Business Lessons From Megxit?

Tuesday, January 28, 2020

The British royal family is not exactly a family business, but business writer Suzanne Lucas found similarities relevant to anybody running one. The most important one is this: "Your children aren't obligated [to] remain in the family business."

Building on this, and the family business-like nature of the royal family, Lucas notes the following:

Image by Mark Jones, via Wikimedia Commons, license.
In this case, the family business is set up explicitly for one person to be in charge, and all the other family members get to support that person. Prince William had the advantage of being able to say to Catherine Middleton, "One day, all this will be ours." Prince Harry could only say to Meghan Markle, "One day, this will all be my brother's, and we'll be doing the same thing we do today for the rest of our lives."
And this isn't just any family business -- it's the royal family, and I agree with Lucas that there was probably no good way for Meghan Markle to have truly figured out what she was getting into.

I wish the ex-royals well, and salute them for making the difficult -- and admirably selfish -- decision that they did.

-- CAV

Updates

Today: Corrected spelling of Meghan. 

6 comments:

Snedcat said...

Yo, Gus, you write, "The British royal family is not exactly a family business..." True; it's a family racket.

Seriously, I would have to think long and hard about marrying a royal, and not only from worries about the congenital idiocy and the hemophilia. (Try a younger daughter from the lesser nobility. It worked fine for me.) On the other hand, I would also have to think long and hard about marrying an American TV actress. That's like the meeting of two worlds completely removed from reality and devoted to mindless ceremony and empty show. (And while I am not convinced racism had too much to do with the double standards the UK press showed toward Markle, I am sure that her not fitting the model princess model had everything to do with her getting treated like Sarah Ferguson.) And frankly, if I did get married to anyone from Suits, an addictive, compulsively watchable, and ultimately (a)palling show my old boss at the law firm suggested once using as the final test in a course on legal ethics--identify every ethical breach in every episode for an A, which is a fair cop for a show premised on a wholesale violation of legal ethics--it would be Sarah Rafferty. Her character left Markle's so far in the dust it ain't even funny.

Gus Van Horn said...

Snedcat,

Yes. I, too, would have been cautious about a royal or an actress back in the day...

Gus

Anonymous said...

Hey Gus:

My view is Meghan Markle was a total unknown. I had never heard of the show Suits, much less her as an actress. Prince Harry has more cache than she had. I believe she knew what she was getting in to when she married him. Her profile would get a serious boost marrying into the British Royal family. She wanted all the pomp and circumstance, but now she wants to cut and run!! It's quite possible Prince Harry wanted to get out himself. I'm sure he was very dissatisfied with his position. So why not be honest about from the get go? And if you want to leave, don't expect to profit from your formal royal name you wanted, and then cut and run.

I don't think the situation was thought through. The question hasn't been answered if they can use Sussex in a commercial capacity. I would never want to marry anyone from Hollywood because they live in a fleeting manner. Plus there is a lack of an ethical compass. I wish both of them the best of luck. Especially Harry because he really hasn't had to "work" for anything besides his military career, which made him extremely popular. He has been reared in a sheltered environment.

Bookish Babe

Gus Van Horn said...

BB,

My wife said that that Meghan Markle's -- Oops! I've been spelling it wrong. -- acting career was impossible once she became a royal. If so, I can see the "profile boost" angle. But I can just as well see being driven up the wall by all the rules and obligations that came with being a royal. I wouldn't want that for any amount of time, let alone the rest of my life.

And, yes, in many respects, Harry has had a sheltered life.

Time will tell how this works for them. I hope everything ends up for the best.

Gus

Snedcat said...

Bookish Babe:
My view is Meghan Markle was a total unknown. I had never heard of the show Suits, much less her as an actress. When I heard her name the first time I heard the announcement and that she was on Suits, I couldn't place her at all. When I looked her up, I thought, "Oh, her."

I believe she knew what she was getting in to when she married him. Well, she darn well should have anyway.

Yo, Gus, you write, Time will tell how this works for them. I hope everything ends up for the best. I do too, though I wonder. Then again, more untried pairs have flourished in the past, so we shall see. Incidentally, here's a BBC video about black Britons' views of the wedding around the time of the marriage, which you might enjoy especially because Pauline Black is one of the people briefly interviewed. (I used it in an ESL class at the time because my students were interested in the marriage, and it was time for them to get some more non-American listening practice.)

Snedcat said...

Forgot to reply to this earlier:

Bookish Babe: I would never want to marry anyone from Hollywood because they live in a fleeting manner. Plus there is a lack of an ethical compass. That is quite true. Moreover, there's an almost universal leftism stewed into them by osmosis (as well as selected for in the institutions there). I have a sad foreboding that they will become prominent in short order mostly for very public, generally quite leftist claptrap.