::gasp:: Prince Willy's a Prick?! Quelle surprise!
This week: The Broken Dog Dish Heard Around the World & How the Royals are the living embodiment of white supremacy.
Oh hey folks,
I suspect I’m not the only one to have found themselves accidentally enthralled by the multi-media onslaught of Royals Behaving Badly. Like a trainwreck in slow motion, I can’t look away from this tabloid fodder feeding of a family who is so willing to throw even its own members under the proverbial bus.
I’ve succumbed to click-bait to grasp at crumbs of a story about what basically amounts to cult-deprogramming for simply being a part of, essentially, a super rich family with some impressive ancestors and a Kardashian-level wardrobe and PR team (with the egos to match). That’s all the royal family is, after all, they hold no real political power except as a crusty barnacle on the United Kingdom’s inglorious colonial legacy.
Despite this (or perhaps because of it?) there is something inexplicably fascinating about the royal family, and they are packaged for easy and eager consumption like the delicious commodities that they are. The irony that they would feel superior to an American actress is laughable, but that thing that has me cackling like a sea witch is just what a dick Prince William is.
And now, on this day of our Lord King Charles, in honor of Prince Harry dropping his memoir the same day he had to flee his luxurious Montecito home because global warming be mad real these days, I present you with: Generic White Man of The Year Award, which goes to none other than a bald red-faced Prince Willy.
Like a shotgun wedding, even though it has only been 10 days into 2023, I feel supremely confident that the GWM recipient I have chosen was literally born for this role. Allow me to explain:
News of the Royal princes’ physical altercation last week revealed that the mounting evidence that Prince Willy is a massive dick is not only true; but that he is a violent prick to boot. Quelle surprise! Jk~
It’s not like his family’s wealth and power is rooted in not just the slave trade but in the mass-exploitation of land, resources, and peoples on the basis of race across the entire freaking globe, or anything. OH WAIT. Even the Netflix documentary took the time to explain why absolutely no one should be surprised that a monarchy built on the exploitation of peoples of color would be dicks to their biracial inlaw.
As an American with authority issues, I’ve enjoyed rolling my eyes and feeling Democratically superior to the Royal family’s cult-like adoration in the UK. Musing about how the last tsar’s wedding spared no expense during a time of widespread famine, I was amazed to realize just how much of the UK media relies on stories about the Royals. The disenfranchised masses can’t seem to get enough of a family that makes their youngest child wear shorts for a rather long winter walk outside for fear of appearing “middle class.” And my, my how angry they are at Harry and Meghan for speaking truth to power, even if it is just their truth.
At this point in this newsletter, I might as well come clean to you: I eagerly waited for the release of every episode of the Netflix series that like mid-thirties basic white betch that I am. I can’t help it, I grew up absolutely captivated (read: probably in love with) Princess Diana. I was heartened to see Prince Harry’s rather impressive turn-around from Nazi-uniform wearing member of a family with actual Nazi-sympathesizers and child rapists lurking in the shadows, to a champion for Black people who just really loves his biracial wife (even if she’s not as funny and doe-eyed as she thinks she is). While it seems Prince William et al is incapable of shifting his belief of (completely unearned) superiority, Prince Harry on the other hand, is here to remind us that the obnoxious moniker of “not all men” has some truth to it.
Watching the Netflix tell-all, all I could think (rather condescendingly) is that Harry is such a Good Ginger. I just wanted to boop him on the nose and scratch behind his ears, and say: “who is unlearning institutionalized racism and psychological bias despite being born with literally all the privileges of white supremacy” and then ::boop:: “It’s you H! Good ginger!”
The latest details that Prince William not only has an explosive temper but also (of course) resorts to physical violence is surprising to literally no one who is even vaguely familiar with the concept of colonization. I mean let’s be real, we all know that dear Prince Willy’s probably the one who made the comment about “how dark” Meg & ‘Harold’s’ babies would be. Ojeoma Oluo might as well have been referring to Prince Willy’s balding red-ass face when she says: “I know what that despair looks like when it’s mixed with the entitlement and bitter disappointment of white male mediocrity.”
This is also the story of Harry and Meghan’s very relatable process of drawing boundaries around their toxic family members. Like the early days of Facebook overshares, we watch them squabble over who got the front page cover of media articles, who wore what, and bullying. When the blind loyalty that white supremacy-- I mean-- Prince William-- I mean-- the Monarchy-- was not returned from Harry, Willy boy struck out-- quite predictably and in accordance with the ideals of white masculinity set up by his nation.
English masculinity has always been inextricably linked with brutality and violence, as Nell Irving painter’s History of White People makes clear. In particular, Painter describes how “the red and white complexion, blond hair, blue eyes, and tall stature-- and, without doubt, ferocious manhood, are all admirable traits used to justify the racial superiority of white people. Throughout Painter’s account of English manhood, beauty and brutality emerge as the most prized qualities. As she notes, ”Nature created Saxons/Norsemen as “a rude race, all masculine, with brutish strength,” endowing their English descendants, in turn, with an “Excess of virility.”
Distilled down through the generations, Prince Willy’s beauty is a bit threadbare these days and his “excess of virility” is all dressed up with nowhere to go (except when it’s sending dear darling Harry crashing into his dog’s food bowl). Is it any wonder he would turn on his brother, and his biracial wife, and demand a medieval-level of fealty to him and the Crown? Violent subjugation is the British Monarchy’s whole vibe and raison d’etre.
The British Monarchy is the best living embodiment of white supremacy and the lie of deserved wealth and status on the basis of who your ancestors were (and how pasty their skin was). Whether we are conscious of it or not, our fascination with the Royal family owes a lot of its appeal to how they prop up the myth of white supremacy. The problem with them (and, of course, our fascination) is their continued existence performs a miraculous feat of historical revision in which Queen Elizabeth/ the Monarchy is presented as a champion and defender of the commonwealth, of the people. Forgive my rude American reaction of: LOLZ, bitch, please.
The true legacy of Great Britain and its precious little monarchy is egregious. The impact of today is as easy to understand as looking at GDP of Britain over that of, say, India, South Africa, the Caribbean, et al. In order to justify their exorbitant and decorative existence, much like white supremacy, the Royal family must believe in their inherent (biological) superiority not just to other races, but to their own people. The Irish will be quick to remind you that Great Britain were equal-opportunity colonial pillagers and extortionists. No one, not even white people writ large nor Prince Harry himself, benefits from this continued belief in the fantasy of both white supremacy and the British monarchy.
Queen Elizabeth’s uncle didn’t leave the monarchy for love, he left because he was a Nazi-sympathesizer. They quickly swept him under the rug in way that Queen Elizabeth could not do for her pedophile predator of a son. That Prince Andrew got caught with his pants down, and even had to pay a settlement speaks to their eroding influence. Prince Andrew was, after all, simply following in the footsteps of his ancestors in taking what he wanted, regardless of the fact that it was a child who was sex-trafficked. After all, that was once a huge source of income for the family.
So again, am I surprised that Prince William is in fact a giant prick willing to exploit even his own blood for his own gain?
Nah. White supremacists gonna white out. (Read: throw a literal temper tantrum when his brother said he wanted to leave his toxic family because they were was being mean to his wife and eroding her sense of self for the sake of selling stories). They will use any excuse to take what they want from you, even if you’re white and related to them (poor Gingers). This is what is so maddening about white supremacy: it’s fucking all of us over, even the melanin-deficient.
So, until next week, I’ll be eagerly watching for just how the monarchy spins Prince Harry’s memoir into a personal indictment of both his and his wife’s right to exist. If I know anything about being a whistle-blower, it’s that they’re in for a hell of a psychological ride.
Godspeed Good Ginger & Meghan.
What I’m reading:
(because I’m too cheap to buy Spare and need to balance out my tabloid addiction):
Nell Irvin Painter’s The History of White People (2010)
Igeoma Oluo’s Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy of White Male America (2020).
Oluo describes this phenomenon of violent bullying as a reaction to not getting exactly what you want as occurring throughout the history of white men, not just Royal Willy:
“It’s the expectation that many white men have that they shouldn’t have to climb, shouldn’t have to struggle, as others do. It’s the idea not only that they think they have less than others, but that they were supposed to have so much more. When you are denied the power, the success, or even the relationships that you think are your right, you either have to believe that you are broken or you believe that you have been stolen from. White men who think they have been stolen from often take that anger out on others.”
Abby L Ferber’s White Man Falling: Race, Gender, and White Supremacy (1998).
“Because race is not grounded in genetics or nature, the project of defining races always involves drawing and maintaining boundaries between those races.”
“Whiteness here is tied to masculinity. Gender is often employed as an analogy for racial hierarchy where masculinity symbolized white superiority, and the downfall of the race is described as the process of feminization”
“Accounts that label label the contemporary white supremacist movement as fringe and extremist often have the consequence of rendering this history invisible. Understanding this history, however, is essential to understanding and combating both contemporary white supremacist and mainstream racism.”