By turning a simple gesture of respect into an over the top, sarcastic performance, complete with the mocking “Pleasure to meet you, Your Majesty,” she did not merely poke fun at royal protocol. She openly disrespected her husband’s grandmother and the cultural traditions she was marrying into. You do not have to adore the monarchy to show basic decency. Mocking it on a global stage is not empowerment. It is pettiness wrapped in self righteousness. It is contempt.
What makes it worse is the attempt to sell this as innocence. She was not a sheltered teenager from another planet. She was a middle aged actress who had dated a prince, lived in the UK, and actively sought proximity to that world. She knew she was joining one of the most scrutinised families on earth. She could have asked. She could have researched. She could have practised quietly. Instead, she weaponised the moment years later.
And Harry fares no better in this story. A man raised in palaces mentions curtsying in the car, yet apparently never bothers to explain what actually matters. Then he sits back while his wife mocks the moment on camera. Pretending she thought curtsying was some medieval parody is performative ignorance. That is not naïveté. It is affectation. Harry was complicit in the shade throwing, prioritising their grievance narrative over basic respect for his own family.
What Meghan failed to understand is that respecting another culture does not diminish you. It elevates you. Courtesy is not submission. Learning customs is not erasure. When you marry into another family, another country, another culture, the basic adult response is to observe, learn, and show respect. Millions of people move across cultures every day. They learn greetings, gestures, and etiquette not because they are forced to, but because respect is universal. You honour others and in doing so you show character. Meghan chose the opposite. She treated unfamiliarity as something to sneer at, as if curiosity and humility were beneath her.
The late Queen would not have cared about a perfect curtsy during their first meeting. She met presidents, dictators, pop stars, and children. She was pragmatic, warm, and famously forgiving of protocol mishaps. A genuine smile and a simple “Nice to meet you” would have been more than enough. Instead, Meghan chose theatrical disdain, reducing a lifetime of duty and service into a punchline for Netflix dollars. It was not funny. It was mean spirited, and it revealed someone who views other people’s customs as beneath her.
That exaggerated curtsy was not for the Queen. It was for the audience Meghan always imagines watching her. The moment was not lived. It was stored, packaged, and later monetised. That is the pattern. Nothing is private. Everything is content. Every interaction is reduced to a punchline that flatters her and diminishes others.
This moment was never really about a curtsy. It was about attitude. A woman secure in herself does not need to belittle someone else’s traditions to feel superior. She does not turn cultural difference into comedy and later into grievance. She adapts. She listens. She observes. That is how you gain respect without asking for it.
If anything, that exaggerated curtsy made her look small, not modern. True confidence does not perform contempt. It practises respect quietly, even when the cameras are off.
She did not merely reveal herself. She ruined herself, slowly and publicly, through moments like this. She did not need the press to torpedo her image. Her own words and performances did that for her. Respect is not about agreement. It is about not being gratuitously rude. Meghan’s mockery achieved the opposite. It made her appear insecure, arrogant, and unwilling to bridge any gap.
