Who will give Meghan Markle away on the day of her wedding? Well, no woman needs to be given away and no one needs to contend with another royal wedding. Everyone in Britain can look away now and revel in the idea that the monarchy is an institution that has no real effect on its subjects’ lives, loyal or disloyal. The lovely old Queen, corgis and all, is the head of state and head of the church, but why bore on about the constitution when we can consider Meghan’s messy bun? For the way the monarchy functions is by telling us stories that are said to unify our disparate nation – and those stories are of the hatch ’em, match ’em and dispatch ’em variety.

At one time, power meant privacy. Not any longer. The royals are born to rule and we are apparently born to watch, or so it is assumed by those who publish paparazzi shots of them and their adjuncts. Thomas Markle, a retired lighting director, seemed to be living a quiet life in Mexico until his daughter got embroiled with a royal. Long divorced from her mother, he is said to be close to his daughter. Portrayed in some quarters as some kind of bumbling reclusive bankrupt, he actually won several awards during his career. He just doesn’t seem to want to be in the public eye, and why should he?

Paparazzi have apparently rented a house next to his and followed him around, making his life a misery. He then set up some shots of his own, perhaps to try to take control of the images that were circulating. Nothing dramatic. The pictures he apparently posed for show him Googling royal stuff and being fitted for a suit. But he got paid for them, which is said to have caused him embarrassment, and he is now so stressed that he is having chest pains, having had heart attacks in the past. Yesterday, he said he had decided not to come to the wedding, although today, there were reports that he has changed his mind. Poor guy. And what a rum do all this is. It could surely have been avoided if the palace had stepped in earlier to try to warn, prepare and protect him. Meghan and Harry are, understandably, said to be distressed, too.

This pursuit of her father is a lesson to Meghan about what marrying into this family entails. There is not a relationship between the royal family and the press: there is a void, and it is dark.

There are moments of negotiated truce, of course, lines constantly drawn and breached. There are laws, and enquiries; there is hand-wringing, and then there is the reality: a paparazzo once told me that one shot, the right shot, could keep him for a year. One shot – tears, tits and tiaras – will sell all over the world.

Paparazzi used to spit at Princess Diana to get her to react. When they were young, Harry and William were frightened by scuffles among photographers. A press call is never enough. Ultimately, the brothers blamed the paparazzi for their mother’s death, the men who pursued her on speeding motorbikes, who took photographs of her dying. That much we know.

While she was alive, and especially during her divorce, Diana courted certain photographers and journalists to get out her side of the story. She made a deal with the devil, but the thing about the devil is that he doesn’t do guilt, or even shame.

After her death, there was a period of reflection by some newspaper editors. But this lasted five minutes, at most. Diana’s collusion with the press compromised her, but she didn’t have much choice – they would have followed her anyway. Even Piers Morgan, that expert on press intrusion, said: “We in the media were culpable in allowing the paparazzi to become ridiculously over the top.”

Where does that culpability lie? Some lies with newspaper, magazine and website editors who cannot get enough of these snatched pictures, stolen images traded like contraband. Some say it also lies with the public, who, it is claimed, bizarrely, crave these images. But some lies with the monarchy itself, which cannot maintain its standing without a certain level of publicity. Of course they try to control it. But even when there are deals, they can’t. We have seen pictures of various family members in states of undress. A secret recording gave us the future king’s tampon fantasies. Long lenses have given us pictures of the Duchess of Cambridge topless. iPhones have given us pictures of her brother, James, in a French maid’s outfit and Harry naked in Vegas. We have also seen Harry in Nazi gear and the Queen wringing the neck of a wounded pheasant. All of these were presumably private moments. All of these pictures were sold at vast profit.

Princess Diana in 1996. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock

The palace has gone on the offensive by suing and making it clear what these long lens shots involve. In 2007, William and Kate were pursued leaving the nightclub Boujis by paparazzi on motorbikes, and they are now deeply concerned over how their children are pursued. Paparazzi have been found hiding in fields behind dunes to get pictures of Prince George playing with his grandmother, Carole Middleton. A man was found in the boot of a car trying to take a picture through a small gap. The palace wrote a letter that said such tactics were reminiscent “of past surveillance by groups intent on doing more than capturing images”. George was two at the time. The implicit link here between what the paparazzi are doing and what terrorists do is striking. It is dangerous; surveillance of an unprecedented kind.

Having starred in a TV series, Meghan is perhaps better prepared for surveillance than many. Her father is not. No normal person could be. The deal that the royals want to broker with the press in which they control all access is understandable, but untenable. All regulation seems to fall down once international websites come in. Images will circulate even if certain newspapers refuse them. But not only do some newspapers not refuse them, they scrutinise the bodies, makeup and hair of the female royals with the decorum of an upskirt sleaze merchant. These are the same papers, of course, that love the monarchy.

Diana wanted out before her wedding, but was told that her face was already printed on the tea towels. Meghan may want to fly off to a chapel in Vegas right now, but there is a sense that the deal is done.

The firm will reinvigorate itself with the fresh blood of the women who marry into it. For all the privilege and lives of enormous wealth, those women will give up a shocking amount of privacy because the royals are part of a celebrity culture. They may rattle the bars of the gilded cage, but they won’t break them. The firm has a strong sense of self-preservation, after all, and when Charles becomes king they need Meghan and Kate to maintain a popular and modern front.

On one level, then, this is the fairytale and, quite frankly, who cares if her mother not her father gives her away? That seems fine. But all of this is really about who controls the narrative: the press or the palace? And how long can they remain locked in this abusive and dysfunctional relationship?

We the subjects can choose not to be interested, of course, not to care and not to look at the whole circus. We can certainly choose not to think any of it matters. But the royals are the fountainhead of how power operates in this country. The soap they provide is part of how consent is manufactured for this archaic institution. They trade privacy for what? Love? Power? Charity? And the fairytale cracks when too much is demanded of those not groomed for intense scrutiny. No wonder Thomas Markle wants to run away. He is not an embarrassment. What is embarrassing is this lurid voyeurism that calls itself journalism. What does harassing a 73-year-old man achieve? The fairytales and the tabloids never talk of the collateral damage involved in marrying a prince. We are an amnesiac culture, but the damage caused by all this is real, and not long ago or far away. How much more do we need to see?