Brand Royal: Meghan Markle, feuding families, and disruptive duchessing in Brexit era Britain

Abstract

Focusing on mainstream and tabloid news reporting and ancillary texts, this article analyses the media presentation of Meghan Markle’s intersectional identities through a rhetoric of the feuding famous family. We argue that the media discourse centred on family conflict and domestic drama used to characterise Markle’s position as a royal during the Brexit era both surfaces and suppresses the significance of her existential challenge to the normative racial, class, national and gendered attributes associated with British royalty. That discourse also obfuscates and trivializes the power struggle over the significant economic capital and political “soft power” associated with the British Royal Family brand.