A Tale Old and New as Another Royal Wife Breaks Free
梅根，第二个戴安娜王妃？

Anyone who remembers the funeral of Diana, the Princess of Wales, in 1997 can’t help being haunted by the wrenching sight of her two young sons, Princes William and Harry, walking slowly behind her coffin as it made its way to Westminster Abbey. Their hands were clasped in front; their heads were bowed. Harry looked so small in his suit.

凡是记得1997年威尔士王妃戴安娜(Diana, the Princess of Wales)葬礼的人都难以忘记她的两个幼子——威廉(William)和哈里(Harry)王子——在她的灵柩前往威斯敏斯特教堂时缓缓走在后面的痛苦景象。他们扣着手，低垂着头。哈里穿着西装显得那么瘦小。

That image has reverberated down the years, a ghostly reminder of the princes’ traumatic childhood, and it hovered again in the background as Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan, spoke to Oprah Winfrey on Sunday night.

那张照片多年来一直萦绕不去，幽灵般提醒人们王子们经历了怎样充满创伤的童年。周日晚上，当哈里王子和妻子梅根(Meghan)接受奥普拉·温弗瑞(Oprah Winfrey)采访时，它再次出现在背景中。
 

发声：1995年，戴安娜王子就宫中生活接受采访。梅根·马克尔周日也这么做了。

While the British tabloids like to cast Meghan in the villainous role of the Duchess of Windsor — the American divorcée who lured away their king in 1936 and lived with him in bitter exile, causing an irreparable family rift — Harry and Meghan seem determined to position her instead as a latter-day Diana, a woman mistreated by her in-laws, more sinned against than sinning.

虽然英国小报喜欢把梅根塑造成温莎公爵夫人(Duchess of Windsor)那样的反派角色——一个离过婚的美国女人，在1936年拐走了他们的国王，和他一起过上凄苦的流亡生活，造成了无法弥补的家庭裂痕——但哈里和梅根似乎决心把她反而定位为当今的戴安娜，一个被姻亲虐待的女人，非但没有罪过，反而还是被罪行侵害的一方。

Harry has often spoken with anguish and bitterness about what happened to Diana all those years ago when she was cast out of the royal family after her divorce from Prince Charles and later died in a car wreck in a Parisian underpass, the paparazzi in hot pursuit. He raised the subject again on Sunday, drawing parallels between the experiences of his mother and his wife and saying, of Diana, that he has “felt her presence through this whole process.”

哈里王子经常痛苦地提起多年前戴安娜的遭遇。她与查尔斯王子(Prince Charles)离婚后被逐出王室，后来被狗仔队穷追不舍，在巴黎某地下通道内的一场车祸中去世。周日，他再次提起这个话题，将母亲和妻子的遭遇相提并论，并在谈到戴安娜时说，自己“在整个过程中都感觉到了她的存在”。

It felt Shakespearean, the sense of history repeating itself through the immutable structure of a royal lineage and an ancient institution — while a prince spoke of breaking free from the old patterns and finding a new way forward.

这给人莎士比亚戏剧的感觉，历史感通过王室血统和古老制度不可改变的结构进行着自我重复，而一位王子则表示要打破旧模式，寻找新的前进之路。

Harry made the comparison explicit on Sunday when he referred to the “constant barrage” of criticism and racist attacks on his wife.

周日，哈里王子表示妻子受到“持续不断的”批评和种族主义攻击，明确地将妻子和母亲相提并论。

“What I was seeing was history repeating itself,” he said, though he described the treatment of Meghan as “far more dangerous” because of the ubiquity of social media and the corrosive element of racism.

“我看到历史在重演，”他说。不过他表示，因为社交媒体无处不在，以及种族主义的腐蚀性因素，梅根的遭遇“要危险得多”。

Meghan’s discussion in the interview of her mental health struggles as a royal wife, of loneliness and desolation and thoughts of suicide, were reminiscent of Diana’s account of the bulimia and depression that consumed her during her own marriage. Both women said they had desperately sought help from the family, only to be ignored and rebuffed.

梅根在采访中谈到自己作为王室妻子那段时间的心理健康问题，以及孤独、悲哀和自杀的念头，这让人想起戴安娜曾谈到自己婚姻期间的暴食症和抑郁症。这两名女性都表示，她们曾拼命地向家人寻求帮助，但都遭到了忽视和拒绝。

“When I’m talking about history repeating itself, I’m talking about my mother,” Harry said. “When you can see something happening in the same kind of way, anybody would ask for help.”

“当我说历史重演的时候，我说的是我的母亲，”哈里说。“当你看到一些事情以同样的方式发生时，任何人都会寻求帮助。”

But just as with his mother, when Meghan pleaded for help, he said, none was forthcoming. Instead, the family dismissed her concerns and told her, essentially, to keep her head down.

但他说，就像他的母亲一样，当梅根请求帮助时，没有人愿意帮忙。相反，王室没有理会她的担忧，他们给她的要求基本上就是，低头作人。

The couple was repeatedly told: “This is how it is. This is just how it is,” Harry said.

这对夫妇被反复告知：“事情就是这样。事情就是这样，”哈里说。

There are many parallels between Meghan and Diana.

梅根和戴安娜之间有很多相似之处。

Like Diana, Meghan married into a family that did not understand her and believed she would conform, without complaint, to royal customs and protocol. As with Diana, when Meghan proved unable or unwilling to tow the family line, she said, the palace did nothing to dispel the emerging public narrative that she was demanding, petulant, entitled. And like Diana, Meghan found herself hounded by the tabloids, which accused her of constantly seeking attention while happily filling their pages with stories about her.

和戴安娜一样，梅根嫁到了一个并不理解她的家庭，他们认为她会毫无怨言地遵守王室习俗和礼仪。她说，和戴安娜一样，当梅根被证明不能或不愿意同家族保持一致时，王室没有做任何事情来消除关于她苛刻、任性、高傲的公共叙事。和戴安娜一样，梅根发现自己被小报纠缠，它们指责她不断寻求关注，同时乐此不疲地用她的故事填满版面。

But there are differences, too, beyond the fact that Diana was white and Meghan is biracial, and the fact that Diana’s marriage fell apart, while Meghan has a strong marriage and a fierce champion in Harry.

但是两人之间也有一些不同，戴安娜是白人，梅根是混血儿；戴安娜的婚姻破裂了，而梅根的婚姻却很稳固，哈里是她的坚强后盾。

Diana was just 20, and very sheltered and naïve, when she and Charles married; Meghan was 36 and worldly, having made her own living for years, when she married Harry. She was also divorced, with a high-profile job as an actress.

戴安娜和查尔斯结婚时只有20岁，不知世事，非常天真；梅根嫁给哈里时36岁，处世精明，已经独立生活多年。她也离过婚，是知名演员。

And Meghan is American, with an American sensibility.

而且梅根是美国人，有着美国人的感性。

Diana came from a culture of reticence in which tradition is venerated; Meghan comes from one where it is normal to ask for help, to discuss your feelings and to suggest that there might be better, newer ways of doing things.

戴安娜来自一种崇尚传统、沉默寡言的文化；梅根则来自一个可以去寻求帮助、讨论自己的感受，提出可能有更好、更新的做事方式的地方。

Still there were more than a few hints of Diana when Meghan sat down with Oprah for the interview. Meghan wore a diamond bracelet that had once been Diana’s. (Diana’s most famous piece of jewelry, her sapphire-and-diamond engagement ring, can now be found on the finger of Prince William’s wife, Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge.)

不过，当梅根坐下来接受奥普拉的采访时，她身上还是有不少戴安娜的影子。梅根戴着戴安娜曾经戴过的钻石手镯。（戴安娜最著名的首饰是她的蓝宝石与钻石订婚戒指，现在戴在威廉王子的妻子、剑桥公爵夫人凯特[Kate, the Duchess of Cambridge]的手上。)

Then there was the interview itself.

然后是采访本身。

The bold decision of a royal wife to level criticisms against her husband’s family in a televised special was reminiscent of Diana’s 1995 interview with the BBC. That was the one in which, in somber tones, she revealed that her marriage had always been doomed because there were “three of us” in it: her, Charles, and Camilla Parker Bowles, his longtime lover and later his wife.

一位王室妻子大胆决定在电视特别节目中批评丈夫的家庭，这让人想起戴安娜王妃1995年接受BBC采访时的情景。在那次采访中，她以忧郁的语气透露，自己的婚姻一直以来都是注定要失败的，因为婚姻中有“我们三个人”：她、查尔斯和卡米拉·帕克·鲍尔斯(Camilla Parker Bowles)。鲍尔斯是查尔斯多年的情人，后来成了他的妻子。

But it was Harry who most pointedly invoked his mother on Sunday. He said he believed Diana would have been angry and sad at the couple’s treatment. And he said she would have supported their decision to leave Britain and seek a new life away from the constraints of the royal family.

但周日以最直接的方式提到戴安娜的人是哈里。他说，他相信戴安娜会对他们夫妇的遭遇感到愤怒和悲伤。他还说，她会支持他们离开英国，追求摆脱王室约束的新生活。

Given her experience, he said, his own plight had an air of inevitability to it.

他说，鉴于她的经历，他自己的困境似乎带有一种必然性。

“Touching back on what you asked me — what my mum would think of this — I think she saw it coming,” he told Oprah. “But ultimately, all she’d ever want is for us to be happy.”

“说到你问我的问题——我妈妈会怎么想——我想她早就料到了，”他告诉奥普拉。“但最终，她只希望我们能幸福。”

For Harry, there is the added element of knowing that his father caused his mother pain, and that Charles knew how unhappy she was as a royal wife. Now, he told Oprah, he and Charles have had a falling-out over Meghan, with his father at one point refusing to take his calls.

对哈里来说，还有一个额外的因素，那就是他知道父亲给母亲带来了痛苦，查尔斯知道戴安娜作为王室的妻子是多么不快乐。现在，他告诉奥普拉，他和查尔斯因为梅根发生了争吵，父亲一度拒绝接他的电话。

“There’s a lot to work through here,” Harry said. “I feel really let down, because he’s been through something similar. He knows what pain feels like, and Archie’s his grandson. At the same time, of course, I will always love him. But there’s a lot of hurt that’s happened.”

“有很多事情需要解决，”哈里说。“我真的很失望，因为他也经历过类似的事情。他知道痛苦是什么感觉，而且阿奇(Archie)是他的孙子。同时，当然，我会永远爱他。但是很多的伤害已经造成。”

Toward the end of the interview, Harry spoke of his son, Archie, and his new life in California. He sounded both loving — and wistful. For a moment, he seemed to be recalling how it felt to be without a mother at the age of 12.

采访快结束时，哈里谈到了儿子阿奇，以及他在加州的新生活。他的声音听起来充满爱意与渴望。有那么一刻，他似乎在回忆12岁时失去母亲的感觉。

“The highlight for me is sticking him on the back of his bicycle in his little baby seat and taking him on these bike rides,” he said. “Which is something I was never able to do when I was young.”