Kim Kardashian has gotten a lot of crap about her divorce from Kanye West. It took nearly two full years for everything to get settled, mostly because there were some long-winded negotiations about money, real estate and custody of their kids. Plus, Kanye spent a year and a half trying to hold up the divorce and firing a succession of lawyers who wouldn’t go along with his unhinged schemes to do so. At the end of the day, Kim and Kanye do technically have joint custody of their kids, although Kim basically has primary custody and she had the kids most of the time. She’s gotten sh-t about divorcing Kanye, and she’s gotten sh-t about not divorcing him sooner, and not going for full custody of the kids and everything else. I don’t know – when it came to the divorce, I think Kim was just doing the best she could, all while dealing with an unmedicated ex who was threatening violence and openly stalking her and harassing her. Kim recently spoke to the Angie Martinez IRL podcast about how rough it’s been to coparent with Kanye:

Kim on coparenting: “Co-parenting is really f—ing hard… If they don’t know things that are being said, why would I ever bring that energy to them? That is real, heavy, grownup s— that they are not ready to deal with. When they are, we will have those conversations. One day, my kids will thank me for not sitting here and bashing their dad. I could. I definitely protected him and I still will in the eyes of my kids. For my kids. So, in my home, my kids don’t know anything that goes on [in] the outside world.”

She’s not doing well: “I am holding on by a thread. I know that I am so close to that not happening,” the SKIMS founder continued of the kids’ inevitable access to public information about their parents, “but while it is still that way, I will protect that to the end of the Earth as long as I can.”

She doesn’t want the kids to know the details: “My kids don’t know anything. So, at school, some of my best friends are the teachers, so I know what goes on at recess and lunchtime. I hear what is being talked about.”

She puts on a happy face in front of the kids: “If we are riding to school, and they want to listen to their dad’s music — no matter what we are going through — I have to have that smile on my face and blast his music and sing along with my kids. [I can] act like nothing is wrong and as soon as I drop them off, I can have a good cry.”

[From People]

Yeah… my parents struggled for years before they divorced and I can safely say that Kim’s kids know a lot more than Kim believes. I mean, it’s good that Kim isn’t talking sh-t about Kanye in front of her kids. It’s good that Kim is sheltering them from a lot of Kanye’s crap. But… the kids know some of it already, especially the older kids, North and Saint (who are 9 years old and 7 years old). North especially, since she seems to spend the most time with Kanye out of all four kids. While Kim tries to put a happy face on it, the kids can see that their dad is unwell, and God knows what Kanye is saying to them when he spends time with them. Also: while I’m never on Team “Dump All Of Your Problems on Your Children,” there is something to be said for being honest with your kids, especially when you’re struggling.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Kim’s Instagram.

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Ariana DeBose is on the cover of January’s Women’s Health. She looks amazing, as you can see. It’s nice that the interview isn’t focused on crazy restrictive diets and strenuous workouts as is typical for these articles at the beginning of the year. Ariana discusses her well being and how the pressures of winning her Oscar for Anita in West Side Story affected her. But she also talked about her workouts, especially since she’s playing Calypso in Marvel’s Kraven the Hunter. Again, Ariana isn’t killing herself to get in Marvel shape because she’s already fit. Plus, she hurt herself while on Broadway. So she focuses more on “maintaining” her body than sculpting it. She finds the best way to make exercises work for her. Like push-ups, which she does with her knees on the ground and says is fine as long as you engage your core. Me. She’s talking to me.

There’s a lot of pressure winning the Oscar: The moment was important to me and became very important to many communities, and I’m grateful for everything that has transpired, but it was a pressure cooker. I felt that every day, and now even in the aftermath, I still feel it. There have been times this year that I have been more lonely than ever.

She’s had to reexamine friendships: A big part of this life change was releasing shifty energy—cutting ties with folks who’ve shown a different side of themselves after she claimed her award. “Friendships have morphed,” she says. “It’s fascinating to see people want something different from you, like different access. I think people come into your life seasonally, and some seasons have come to a close. It’s a tough journey, but I believe in healthy boundaries. All of it is making me a better person, and a better artist.”

On her self care: “I can’t function if I haven’t slept properly,” she says. “I believe in recharging.” To get a “full reset” recently, Ariana and her best friend completed a wellness and health retreat in Italy at a place called The Ranch. “We hiked every day. I realized I thrive when I am close to nature, so now I prioritize being by the water.” Taking walks by the riverbank of the Danube, which is close to her temporary place in Budapest, “helps cleanse my energy, and I can hear my thoughts, and I move,” she says. “I have to move. If I don’t move, I am a raging terror.”

Her exercise routine: Dancing around her house to Beyoncé’s Renaissance album, Bette Midler’s greatest hits, the Gypsy Kings, or Celia Cruz is as key as getting her steps in while outside. “That makes me feel aligned,” she says of grooving. “That refills my spirit.” In addition to her therapeutic dance parties, Ariana works out at the gym three or four days a week doing a mix of intervals, including pushups (“Mind you, most of the time I do them with my knees down,” she says. “There’s nothing wrong with that as long as you engage your core!”), tricep dips, rows, and a variation of lunges targeting her glutes and inner thighs with 10- to 15-pound weights. After doing a few rounds of 10 reps per exercise, Ariana jumps on the elliptical for 30 to 40 minutes. Switching up which muscle group she targets during every workout helps her stay motivated. So does sticking with a set cycle of moves. “Give me a routine and I’m happy as a clam!

How she prepares for Calypso: She’d stretch in the morning while lying in bed to “get in tune with what was going on” with her. She also practiced yoga on-set and meditated for 10 minutes after lunch.

Figuring out how to nurture her well-being: “In the last year, I’ve gotten more acquainted with what my power is,” she says, adding that she feels a surge of pride in her progress when she’s able to “positively impact another person or community.” As a board member of Covenant House, Ariana helps to provide homeless and sexually trafficked youth with opportunities to rebuild their lives. “There’s power in showing up for someone else, advocating for them, and feeling like you’ve helped them get back on track,” she says. There is also serious power in showing up for yourself and facing novel challenges head-on.

[From Women’s Health]

Push-ups vex me – at least the way you’re ‘supposed’ to do them. So I appreciate anyone who justifies my knee-on-the-ground push-ups. I could do the the routine Ariana mentions above. I’d hate it, because I’m convinced lunges are retribution for unpunished crimes, but I could do it. And you know I love some dancing and grooving worked in to any exercise program. I like routines that apply to a variety of people. I also included the part about Ariana preparing for the Marvel role because she mentioned getting in tune with her body as she wakes up. Michelle Yeoh said something similar. I wake up and start whipping through my to-do list but maybe I need to refocus and start tuning into my body instead. Seriously, 2023 is my year of changes.

Which brings me to the rest of Ariana’s interview. I really related to Ariana’s wholeness approach. I want to change so much about my well-being this year and the physical is only part of it. So I paid close attention when Ariana talked about discovering her need to be near water. And reexamining the relationships that aren’t working for whatever reason. There’s just so much food for thought here.

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Photo credit: Instagram and Cover Images

As everyone always says, The Crown does not represent a perfectly accurate history of the British royal family. If anything, showrunner/writer/producer Peter Morgan tends to soft-pedal some of the creepiest and most unsettling stuff. There has been a lot of talk about the way Prince Charles and Camilla are portrayed, but as I’ve said before, their actual history is a million times worse than we see on The Crown. So it is with the Duke of Windsor, aka Prince David, aka the brief reign of King Edward VIII. The Crown shows the post-abdication David (as he was known to his family) as some kind of informal advisor to the crown in the early years of QEII’s reign. While that may have been the case, it’s worth noting that the Queen Mum never got along with David, and in the last decades of his life, David had barely anything to do with the Windsors and vice versa.

The Queen Mum kept her distance from David because she knew exactly who David was and how compromised he was, because King George VI had been fully briefed on all of David’s plans during the war. King George VI knew that if the Nazis broke the British spirit during the Battle of Britain and successfully invaded Britain, Hitler would install David as some kind of Vichy Monarch, a Nazi-adjacent king. While those plans were not widely known among the British people, trust that British intelligence and the British government knew of those plans. There’s been some questions about what David knew about it though, and whether he genuinely cosigned the Nazi plot. That’s what a new documentary is about.

Long-standing rumors that Edward VIII aided the Nazis after being forced to abdicate have been given new credence by evidence that he passed critical information to the Germans and urged them to continue “severe bombing” of the country, paving the way for him to return as head of a puppet government.

Edward, who was photographed meeting Hitler in 1937 with his wife, wrote four reports on the lamentable state of the French army in 1940, having been invited to inspect the troops by the French government, who assumed he was loyal to the allied cause. Edward was living in exile in France with Wallis, but still held military rank, acted as a liaison officer and had not been completely cut off by the family.

However after his reports, which detailed low morale and weak leadership, were ignored by the British, he passed them to a friend who was a Nazi informant. A new documentary Edward VIII: Britain’s Traitor King, based on a book of the same name by historian Andrew Lownie, says that Germany then used the information from Edward’s reports to inform their invasion of France in 1940.

The documentary also brings fresh nuance to Edward’s planned role in a potential British puppet government after any German victory. It is a matter of historical record that the Nazis considered such a plan, which was codenamed Operation Willi. However there has long been doubt over whether Edward knew about and endorsed Operation Willi.

The new documentary suggests that Edward was actively interested in the plan and reveals that after Edward was forced to leave Portugal for the Bahamas (where he was appointed governor) by Churchill, he sent a message to his friend Ricardo Espirito Santo, a wealthy banker who was a Nazi informant. The coded telegram said that he was willing to come back to Europe, which is interpreted as meaning he was willing to assume the British throne.

According to another diplomatic cable, Edward told Spanish agents: “Continued severe bombing would make England ready for peace,” and that he was being kept away from England to prevent him working with “English friends of peace.”

[From The Daily Beast]

Yes, I think David knew Hitler’s plans and he knew all about Operation Willi and he was all for it. I’ve always thought that? I mean, David and Wallis truly went to Berlin and met Hitler in person. Do you think they only talked about the weather? Of course they schemed. Sidenote: David, like every member of the Windsor clan at that time, spoke fluent German. As for David likely submitting reports on Allied military readiness, I believe that too. In recent years, people have tried to do this bizarre historical revisionism when it comes to Edward VIII and I don’t get it at all. He and Wallis were both Nazi sympathizers, if not outright Nazis.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.

Princess Anne missed the Christmas church service because she had a cold. [JustJared]
Photos from the huge North American winter blizzard. [OMG Blog]
The best TV episodes of 2022? [Jezebel]
CoCo-T got backlash for posting a video of her 7-year-old twerking. [Dlisted]
What actor-pairing had the best on-screen chemistry? [Pajiba]
2022: the year of the hooded gown. [GFY]
Tom Everett Scott has been around forever. [SeriouslyOMG]
The mystery of the Setagaya family murders. [Buzzfeed]
Brittney Griner’s wife has a message for critics. [Towleroad]
This TikTok trend is awful, stop doing this to your parents. [Gawker]

I still believe that there were many shenanigans in and around Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi’s courtship with Princess Beatrice. One day, he was engaged to Dara Huang and they were raising their son together and the next day Edo was super-serious with Beatrice and Dara was sleeping on a friend’s couch. Whatever happened, it happened quickly and the mess was hushed up for the most part. Dara and Edo are still friendly, they still work together and they coparent their son Wolfie. As it turned out, Edo and Beatrice had Wolfie on Christmas Day, so Wolfie was included on the church-walk on the Sandringham estate. Wolfie has been included in some royal events before, especially during the Jubbly, and it seems like Edo and Dara are both fine with it. Well, Dara did have some sh-t to say… about how happy she is that Wolfie is being raised and educated in the UK.

Her son has been welcomed so warmly into the Royal Family that he joined the King and Queen on their walk to church at Sandringham on Christmas Day. And now architect Dara Huang has voiced her gratitude that Christopher Woolf Mapelli Mozzi, or ‘Wolfie’ as he’s known, is being educated in this country rather than her native America. She fears that the six-year-old could have become yet another victim of a school shooting in the USA.

‘I’m glad my son doesn’t go to school in the USA,’ Dara declares online. ‘I can sleep at night knowing he won’t die at his desk tomorrow morning.’

There have been more than 600 mass shootings in the US so far this year and at least 1,500 children killed in gun-related incidents.

Miss Huang, 39, who was engaged to interior designer Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, 39, before he married the King’s niece Princess Beatrice, 34, was born and grew up in America, to where her maternal grandfather had emigrated from Taiwan. She was granted British citizenship earlier this year.

The architect, who was recently featured in Channel 4’s property programme Britain’s Most Expensive Houses, made the comments after returning to the US for Christmas while Wolfie was at the King’s Norfolk retreat with his father and stepmother.

‘Not to get all political here, but I went to a sports store in the US to buy tennis shoes today and couldn’t help but notice this huge gun section – post Xmas sale,’ Dara says. ‘So I walked up to the man and said, ‘What do I need to buy a gun home? Do I need a licence?’ And he said, ‘No, you can buy one right now and either take it in two days or take a $50 two-hour ‘conceal and carry course’ and bring it home right now.’ And I said, ‘OK, so no licence needed, medical records, history of felony?’ And he said, ‘Nope. You can keep it in your car or home, as you see fit.’ ‘ She adds: ‘Literally anybody can buy the most dangerous weapon known to man.’

[From The Daily Mail]

I mean… she’s right? America’s gun culture is shameful and crazy. It shouldn’t be this easy to buy a gun. American parents have completely legitimate fears that there will be a shooting at their kids’ schools. Foreigners traveling to America are always shocked by the guns and the prevalence of gun violence. News of American gun violence makes international news. It’s a bonkers way to live. Anyway, I’m glad Dara and Edo are on the same page about raising Wolfie in the UK.

Photos courtesy of Cover Images, Backgrid.

During the Boston Flop Tour, Prince William threw a tantrum about the Harry & Meghan trailer, and magically, every British media outlet had quotes about how the Sussexes were “like the Kardashians” and how everything Harry & Meghan do is about themselves. Valentine Low at the Times dutifully transcribed this huffy quote: “They are two people who are accepting awards for themselves, talking about themselves, doing programmes about themselves. [William and Kate are] active members of the royal family who have a job to shine a spotlight on other people, give awards to other people. That’s the contrast.” I bring this up because the Windsors are liars, morons and narcissists. William genuinely believes that he was so selfless in refusing to invite the Earthshot finalists to Boston, thus making everything about William and Buttons. It’s the exact same thing for the other Windsors too – look, here’s Queen Camilla on the holiday issue of Good Housekeeping UK. I thought it was against the rules for royal women to appear on magazine covers? Maybe it doesn’t count if they use tons of Photoshop.

Queen Camilla is gracing newsstands! The Queen Consort, 75, has been revealed as the latest cover star of Good Housekeeping’s U.K. edition. Camilla smiled in a red coat dress adorned with a ballerina brooch before a sparkling fir for the cover of the Christmas and New Year’s issue.

“The Queen Consort: Thinking of others this festive season,” the cover reads. In the accompanying interview, Queen Camilla shed light on her work with SafeLives, a domestic abuse charity that she’s been involved with since 2016, and her most memorable exchanges with survivors and volunteers.

“The work of SafeLives is extremely close to my heart because I have had the privilege of meeting so many women — and men — who live in an atmosphere of permanent fear. Their stories still haunt me,” she said in part. “Over and over again, I have heard that what survivors want, above all, is for the wall of silence to be broken.”

The lifestyle magazine’s latest issue is especially regal. According to a statement shared by publisher Hearst, Queen Elizabeth II granted her blessing for Good Housekeeping to produce a special issue “championing royal women and, crucially, raising awareness around important social causes” for the publication’s 100th anniversary this year and in connection with her Platinum Jubilee.

The issue also includes exclusive interviews with Kate Middleton, Princess Anne, Sophie, Countess of Wessex, Princess Alexandra (Queen Elizabeth’s first cousin) and Birgitte, Duchess of Gloucester (the wife of Prince Richard, who is also first cousins with Queen Elizabeth). The royals are expected to address “their own selected causes spanning dementia, carers, child safety and missing people,” Hearst said.

[From People]

Well, at least Camilla used the cover to highlight one of her causes. That was not the case over the summer, when Camilla appeared on the cover of Country Life magazine. That was around the same time that she also appeared in British Vogue and organized several birthday profiles and interviews. As it turns out, Camilla, Kate, William and Charles are in the narcissism business. Spoiler: it’s their only business.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images, cover courtesy of Good Housekeeping UK.

One of my biggest irritations is when people act as if the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s story and exit from the British royal family is some kind of siloed, superficial issue. The Sussexit had huge repercussions for the monarchy, for the British commonwealth, for the media, for global conversations of racism, extremism, misogyny and more. If you ask me, King Charles seems to have made his peace with the fact that many countries will leave the commonwealth and abandon the British monarch as their head of state. Charles knows he’s likely losing the Caribbean countries and many African commonwealth countries in the years to come. Post coronation, he will likely make big, splashy tours to Canada and Australia though, because he cares about “keeping” the “white countries.” The problem is that Australians are watching Netflix!! Aussies watched Netflix’s Harry & Meghan and they are being radicalized to believe that maybe they shouldn’t have a monarch.

For a nation still recovering from the emotional hangover over the loss of its sovereign, the latest Harry & Meghan instalment is triggering sympathy mixed with fierce debate about Australia becoming a republic. As the second volume of the revealing documentary aired this week, charting in detail why the couple decided to carve out a new life in the US, many Australians questioned their country’s future ties.

Bestselling Australian novelist and true crime author Vikki Petraitis told The Telegraph she was saddened by the final three episodes, and in particular about the alleged attempts to silence Meghan. “I saw it as absolute manipulation,” she said. “Now that the Queen has gone, if the Royal family can’t reconcile with Harry and turn the tide so it’s not abusive to him and his family, what hope do they have of surviving?”

On social media the commentary among Australians after the final episodes was at times angry and heated.

“Am reminded that it is high time we in Australia formally unshackled ourselves from this entire family,” said one tweet, from a woman in Sydney. Another user, a male software developer based in Canberra, described the Royal family as an “awkward institution.”

Other Australians, however, expressed dismay and disinterest, with one commenting the show involved “two extremely privileged people whining about how tough it is being them.” Meanwhile, Peter FitzSimons, former chairman of the Australian Republic Movement, commented sympathetically that the controversial series had changed his mind about the couple’s motivations. “I start to get what they were on about,” he tweeted.

In the final episodes, friends of Harry and Meghan noted their Australian tour in 2018 as the “turning point” in which the Palace began to feel threatened by their popularity. “I think Australia was a real turning point because they were so popular,” Meghan’s friend, Lucy Fraser, said in the documentary. “So popular with the public, that internals at the Palace were incredibly threatened by that.”
Australian journalist Natalie Oliveri saw the hysteria first hand when the couple toured the country. She believes their future could have taken a far different trajectory. “I was on the Australian tour with Harry and Meghan and witnessed the insane popularity they had with crowds,” she posted on Twitter. “Sad to see how drastically the situation has turned. Imagine how things could have been.”

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has long supported the republican movement but so far his focus has been testing the mood with “national consultation” work behind the scenes, rather than any solid sign of another referendum. But with voices on the matter becoming louder after the Netflix documentary, that may well change.

As Melbourne-based academic and scientist Rob White remarked, the loss of Prince Harry to the official royal line-up has been a blow. “I’m no fan of the monarchy – bring on the republic of Australia,” he wrote on social media. ‘But I quite liked Harry… they could have contributed so much – pity.”

[From The Telegraph]

Harry even said that directly in the Netflix series, that the family could have had such an incredible diplomatic figure with Meghan, but they ruined it. They threw Meghan away and treated her like garbage. That was the section in the sixth episode where Liz Garbus actually showed some photos from William and Kate’s sad Caribbean Flop Tour too – that was magnificently shady. And it’s just going to keep going too – whenever those horrid people leave Salt Island, they’re going to flop so hard. The Windsors’ “stay with us, please let us rule over you” tours are going to be so funny in the coming years.

Photos courtesy of Instar and Netflix.

Piers Morgan’s Twitter account was hacked by someone even more vile than him. The hacker is also threatening to expose Morgan’s DMs, which could get interesting. [Just Jared]
A list of the worst tweets of 2022. [Gawker]
Gov. Abbott is one of the most disgusting people in America. [Towleroad]
Pajiba’s top ten films of 2022. [Pajiba]
Billie Eilish dressed up as a sexy Santa. [Egotastic]
Stop calling 911 over your neighbor’s lawn decorations. [Dlisted]
In 2022, so many people embraced brown clothes. [Go Fug Yourself]
Sarah Michelle Gellar looks amazing at 45. [Seriously OMG]
The chaotic history of kissing under the mistletoe. [Jezebel]
T&L’s favorite movie costumes of 2022. [Tom & Lorenzo]
Some of the most wholesome tweets of 2022. [Buzzfeed]
This is such a wicked web of internet-famous people. [Starcasm]

Header image courtesy of Politico Magazine

The image above is from Politico Magazine’s cover story, which dropped yesterday. Joanna Weiss wrote the piece called: “2022 Is the Year We All Finally Got Tired of Narcissists: Narcissists had their moment in the sun. But in 2022, some of them got their comeuppance and some of them got worse: our disinterest.” Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Elizabeth Holmes, Kanye West, Sam Bankman-Fried… and the Duchess of Sussex. I must ask again: are white women okay? Joanna Weiss is not okay. Meghan is a flawed person like literally everyone else, but the only things Meghan is “guilty” of are “telling her own story” and “having a successful podcast” and “producing a successful Netflix docuseries.” For these crimes, Joanna Weiss lumped Meghan in with an antisemitic white supremacist (Ye), a Russian stooge moron (Elon), a Russian stooge antisemitic fascist terrorist (Trump), and two con artist criminals who bilked investors for billions of dollars (Bankman-Fried and Holmes). What’s even more grotesque is that in the text of the cover story, Weiss LEADS with Meghan’s “crimes,” as if Meghan is the somehow the most appalling person in this crew:

It’s been a good run for the narcissists. Over the past decade or so, a mix of shameless self-aggrandizement and self-confident charm has served certain people extraordinarily well, turning them into venture-capital darlings, licensed-merchandise magnates, Forbes cover models, social media superstars, Oprah confessors, business-conference keynoters, new-money plutocrats and, in one case, president. Elon Musk, Sam Bankman-Fried, Ye (né Kanye West), Elizabeth Holmes, Meghan Markle, Donald Trump: All of them used attention as currency and ego as fuel, and were rewarded, for a time, with what they craved. We’re drawn to people who love themselves.

But somewhere between the fifth and sixth hour of “Harry and Meghan,” the new Netflix documentary series produced by the former Duke and Duchess of Sussex and filmed at their California mansion — which suggests that there is no one more in love, no one more socially conscious, no one more aggrieved — my natural sympathy for the couple started turning to irritation, and it occurred to me that ego has its limits. And it struck me that the overreach that led to the Sussexes’ critically panned mega-series is the same impulse that turned Elon Musk into a terror on Twitter, that prompted Ye to up the ante of outrageous behavior until he crossed the line into blatant antisemitism, that sent Bankman-Fried from the top of the world to a Bahamian jail.

Some of these turns of fate are more dramatic and complete than others. But once we tally up the losses, it could be that 2022 marks the year our love affair with narcissists started to falter. Many of them met this year with declines in fortunes, falls from grace or newfound public skepticism. Many seemed to overstay their welcome in the public glare. And if this is the moment when we started to crave boring public figures for a change — well, to a large degree, the egotists did it to themselves. Maybe they couldn’t help it.

[From Politico]

Joanna Weiss is not a well woman. Shame on Politico for giving this deranged nutjob a platform. One of the things I’ll never, ever f–king understand is why these kind of Derangers – and make no mistake, Weiss has a long Deranger history – make it sound like Meghan in particular is “forcing” people to pay attention to her. You literally have to go out of your way to listen to Archetypes or watch the Netflix docuseries. You literally have to click on Meghan’s interviews and take the time to read them. She does not affect your daily life in any way if you’re sane.

Placing Meghan Markle at the center of criminals and antisemites is not an accident. The hate for Meghan is palpable. A woman of color protecting her family and defending herself isn’t narcissism; it’s survival. @JoannaWeiss & @POLITICOMag should apologize for this garbage take. pic.twitter.com/YzQUD4YBnd

— Christopher Bouzy (@cbouzy) December 27, 2022

Not satisfied to sit on the sideline while the British media unleashes it’s racist scribes to attack Meghan Markle, @politico decides to throw its full racist staff at Meghan Markel liking her to racist, antisemitic, apartheid and nazi-loving thrives grifters and insurrectionists pic.twitter.com/yUct4D3KyQ

— President Kamala’s Hand (Again) (@myronjclifton) December 26, 2022

Header image courtesy of Politico Magazine, additional photos courtesy of Netflix.

Personally, I was surprised to see the number of royals and royal-adjacents “allowed” to go on the Sandringham Christmas walk to church. While I expected King Charles, Camilla and the Wales family, it was interesting to see Charles include all of his nieces and nephews, including the Tindalls, Peter Phillips, the Wessexes and the York princesses and their husbands. My guess is that Charles genuinely wanted to have a big showing for his first Christmas as monarch. My guess is that all of the Windsors know that they’ve lost their brightest stars: the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. It was an all-white royal Christmas and the visuals were painful. So of course the Hector Projectors in the British media have made this into “Who needs Harry and Meghan! The Sussexes are probably so mad that they missed this!!” Please allow the Mail’s Sarah Vine (who is a piece of sh-t) to attempt to brand the Waleses, Charles and Camilla as “the magnificent seven.” Buh-bye Drab Four, now George, Louis and Charlotte have to pick up the slack.

Barely a few months have passed since the Queen died, and already the tectonic plates of the Royal Family have shifted beyond measure. King Charles seems to have slipped almost effortlessly into his new role, and the Queen Consort’s natural warmth and humour — legendary among her close friends but perhaps not always glimpsed in public — have really come to the fore.

The Prince and Princess of Wales, too, have hit their stride, alongside their three children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis. It can’t be easy for children so young to find themselves so frequently in the spotlight, and yet their parents seem to strike just the right balance between allowing the public access to them and protecting their privacy — and letting their very different personalities shine through.

Pictures of Louis in shorts made me laugh. Children that age can get obsessed with wearing certain things — I remember my daughter going through a phase where she insisted on nothing but shorts, come rain, wind, sun or snow. Perhaps young Louis is similarly stubborn. The children — not just the Waleses, but other smaller royals, too, including Lena Tindall and Savannah Phillips — were very much front and centre this year. Such a contrast, too, from a few years ago, when all eyes were on Harry and Meghan, the new royal superstars.

Back then, we were fixated on the ‘Fab Four’, with the Duchess of Sussex bringing all the glamour, the then Duchess of Cambridge rather more Home Counties than Hollywood in comparison. Not yesterday. The Princess of Wales looked absolutely stunning in an elegant olive-green coat, topped off with a rather rakish Philip Treacy trilby hat (all the rage at the moment) that made her look both chic and edgy. Her style has evolved rapidly over the past few years, and this was one of her best looks yet: clean and simple, and the perfect expression of her new-found self-assurance.

Harry and Meghan were, of course, conspicuous by their absence, having spent the past few weeks lobbing lumps of dirt across the Atlantic in increasingly desperate attempts to win fans and shame the royals back home. But it mattered not a jot that they weren’t there. In fact, if I’m honest, it was a relief not to see Harry’s scowling face and Meghan’s pained smile. And besides, who needs the Fab Four when you can have the Magnificent Seven: three united generations of royals who genuinely seem to enjoy their roles and appreciate the place they hold in the nation’s hearts?

One can’t help wondering whether Harry, waking up in his cashmere-lined Montecito idyll, might not have felt a small pang of regret at seeing them all together at Sandringham. Part of him might have felt sad, too, that his own two children couldn’t be there, playing alongside their cousins.

If the estranged Duke and Duchess of Sussex seem driven by bitterness and resentment, unable to forgive or forget and determined to cast themselves as victims even as they act as aggressors, then senior royals are clearly equally determined to turn the other cheek.

[From The Daily Mail]

Nothing says “Miserable Prince Harry must be full of regret” like devoting an entire f–king royal-Christmas column to how Harry and Meghan weren’t at Sandringham. I could genuinely feel the panic creeping in as Vine wrote “magnificent seven” and tried to compliment Kate’s Carmen Sandiego look. What’s crazy is that they can’t help but tell on themselves – if they weren’t so busy screaming about the Sussexes’ absence, the all-white visuals would have been okay. Boring but okay. As I said, I was surprised by Charles’s inclusion of his nieces and nephews. Charles’s first Christmas actually got a good turnout. But of course, as you see Charles standing there with his extended family, you do remember… oh, right, his younger son hasn’t spent the last four Christmases in the UK. Oh, right, Charles refuses to protect his younger son’s family.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid.