Meghan Markle is a duck. Or perhaps she’s a rabbit. It all depends on your point of view.
Indeed few figures in modern popular culture have been as polarizing as the erstwhile working royal, who abruptly upped sticks with her husband, Prince Harry, from the United Kingdom to North America in a dramatic whirlwind of abandoned titles, dismantled relationships, and venomous tabloid headlines that decried the decampment as “rogue,” “petulant,” and an “atrocious lapse of judgement.” Still others praised her for her courage in breaking not only away from the royal family but also a post-Brexit Britain brimming with nativist nationalism and an “an ever thickening loom of imperial nostalgia.” Meghan’s such a good mother for shielding her and Harry’s 1-year-old son, Archie, from that “toxic” atmosphere. No, she’s a bad mother for failing to support Archie’s little neck and body. And would somebody please put a sun hat on that baby! Duck! Rabbit!
Did the Duchess of Sussex have duality in mind when she chose to read Duck! Rabbit!, a children’s book by Amy Krouse Rosenthal and Tom Lichtenheld, to Archie in a video for the charity Save the Children earlier this month? Archie squirmed, fussed, lunged off screen, and took a chomp out of the book like babies are wont to do. Shot through the chorus of “good job, Mama” and “look how big he is,” however, was a vein of vitriol.
“This video is all about Meghan. Poor Archie, only used [as] a prop,” one person said on Twitter. “She didn’t give birth to him we all know that,” said another, alluding to a conspiracy theory that the Sussexes faked the pregnancy. “Meghan’s demeanor in the video screamed look at me! Look at me! I need attention as the doting mother,” clucked a third.