Meghan has been cast as the inverse to Diana, a photonegative of adoration. Why do we need scapegoats?

‘I cannot imagine why anyone at a remove would have anything other than a mild or neutral view of Harry and Meghan,’ Brigid Delaney writes. Photograph: Jonathan Brady/AP

Whatever unhinged parasocial relationship the adoring public had with Diana, Princess of Wales, their relationship with the Duchess of Sussex is its shadowy reflection.

For decades, Diana was the subject of public adoration that was locked in a permanent hysterical register. Clive James, for example, captured the hyperbole when he described himself as a “besotted walk-on mesmerized by the trajectory of a burning angel” and Diana as like “the sun coming up; coming up giggling”.