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Dowd: Gone with the Windsors

File photo by Matt Dunham of The Associated Press / Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, Meghan the Duchess of Sussex and Prince Harry stand on a balcony to watch a flypast of Royal Air Force aircraft pass over Buckingham Palace in London in Julyf 2018. File photo by Matt Dunham of The Associated Press / Britain's Queen Elizabeth II, Meghan the Duchess of Sussex and Prince Harry stand on a balcony to watch a flypast of Royal Air Force aircraft pass over Buckingham Palace in London in Julyf 2018.

By Maureen Dowd / New York Times News Service January 13, 2020 4 min read

I never had much use for the queen.

Maybe it’s the Irish in me. As Winston Churchill said: “We’ve always found the Irish a bit odd. They refuse to be English.”

Or maybe it’s the American in me. We did go to an awful lot of trouble to break away from that corgi-and-gin-loving racket 244 years ago.

At some visceral level, though, America must regret being torn away from the royal family. How else to explain our enduring fascination with dynasties?

The ghost of Diana gone rogue animates the fractured fairy tale of Meghan and Harry, and their intemperate attempt to upend centuries of starchy rules and break away from the Firm.