I understand being uncompelled by Meghan Markle's experiences with royals

[Emrys]

113. I'm in the UK, and just wanted to say I agree with just about everything you've posted above.

One area where I differ is that I have a surprising (to me) amount of sympathy for Harry.

The media idolized his mother, then demonized her, and it's no great stretch to say it was culpable in her death. He had to walk behind her hearse during her funeral in the full glare of publicity as a young, bewildered child. That's bound to leave a mark, and accident of birth or not, he's owed because of it. I want him and his new family left alone, and wish them nothing ill.

I'd be singularly unbothered if the royal family's role in the UK was abolished or downgraded to where they're just citizens who have a colourful family history. Once Elizabeth dies, I have a feeling that's what will happen anyway, and it won't be before time.

Tonight, my wife and I watched the UK's Channel 4 News on TV. It's among the most progressive and incisive media we have, but the first 15 minutes of its hour-long programme was full of the Oprah interview and well-meaning talking heads discussing it and issues arising. It was infuriating when, as you point out, we have so much real and consequential news breaking every day.

None of the ensuing public debate about what may or may not have happened will make any great difference, and it sucks up the apparently finite public attention span while everything continues to go to shit.

I remember being struck by the debate on DU when Harry and Meghan's marriage was announced. Many of the Americans who piped up seemed much more concerned and consumed by the royal family than most of we Brits are. It was hailed as a transformative, modernizing development that could have far-reaching consequences.

If the few of we Brits who posted at the time didn't chime in more vociferously, I think it's partly because we didn't want to rain on people's parade as many seemed genuinely excited at the prospect, and partly because we'd have been drowned out and even taken to task because we have a more realistic opinion of what the royal family was, is and will ever be.