A Question of Contrast: Unpacking the Mail Online’s Depiction of Meghan Markle’s Royal Motherhood

Abstract

Working from a cultural studies perspective, this article explores how contrast, as a rhetorical device, is used by the Mail Online, a British tabloid, to cast Meghan Markle as “threatening” the monarchy and, by extension, traditional notions of British identity. One of the principal ways this conflict is constructed is through repeated comparisons between Markle and her sister-in-law Kate Middleton. Contrasted with Middleton, the Mail Online positions Markle as dominating, nontraditional, and pushy. Concurrently, contrasted with “unorthodox” Markle, the once-maligned Middleton is reinvented and venerated as a reassuringly “normal” royal. This article unpacks these dynamics, arguing that the Mail Online’s coverage of Markle is an example of how long-standing racialized, classed, and sexist stereotypes are being reconfigured in the digital era, reflecting a wider instability around cultural notions of Britishness in a post-Brexit world.

Keywords:

• British monarchy
• gender
• race
• representation