哈里王子夫妇为何从王室“出走”?
She was too bold, too outspoken, too difficult, too American, too multicultural, the critics said. She should not have alienated the news media by refusing to join in their celebrity games. She should not have spent so much money renovating the house the royal family was kind enough to bestow upon her and her husband.
批评人士说,她太鲁莽、太直率、太不好相处、太美国、太多元文化。她不应该因为不愿意参加新闻媒体的名人游戏而疏远媒体。她不应该花那么多钱来翻修王室慷慨赠与她和丈夫的房子。
And most of all, they said, Meghan Markle, a.k.a. the Duchess of Sussex, should not have inserted herself, Yoko Ono-like, into the once-close relationship between Prince Harry, her iconoclastic husband, and Prince William, his toeing-the-line older brother and a future heir to the British throne.
他们说,尤为重要的是,梅根·马克尔(Meghan Markle),也就是萨塞克斯公爵夫人,不应该像小野洋子那样,插在反对传统的丈夫哈里王子(Prince Harry)与他循规蹈矩的哥哥、王位继承人威廉王子(Prince William)之间一度亲密的关系中。
2018年,伊丽莎白二世女王与哈里王子和他的妻子、萨塞克斯公爵夫人梅根在白金汉宫。
But even as the duchess has faced lacerating criticism from Britons who like their royals to be dutiful and traditional — and from the tabloid newspapers that feed off and direct public opinion — so, too, has she had her own problems with life in her adopted country.
但是,公爵夫人面临英国人和英国小报的严厉批评的同时——前者希望王室成员尽职尽责、恪守传统,而后者则在消费、引导公众舆论——她在英国也遇到了生活上的种种问题。
“It’s not enough to just survive something, right?” she asked plaintively last year in the documentary “Harry & Meghan: An African Journey,” talking about the British custom of keeping calm and carrying on through even the most untidy of emotional upheavals.
“仅仅活下来是不够的,对吗?“去年,她在纪录片《哈里和梅根:非洲之旅》(Harry & Meghan: An African Journey)中哀伤地问道,当时她谈论的是英国人保持冷静的习俗,哪怕是在最激烈的情绪波动中也要不动声色。
“That’s not the point of life. You’ve got to thrive, you’ve got to feel happy,” she went on to say. “I really tried to adopt this British sensibility of a stiff upper lip. I tried, I really tried. But I think that what that does internally is probably really damaging.”
“这不是生活的意义所在。你必须充满朝气,你必须快乐,”她接着说。“我真的试过英国人那种不苟言笑的情感。我努力了,真的努力了。但我认为,这种做法对人内在的影响可能是真正有害的。
The result of this reciprocal unhappiness, it seems, was Wednesday’s extraordinary Instagram announcement from the couple that they would “carve out a progressive new role” and “step back as ‘senior members’ of the royal family.” How this would work in practice is anyone’s guess.
而这种互相看不顺眼,似乎正是这对夫妇周三在Instagram上宣布,他们将“辞去王室‘高级成员’身份”并“开创一个进步的新角色”背后的原因。这将如何实现,是大家都在猜测的事情。
Other royals have left the family before, in various ways. Diana, the Princess of Wales, lost her royal title in 1996 after divorcing Prince Charles. King Edward VIII gave up his right to the throne in 1936 by announcing that he wanted to marry Wallis Simpson, an unacceptably divorced American.
以前也有其他王室成员以各种方式离开。威尔士王妃戴安娜与查尔斯王子离婚后,于1996年失去了王室头衔。爱德华八世国王在1936年宣布要娶离婚的美国人沃利斯·辛普森(Wallis Simpson)后,放弃了他的王位。
And Prince Andrew was all but banished from the family last year after his association with the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein came to light.
去年,安德鲁王子与声名狼藉的金融家杰弗里·爱泼斯坦(Jeffrey Epstein)的联系曝光后,差点被逐出王室。
There is no precedent for Harry and Meghan’s situation.
哈里和梅根的这种情况是没有先例的。
No senior royals in the past have voluntarily said that they want to remain members of the royal family while also being somehow outside it at the same time. Except for King Edward, later the Duke of Windsor, who was exiled from home but longed to return, no senior royals have lived for any substantial time anywhere but Britain.
在过去,没有任何一位王室高级成员自愿表示,他们希望在保持王室成员身份的同时又与这一身份保持距离。爱德华国王,也就是后来的温莎公爵,曾流亡国外,但渴望回家,除此之外没有任何一位高级王室成员在其他地方生活过很长时间。
Harry and Meghan’s plan to live part of the time in the United Kingdom and part in North America, as their statement said, seems even more jarring.
哈里和梅根在声明中说,他们打算部分时间住在英国,部分时间住在北美,这一点似乎更加令人惊讶。
And while the other royals who have left the family’s viselike embrace have done so reluctantly, unwilling to give up the trappings and remunerations of royalty, Harry — at least judging by his and Meghan’s Instagram statement — appears to be enthusiastic about the prospect.
虽然其他离开王室虎钳般拥抱的家庭成员都非情愿,他们舍不得放弃王室的排场和收入,但哈里似乎对这样一个未来充满了热情——至少从他跟梅根在Instagram上的声明来看是如此。
Not only does the couple want a new role within the monarchy, the statement said, but they want to “work to become financially independent.” That’s a radical notion indeed, in a family whose members have long enjoyed public financing.
声明称,这对夫妇不仅希望在王室中充当新的角色,而且希望“努力实现财务独立”。对于一个成员长期享受公共财政资助的家族来说,这确实是一种激进的想法。
It is significant that even as Meghan and Harry went to great lengths in their statement to praise the royal family and pledge fealty to Harry’s grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, and to the monarchy in general, the response from the Queen’s camp was on the icy end of the temperature spectrum. Buckingham Palace does not like to be taken by surprise.
重要的是,即使梅根和哈里竭尽全力在他们的声明中赞扬皇室,并承诺忠于哈里的祖母伊丽莎白二世女王及整个君主政体,来自女王那一方的反应依然濒临冰点。白金汉宫不喜欢突然袭击。
“Discussions with the Duke and Duchess are at an early stage,” the palace said in its own statement — meaning, possibly, that discussions, such as they are, started very recently. “We understand their desire to take a different approach, but these are complicated issues that will take time to work through.”
“与公爵及公爵夫人的讨论尚在初期阶段,”白金汉宫在自己的声明中说——这可能意味着,类似讨论是最近才开始的。“我们理解他们希望采取不同方式,但这些都是复杂的问题,需要时间来解决。”
Meghan and Harry’s desire to break free from royal traditions and renounce the usual menu of royal obligations speaks directly to the challenges facing the monarchy as the reign of the queen, now 93, enters its final years.
梅根和哈里打破王室传统、放弃王室义务的愿望,直接反映了君主制所面临的挑战,女王现年93岁,统治期已至尾声。
As the second son of Prince Charles, who has spent his whole life waiting to become king and is himself now a formidable 71, Harry has virtually no chance of ever becoming king himself. While Prince William, as the elder brother, has been tethered to the notion that he will succeed his father on the throne, Harry has had to find another path.
查尔斯王子毕生都在等待成为国王,如今已经是71岁高龄。作为他的次子,哈里王子几乎没有机会成为国王。长兄威廉王子一直同继承父亲王位紧密联系在一起,哈里只能走上另外的道路。
He served in the British Army for 10 years, did two tours in Afghanistan and founded the Invictus Games for injured and impaired members and veterans of the armed services.
他曾在英国军队服役10年,两次前往阿富汗,并为伤残者和退伍军人创办了“不可战胜运动会”(Invictus Games)。
Along the way, Harry developed a reputation as something of a bon vivant. His early girlfriends, at least the ones anyone knew about, were mostly young aristocratic women roughly from his own social circle. Meghan Markle, a divorced American actress with a white father and an African-American mother, represented a departure.
在此过程中,哈里逐渐树立起了享受生活的名声。他早期的女友,至少是人们所知的那些,大多是来自他自己社交圈的年轻贵族女性。梅根·马克尔是一位离过婚的美国女演员,父亲是白人,母亲是非裔美国人。
Sometimes it can be hard to tell if the British tabloids direct public opinion or reflect it. From the beginning, they had a hard time dealing with Meghan, writing articles about her prior marriage and divorce, and about her parents’ divorce and her half-siblings, and making veiled remarks that seemed just short of racist.
有时很难判断英国小报是在引导还是反映舆论。从一开始,它们就与梅根不和,经常写她的上一段婚姻和离婚,写她父母的离婚,和她不同父母的兄弟姐妹,还有一些近乎种族主义的隐晦言论。
Making an unusually pointed statement while they were still dating, Prince Harry condemned the “wave of abuse and harassment” and the “racial undertones of comment pieces” that Meghan had been subjected to.
当他们还在约会时,哈里王子发表了一份异常尖锐的声明,谴责梅根遭受了“一波又一波的虐待和骚扰”,以及“评论文章中带有种族主义色彩”。
Their marriage, in 2018, seemed both modern and traditional, a meeting of past and present, America and Britain, Anglican and Episcopalian.
他们在2018年结婚,这桩婚姻显得既现代又传统,是过去与现在、美国与英国、英国国教与美国圣公会的结合。
But after a honeymoon with the couple, the tabloids took a new approach of relentless criticism — of Meghan’s outfits, of her outspokenness, of her habit of jetting to America for such occasions as a star-studded baby shower, of her supposed desire to enjoy the trappings and riches of royalty without agreeing to take on the attendant responsibilities.
但在同这对夫妇的蜜月期过后,小报就找到了新的方式,对梅根进行无情的批评——她的衣服、她的直率、她习惯回美国举办众星云集的新生儿派对等活动,人们觉得她渴望享受皇室的服饰和财富,却不愿意承担随之而来的责任。
In particular, she has been held up as inferior to the Duchess of Cambridge, formerly known as Kate Middleton, who fulfills the fantasy of an anodyne royal who is practically perfect by virtue of dutifully and enthusiastically always showing up where she needs to be.
特别是,她一直被认为不如本名凯特·米德尔顿(Kate Middleton)的剑桥公爵夫人,后者满足了人们对一位平淡庄重的王室成员的幻想,她表现完美,总是尽职而热情地出现在需要她出现的地方。
As the news of Harry and Meghan’s plans exploded across the tabloids on Wednesday night, so did the condemnation. In The Daily Mail, a series of correspondents revisited a litany of complaints about Meghan’s behavior, going back to her wedding.
周三晚上,随着哈里和梅根的计划点爆了各种小报,谴责也随之而来。在《每日邮报》(The Daily Mail)上,一群记者重温了对梅根行为的一长串批评,还回顾了她的婚礼。
“It emerged that Meghan had complained about the mustiness of St. George’s Chapel and wanted it sprayed with air freshener before the ceremony,” the paper reported, referring to the site of the royal wedding. “This was a young woman who was clearly not going to accept her position quietly.”
“梅根曾抱怨过圣乔治教堂的霉味,想在婚礼前喷点空气清新剂,”该报报道,圣乔治教堂是两人举行婚礼的地点。“这样一位年轻女子显然不会平静地接受自己的职分。”
If there’s one thing the tabloids hate more than an ungrateful royal bride, it’s an ungrateful royal bride who doesn’t even want to live in Britain.
如果有什么人比毫不领情的王室新娘更让小报讨厌的话,那就是一个毫不领情、甚至根本不想住在英国的王室新娘。