THE relationship between the British public and the Royal Family would have kept Sigmund Freud busy for his entire career. It’s a case study in dysfunction.

It’s not just that the relationship is some dark, twisted psychodrama - the relationship is sado-masochistic, in the true sense of the term. It’s a relationship built on desire, idealisation, power, status, obsession, cruelty, suffering, humiliation, degradation - the giving and receiving of pain and suffering. It’s sick to its very core.

Neither party is blameless in the relationship. It’s mutually perverse. The British public wants to prostrate itself before the Royals, offering complete worship and adoration, and the Royals cannot exist without being elevated constantly to the status of master and mistress.

But the British public is also controlling, it watches everything its object of desire does, and if the Royals’ perfect facade slips for a moment then the abuse begins - the demands, the brutality, the cruelty. And the Royals know that enduring this suffering is the cost of their power and status.

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The Marquis de Sade would have found perverse delight in watching the latest chapter of this S&M relationship unfold - as Harry and Meghan struggled to be free from their bonds while still demanding privilege, status and power. Cruelty pleased him.

We cannot deny the curdled sexuality that lurks beneath this all. The British press and public fetishise the Royals - particularly the women. Their bodies, looks and sex lives are studied and discussed. There’s a ghastly voyeurism and depravity to it all.

If a woman is pregnant, we monitor the bump as if it is some religious artefact. When a child is born we demand to see it. You can almost hear the cries: “Show it to us, it’s ours, we own your baby, like we own you.”

Of course, when I say "the British public" I don’t mean all of us. Many of us are republicans and wish to see the back of the Royals. And while the obsession with the Royals is prevalent here in Scotland, and Wales - and certainly Northern Ireland - it runs far deeper in England than most other parts of Britain.

The press is also different here in Scotland, as well as in Wales and Northern Ireland. Scottish, Welsh and Northern Irish journalists write about the Royals, of course, as they’re in the public eye - just like I’m doing now - but it’s the London media which is the fetishist-in-chief. The London media wields the whip on behalf of the public when it comes to tormenting their object of desire.

The "crisis" over Harry and Meghan’s wish to step back from Royal duties shows just how damaged the British public - both royalists and republicans - have become. Thanks to this harmful, twisted relationship, we no longer find it possible to think rationally about the Royals.

Clearly, Harry has had enough of the sick S&M-style affair, which effectively killed his mother. If I was him, I’d hate the British people - I’d want nothing to do with the entire enterprise that is the monarchy. Meghan has been treated disgracefully by the press - bullied, taunted, endlessly judged - and the racial undertones are obvious and loathsome. Why would she want any part of this theatre of cruelty anymore?

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Yet, Harry and Meghan still want the trappings of royalty - the homes, the titles, the glitter, the deference, the taxpayer money. Power. They cannot have both. You cannot escape the public and still depend upon the public.

Morality, common sense, and decency insist that you cannot step away from the cruel pressures of being royal and then take the benefits of royalty with you. The sado-masochistic system between the Royals and the people demands the same: you’ve been made gods, now accept the torture.

Britain is incapable of looking at Meghan and Harry rationally. The left, even republicans, jumped to their defence due to the racism directed at Meghan, and dislike of a London press which is overwhelmingly right-wing. The right wielded the whip at their idols for wanting to have their cake and eat it.

Why can we not hold two thoughts in our head? I pity Harry and Meghan for the cage they’re trapped inside. I hate the way they’re treated by the press. But I’m also affronted that taxpayers would go on funding their gilded lives - and elevating them above the rest of us. Their desire to have everything their own way is the very definition of royal privilege.

I believe in the abolition of the monarchy. Until now I’ve always focused my concerns on the institution not the people within the institution. The idea that a human is bestowed with wealth and power simply because they enter the world from a particular womb is an absurdity. The monarchy ingrains inequality in British society. So my discomfort was always with the concept of the monarchy, not the Windsors themselves.

Now, though, I think it’s time to admit that just as the British people have been collectively twisted by the relationship with the House of Windsor, so have the royals themselves been twisted as human beings. They’re damaged. We’ve damaged them. They’ve damaged themselves. Tragically, they may be too damaged to realise how perverted the whole relationship with the British people has become.

The great Scottish scholar Sir James George Frazer wrote the classic anthropological study The Golden Bough 130 years ago. In essence, it tells how our ancient ancestors worshipped kings - who were seen as gods. Those kings often ended their reigns being ritually sacrificed. Destroying such a royal deity was a deep religious and psychological rite.

Have we changed that much? Harry and Meghan should get out while the going is good - and do the decent thing by abandoning all power and privilege. I wish them freedom, but they need to be truly free - and that means severing the leash which the taxpayer holds.

As for the rest of the Royals, we can only hope that when the Queen dies, her passing serves as some psychological - even quasi-religious - moment where we are all released from this ancient spell the Royals have cast over the land. Then we might realise that this sick, symbiotic relationship can no longer go on - and it can come to an end for our sake as well as theirs.

Neil Mackay is Scotland’s Columnist of the Year