believe a monarchy can or should exist in a just world. And now is the perfect time to examine that, while we’re having these conversations in a wide-reaching and public forum.

But it’s a hard battle to win, because many who are opposed to the racism Meghan faced are also faithful to the idea of the monarchy. With its centuries-long connections to colonialism and chattel slavery, why do so many people think it’s a redeemable institution?

Regardless of who wears the Crown — made from the stolen Indian diamond, the Koh-i-Noor, by the way — the monarchy is inherently bad because of what it represents. Horrific abuses of power, countless people dead, countries completely destabilized, entire cultures nearly extinguished, environmental disasters… you name it, and the British royal family has some kind of historical connection to it.

Still, why is it so hard for some people to see that the monarchy is rotten to the core? One reason might be its castration. After Charles I was executed in 1689 for being a “tyrant, traitor, murderer and public enemy to the Commonwealth of England,”  a series of events too complicated to delve into led to the Glorious Revolution, which eventually enshrined, within the British constitution, the contemporary form of monarchy we see today: glamorous figureheads stripped of real power. 

Modern royals are fetishized, worshipped, adored… but they do not control us. That lack of direct control makes it easier for people to see “The Firm” as relatively harmless. Queen Elizabeth doesn’t declare war or sue for peace; she doesn’t pass laws or repeal them. She doesn’t even give explicit political opinions on...  anything. The royals are neutral in every way, their personalities and prejudices only coming out through the parasocial relationships we establish with them through the British media — a lot of which runs on racism and sexism. Some sections of that media will run themselves in circles trying to defend that very palace: Piers Morgan, host of popular breakfast show Good Morning Britain, even ended up parting ways with his employer ITV today after he accused Meghan Markle of being a liar and prompted over 41,000 complaints from the public.

Even though the British monarch does not control the people of the UK or the Commonwealth, what they represent still matters. Their purpose is to provide the glamor that keeps us from confronting what lies underneath: a racist, colonialist attitude and rising nationalism. That’s why it’s still not enough to be an anti-royalist. We must strive to be anti-imperialist, understanding that even if we tore down the British monarchy, imperialism thrives in different iterations.

Meghan and Harry don’t seem to have any interest in dismantling the monarchy. They simply want to be treated well by their family. But we don’t need them to be radicalized for us to use this moment to question everything we thought we knew about this elitist system. And by doing so, we can work towards demanding a more just world. And a just world cannot exist with a monarchy. They’re incompatible.

That Oprah interview shocked and saddened so many of us. But we need to understand that this is not merely a Windsor problem. The racism and cruelty that the Windsors allegedly deployed against Meghan is an inherent feature of this arcane institution, and it has no place in the world we want to create.