Meghan Markle raised eyebrows all over the world when she referred to the Royal Family “The Firm” during her interview with Oprah Winfrey on CBS Sunday night.
Was that:
A. A compliment?
B. Hidden code?
C. A derogatory title?
The answer might be best summed up this way…
A little bit of all three, but a little bit more of the final option.
The 1993 Tom Cruise movie “The Firm” wasn’t the first time that phrase carried a nefarious tone.
No less a leader than King George VI reportedly dubbed his extended family as such.
And after the March 7 CBS interview with Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, it clearly isn’t the last time we’ll look upon that title as less than complimentary.
(Could Cruise play Prince Harry? We digress.)
This reboot of “The Firm” could use the description printed in the New York Times this week describing Markle’s plight: “The struggles of a glamorous, independent outsider joining an established, hidebound and sometimes baffling family firm.”
Sounds like a winner.
It was Markle who dug up that word, calling the British royal family “the Firm” in their TV special hosted by Oprah Winfrey. Markle described the immediate family as well as the associated employees as a somewhat cold and personally inefficient business.
We’re not sure whether “the Firm” was previously used in jest, as a prideful statement or just a description of royal reality, but it’s not new.
In fact, Queen Elizabeth’s husband, Prince Philip, frequently used the term – and Elizabeth’s father, King George VI, may have coined it originally.
He supposedly once said (there was no iPhone to capture the moment), “We’re not a family. We’re a firm.”
In the New York Times story, an author who knows that phrase described her Royal subjects:
“It’s very hard to differentiate between the family and the machine,” said Penny Junor, a royal historian who wrote “The Firm: The Troubled Life of the House of Windsor.”
“This is not a family that is good at communicating with each other. They are certainly not good at looking after one another.”
Here’s a quick roster of what makes up “the Firm”:
Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip
Prince Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall
Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge.
Varied departments – termed the Royal Household – manage royal affairs and include the Privy Purse and the Treasurer’s Office, as well as the Private Secretary’s Office.
These groups oversee the Queen’s government relations, finances and human resources.
The infamous HR, which Markle said didn’t help her when she needed assistance with mental health, is part of that Buckingham Palace business machine, which counts more than 400 employees.
Buckingham Palace said Tuesday “the whole family is saddened to learn the full extent of how challenging the last few years have been for Harry and Meghan.” As to Markle’s disturbing allegations of racism?
The statement said they were “concerning,” but maybe not completely factual, and “while some recollections may vary, they are taken very seriously and will be addressed by the family privately.”
So, it seems, not surprisingly, “the Firm” will handle this quietly, and in-house.
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