Royal Women & The Rags: Part 1
The women change, but the plot points stay the same
Pulling Threads by Meredith Constant is a labor-intensive, entirely reader-funded blog. My goal in 2025 is for this Substack to branch out into other media forms and become a part/full-time job for me. I couldn’t do it without your support. Thank you.
The name Diana means ‘divine’, ‘goddess’, and ‘heavenly’. Diana was an ancient Roman deity, often depicted as a hunter, known for her swiftness. It is a cruel irony that one of the most famous Diana’s of the last century–the former Princess of Wales–was one of the most hunted women in modern memory. Among the things Diana most loved was ballet.
I can see glimmers of her complicated relationship with the press through Balanchine’s Agon Pas de Deux. The Miami City Ballet describes the extended pas de deux as duet that is built on:
[…]the sustained, prolonged intertwining of the two dancers rather than being structured as a supported adagio followed by separate variations and a coda. It offers scarcely a break as it builds in tension, offering images of a bond that is tested but not broken.
But what happens when it does break? Who specifically breaks?
The word “agon” is Greek for “contest” and the media and Diana were certainly engaged in a contest, especially once she tried in her final year of life to seemingly break free of it. Or wrest some control away from the persistent press. Dance solo. But, like a dancer who is pushed too hard, Diana was pursued too aggressively by the media and it crushed her. The media, upon losing their prima ballerina, took this disaster as a sign to reform their industry and change the choreography. Articles labeling royal women as ‘difficult’, questioning their desire for privacy after interviews, pitting them against other royal women, etc. would end with Diana.
Except that didn’t happen because all of those things have been said or written about Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, wife of Diana’s second son, Prince Harry. Same playbook, different players.
When people ask me if the British media’s coverage of the British Royal Family was this bad during the days of Diana, Fergie, and Camilla, my answer is—kind of. The misogyny and looks-shaming continues to exist even if the language is less explicit. While ‘commoners’ like Kate Middleton endured classist attacks in the media in the beginning, racism towards it’s first mixed-race American Duchess was certainly a new and sustained flavor in the -isms the press engages in. The media claims phone-hacking and other illegal invasion of privacy tactics are a thing of the past, but I’m not sure if that’s true or a byproduct of developing relationships with certain Comms. Offices in The Firm. Who needs to hack a phone when a family member will give you the goods on a popular royal who needs to be ‘taken down a peg’?