The Queen Consort and the Duchess of Sussex, personalities with fluctuating popularity in the United Kingdom, are the target of certain users of the social network.
Each of their appearance is scrutinized, analyzed, decried. As the United Kingdom gets used to its new King Charles III, who has a warmer but less phlegmatic style than Elizabeth II, Queen Consort Camilla and Meghan Markle are the target of violent attacks on the Internet, in particular on TikTok, notes the Guardian.
Users of the social network thus feast on the missteps and disappointments, real or supposed, of the ex-actress, who has participated alongside Harry in tributes to Queen Elizabeth, since her death on September 8.
Montages, retouched photos…
On TikTok, some have unearthed images of Harry and Meghan’s wedding, and mounted them with images of the queen, whose stern face seems reproachful. “The Queen looks angry, Harry looks unhappy. Meghan?”, Can we read in the caption of the sequence, “liked” 1.8 million times.
Other accounts poke fun at her supposed desire to look like Princess Diana at all costs. “Everyone at the Queen’s funeral,” the video captioned. “And Meghan dressing like Diana,” the user continued, with a photo taken completely out of context.
Another parody video shows a man springing from a coffin to strangle another, and bears the caption “The Queen when Meghan comes to pay her respects”. A photomontage of Meghan Markle is also circulating on Twitter, on which we see the Duchess wearing a t-shirt bearing the image of the Smiths album, The Queen is dead. This is an old photo retouched with Photoshop, according to AFP.
Arrived in the country and in the life of the royal family with a high popularity rating, the Duchess has become very unpopular there according to the “megxit”, and the interviews she has granted in the United States, very critical of the regard to the royal family. The tabloids, which the couple regularly takes to court, are also particularly virulent towards him.
Camilla compared to Diana
Users of the popular social network of millenials are not kinder to Camilla, new queen consort. Here again, the parallel with Diana often comes up. Several TikTok users thus compare the physique of Camilla and that of Diana.
“The new queen,” captioned a slideshow of photos of the queen consort. “The real queen”, caption of the photos of Diana. A publication “liked” more than 140,000 times.
Most of the attacks against Camilla revolve around this cruel comparison and refer to the long extra-marital relationship between Charles and Camilla. “The woman he cheated on”, Princess Diana, young and beautiful, is thus opposed to the one with whom he cheated on her, Camilla.
The one who became queen consort was long the most hated woman in Britain, the one who was blamed for the separation of Charles and Diana.
The image of the chipped royal family?
These attacks, which have a strong echo on social networks, could contribute to undermining the image of the royal family in the minds of young users of social networks, notes in the Guardian, Laura Clancy, media lecturer at Lancaster University.
“Even if much (of this content) is not explicitly anti-monarchy, it certainly creates discourse around the monarchy in a way that is not defined by the official narrative,” she points out. with the British daily.
Especially since King Charles III arrives on the throne with a much less positive image than that of his mother, perceived by many Britons as a landmark and a guarantee of stability for the country. And if, according to a Yougov poll, three quarters of the British have a good impression of his first steps as sovereign, and think that he will “do a good job”, Charles III will have to prove himself and seduce the younger generations and prove that the monarchy is still relevant.
