In defence of Charlie Hebdo’s ‘racist royals’ cover

Amid the ongoing fallout from Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s explosive Oprah interview, Charlie Hebdo seems to have done the impossible: it has united Team Queen and Team Meghan in outrage against it.

In response to Markle’s claims that she was pushed out of the royal family by racism, the fearless French satirical magazine published a front-page cartoon of the queen with her knee on Meghan’s neck. The cartoon is titled ‘Why Meghan quit the palace’, to which Markle answers in a speech bubble, ‘Because I couldn’t breathe any more’.

The depiction of the queen, complete with hairy legs and red eyes, hasn’t gone down well with some monarchists. Meanwhile, those on the identitarian left found the cartoon’s evocation of George Floyd’s death distasteful. Halima Begum, chief executive of the Runnymede Trust, said it was ‘wrong on every level’.