Let’s catch up on some odds and ends from the last couple of days. For starters, Thursday is World Mental Health Day, an event commemorated by the Cambridges and the Duke of Sussex for the last couple of years. This year, the one-time “fab four” have reunited to lend their voices to a PSA promoting the initiative “Every Mind Matters” directed by Richard Curtis.
While Kensington Palace hasn’t announced it, one royal reporter tweeted (and then deleted) a notice that Kate will visit the Angela Marmont Centre for UK Biodiversity tomorrow in the capacity of patron of the Natural History Museum. So, TBD on whether we get a “surprise” appearance. It’s also a possibility we’ll get another one on Thursday, though the PSA might be filling that void this year as the Cambridges gear up for Pakistan next week.
Over the weekend, William and Kate took their two eldest children, Prince George and Princess Charlotte, to watch an Aston Villa football match. William is a long-time (and die-hard) AV fan, so it’s only fitting his son follow in his footsteps. And we’ve seen some evidence by now that George is a football enthusiast – he was photographed playing with a football this summer during the charity polo match and his birthday portraits in July saw him wearing a jersey.
Other family news is that Kate’s younger brother, James Middleton, proposed to his girlfriend, Alizee Thevenet, and as his Instagram caption says, “She said OUI.” So, another wedding to celebrate in 2020! Fingers crossed that George and Charlotte reprise their roles as page boy and bridesmaid, because the images from Pippa Middleton Matthew’s wedding in 2017 are some of my favorites.
The couple’s relationship started some time last year. Alizee first caught the public’s attention this past winter when she joined the Middleton family for their annual Mustique holiday and she was photographed on the beach with James and Pippa.
Over in Sweden, the big news is that the Royal Family is streamlining the monarchy – in the same vein as the Prince of Wales is believed to want to implement in the UK. For a primer on who all the players are, you can catch up here, but the long and short of it is that Crown Princess Victoria’s younger siblings, Prince Carl Philip and Princess Madeleine, will still carry out royal duties, but their combined five children will not, nor will they be styled as HRHs, though they do retain their titles. It keeps the focus on the sovereign and his direct successors, which I do think is smart for a 21st century monarchy.
Last but not least, royal reporter Richard Palmer tweeted this out yesterday:
Nobody in the Royal Family or the Royal Household is supporting Harry and Meghan at the moment. Even the couple’s aides seem embarrassed by their actions. William, who dropped his brother like a ton of hot bricks earlier this year, and Charles have distanced themselves.
— Richard Palmer (@RoyalReporter) October 7, 2019
That’s but one take, of course, and time will tell how true it is, but it’s certainly telling in the absence of other concrete information at the moment. I’ll circle back to the lawsuit as news unfolds.
I can understand Harry’s frustration—there’s an American tabloid out this week with a cover story about “MONSTER MEGHAN”—but I think his war with the media is unwinnable. He just can’t stop them from printing garbage. No one can. Many years ago I read that someone asked Jackie Onassis how she tolerated being the subject of so much vulgar gossip. She supposedly replied that she simply never read any of it (which she referred to as a “river of sludge”). Does Harry read the Daily Mail and the Sun and tacky publications like that? Maybe he should stick to The Economist.
Yeah, that’s the thing with this whole suit – it’s hard to see what a “win” looks like here, because paying a fine and issuing an apology is certainly not going to stop negative press.
It’s that they can’t get married right now as they planned because of Covid 19….. but hopefully they will when its all over