Meghan and Kate now officially don’t get on with each other and are actively feuding. Women are never depicted as cooperative, tolerant or professional, they are always calcuating rivals, over what it’s not clear. Nothing new here going back to Diana and Fergie and later Camilla and Kate as duelling consorts. But it keeps us interested and sells. Why is that, why are women so interested in and highly connected to the British royals? Dr Daniel Kruger, an evolutionary biologist from the University of Michigan is quoted as saying: “we hear about these people that we might never encounter in our lives but we still see them as part of our social world” and adds that the media can convince us that they are relevant to us because, in the past, most of the people that you had information about were important to your survival. “We are particularly susceptible to high-status people eg royalty and we pay attention to them because in the much smaller societies than those of today, they wielded power that could have had tangible consequences for us.” Celebrity exposure must also play a part in convincing us that we are familiar with and like these people that we don’t actually know at close quarters while we admire their glamour and their wardrobes. [“Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton ‘feud’ has a familiar script for royal watchers” by Yasmin Jeffery, ABC online, 4 February 2019)
Woman for an Australian Republic, Adelaide Ironside, republican poet and artist 1831-1867
Self portrait 1855, Newcastle Art Gallery NSW
