Flame, Glass and Ink are Poems, essays, and reading notes by Stefania Joori Suh

Tag: harry and meghan

  • The princess fairy tale

    First of all, let me clarify that I don’t believe in fairytales where beautiful poor girls achieve social escalations by marrying handsome princes and kings. Nor am I keen on the affairs of modern-day royalty whose lives are not even desirable. And yet, the news of Princess Mako’s marriage to her college sweetheart despite forced delays and oppositions is worth writing about because it is a fairytale of the most beautiful kind becoming a truth in reality. Would it be a bit of a stretch if I relate Mako’s heartaches and ordeals to Psyche’s Wanderings and Trials set by Aphrodite to separate her son Eros from the insolent mortal? It also shows that the crowned cannot escape from the intoxication of the heart that is worth denouncing the pomp and circumstances.

    Marrying a commoner is no new in modern-day history, starting from Edward VIII’s marriage to the American divorcee Wallis Simpson and his descendants Princes William and Harry. While those mentioned above British royal members married those outside the peerages, they were not the average commoners working nine-to-five or even more or fewer hours in ordinary situations where they had to depend on the whims and caprice of their employers for the secure livelihood. But Mako’s case stands most excellently because she was determined to give up the whole royal privilege to live as a commoner by marrying the one who is not from a wealthy, not even above average family. Moreover, Mako refused to receive a considerable amount of money as a gift from the royal family for marrying a commoner. On the contrary, Harry and Meghan are considerably wealthy, living without day-to-day financial insecurity about what might happen tomorrow. Their surrendering the titles publicly will not forfeit their assets as in the case of foreclosure that many struggling hard-working Americans are unfairly subject to. After all, why do they need to hold the titular positions to make more money outside the palace? People flock to the brave Meghan and her ever-supportive husband, but why do they do when their happiness illustrates no emblem of sacrifice without a sense of proverbial entitlement?

    I cannot help but compare Mako and Kei to the famously showcased ex-royal couple Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan. Besotted by the sensual charm of his renegade, free-spirited wife, Harry decided to move his young family to Los Angles, California, for good. He joined her Dissent Division to criticize his long-time family for being racist and cold-hearted. On the contrary, Princess Mako never decried her dissenting royal families against her marriage to a commoner, nor did she rebel loudly against the constitutional monarchy outside Japan. Instead, Mako kept all of her affairs of the heart discreetly, remaining true blue to her beloved Kei despite public uproar about his below-than-expected family background for being of a problematic single-mothered household. Forget the stereotypical Japanese politeness and the prejudice on the East Asian women’s submissiveness. Her graceful acts and decencies flow from her natural disposition and upbringing, which I have hardly seen in the famous royal family members.

    Watching Mako and Kei looking at each other with the eyes exchanging affection with radiant smiles in their serenely happy faces put me into a pleasant mood to make me wish for their long and happy life together. Mako is a brave princess who surrenders herself to the love of her choice, even if it means giving up her title and privilege that would make her married life comparatively comfortable to ordinary people. Mako’s decision to live the life of an ordinary wife seems anachronistic and incongruent. Still, not everyone wants to be an Amazon or Scythian warrior, nor does she want to climb up the career ladder to prove her abilities. Mako’s declaration of independence signifies an act of exercising her right to happiness by living with someone she loved dearly. What else could she do to prove her worth for love? It is a beautiful fairytale dissolving to the truth.

  • The Rambler on the interview

    In a post-industrial age, when the mingling of classes in streets is a norm, and social mobility is a reality in a society, the stories about royal families become reality period dramas that seem to give them a status that fuses the capriciousness of greek gods with the glamour of Hollywood celebrity.

    When I saw twitter’s promotion of Oprah Winfrey’s Harry and Meghan interview, I thought no wonder they were sought-after media darlings, living Romeo and Juliet, and something to talk about when things looked bleak and boring. And I honestly feel no qualms about them being a subject of gossip or the tabloid because they live in public eyes, albeit they most clamor for the privacy of their lives. Otherwise, what is the absolute need to broadcast their stories on a central television station at prime time? (No YouTube, please, in respect of their royalty.) Oprah Winfrey, who now seems to have replaced Barbara Walters’ seat, looks fit to the royal couple pleading for upscaled sympathy from the American public unfamiliar with the constitutional monarchy and possibly slightly partial to the name and images of monarchy without knowing them well.

    To put the wedding story of Prince Harry and Actress Meghan Markle on a par with Cinderella story is to ignore the fact she is from a privileged class in the States with expensive private education and parental support. Despite Princess Diana’s aristocratic family background, people sympathized with the lonely Diana because of her doe-eyed, ever muliebral innocent beauty that looked impossible for debauchery. By the same virtue of beauty fused with sensualness of exotic charm, the American actress/model Meghan charmed Prince Harry, who would even venture to Hesperides’ garden to bring her a golden apple should she request. And now Harry lives in the Golden State, the land of his Helen, with a face launching waves of media coverages.

    Ralph Waldo Emerson said that beauty tames the savageness of brutes and allays the hardened souls of criminals. Oscar Wilde added that a beautiful woman is the subject of conversations wherever she goes. The lovely Meghan beaming with sparkling amethyst eyes adorned with apricot cheeks reminded me of a modern-day Helen of Troy. After all, Helen’s prodigal beauty saved her from her first the ireful sword of her first and lawful husband Menelaus, the king of Sparta to whom she betrayed the slain Paris’s brother Deiphobus, her third husband. Despite vehement feminist catchphrases brandishing anti-sexism, beauty is still a woman’s privilege to achieve social escalation in work and an undefeatable power to purchase indemnity for all faults and foibles.

    In addition to the claimed blackness of Meghan’s heritage, the media seems to shoehorn it to fit her estrangement feeling in the procrustean bed to a histrionic degree because one cursory glance at her wouldn’t strike her as a black woman at all. I honestly think that if a woman is beautiful, then where she comes from does not matter. In fact, I feel something is not quite right when someone in her position keeps playing a race card as a chance gambit to muster her retinue against the criticism raised by her unwilling participation in royal attendances and cavalier attitude towards learning the royal manners, which appear antithetical to her carefree American spirit hard to domesticate.

    Call it an acrid narrative of a woman who juggles the daily affairs of life with what she has. Or you may say it is the usual cynical delusion of reference to those who got it all out of passionate envy burned in a fury. Yet, the interview appears to be nothing but their formal excuse for their present life, public proclamation of their still regal sovereignty warning people not to speak ill of them, which is probably directed to the ordinary whom they regard as meddlesome. Well, then let them be whoever they want to be. Playing Romeo and Juliet’s roles in a public theater in long-run shows will only lose favor with the audience, especially with Romeo now being well-stuffed, looking like a rich American, and Juliet still looking fabulous like a luxurious Beverly Hills demimonde.