On Wednesday, Princess Michael (wife of the Queen’s cousin) thought it suitable to wear a blaring racist statement piece to what was presumed to be Meghan Markle’s introduction to the extended royal family at the Queen’s annual Christmas luncheon. Recognizing the insult, perhaps when Lainey Gossip picked it up, the princess is, ehm, distressed.
The selected brooch depicts a “blackamoor,” a golliwog-like slave character popularized during the 1800s and turned into jewelry for white aristocracy. A third party has offered a tepid apology but at least via the internet’s public square:
A spokesperson for the wife of the Queen’s cousin tells TMZ…
Yes.
...she’s ‘very distressed by the episode.’
She has, according to TMZ, worn the gift many times “without controversy.”
Welcome to the royal den.
The incident drags up a series of similarly distressing events such as a 2004 incident in which the princess allegedly told correspondent A. J. Calloway, for “Extra” on BET, to “go back to the colonies” after instructing him and fellow diners to shut tf up at a restaurant. She later cleared it up to the New York Post with a quote that’s actually more disturbing:
I did not say ‘back to the colonies.’ I said ‘you should remember the colonies. Back in the days of the colonies, there were rules that were very good.’
She has also been quoted in 1986 as saying that she came from a “better background than anyone else who’s married into the royal family since the war, excepting Prince Philip.”
Soon she will be forced to share Kensington Palace grounds–a small territory of the universe which the royals colonized and froze space-time somewhere between 1700 and 1950–with Prince Harry’s fiancée of–gasp–the British colony of America.
In any case, the brooch shall be “retired,” thenk you.