Meghan photo that still haunts Charles

One image of Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, proves just how bad things have gotten this year.

COMMENT

It gives me no end of joy when, inevitably, once a year someone, wide-eyed, trots out the sheer numbers that make up a Buckingham Palace garden party. Eight thousand attendees. Twenty-seven thousand cups of tea. Twenty-thousand finger sandwiches. Twenty-thousand slices of cake.

Let it never be said that the palace, when they want to shift a piece of Victoria sponge, don’t know exactly what they are doing. If only they could apply this same level of prowess and deftness to trying to keep the monarchy seaworthy and afloat.

This week marked the official kick-off of the season with King Charles, Queen Camilla and every available pair of liver-spotted still-working HRH hands being trotted out for the first garden party of the year.

The first Royal Garden Party of the year. Picture: Jordan Pettitt/Getty Images

It was, generally speaking, a success of sorts. The day after the party, the King, as he perused the major broadsheets and tabloids over his morning muesli and assorted bird seed selection, should have been relatively happy. Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex’s brief, simultaneous return to London had not entirely knocked Charles off the front page perch.

But should His Majesty pause for a moment of quiet reflection as he soaked in the tub later, he might cast his mind back to exactly this time in 2018, to a different palace garden party, to one that looked a whole lot different and, to be painfully honest, much much better.

It was May, 22, 2018, only three days after the world had tuned in to watch the crescendo of the best love story to come out of the UK since a sopping-wet Colin Firth emerged from that gloopy pond. You know the story — Prince meets girl; girl says, ‘I make TV’; boy says, ‘move to the UK and you can stand in the rain shaking hands’: girl says, ‘I’m booking my ticket’.

It was a much different party in 2018. Picture: Dominic Lipinski/AFP

On paper, Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex might have been a surprising pairing — British versus American; a man who has never had a job interview versus a career actress; underemployed versus wonderfully entrepreneurial; lager versus turmeric lattes — but together, they were absolute dynamite.

So the world got a fairytale wedding and then, only days later on May 22, the UK, still slightly drunk on Tesco fizz and the razzle-dazzle and lustre of the newlywed Sussexes, watched on as they, along with Charles and Queen Camilla, stepped out for a palace garden party.

It showed the newlyweds had chosen duty. Picture: Dominic Lipinski/AFP

The very fact that the duke and duchess, rather than being stretched out on some tropical bit of sand for their honeymoon, were in central Lonon and on the royal clock instead seemed proof positive that they were starting married life with an unwavering commitment to the crown.

The couple had chosen duty over duty-free and their being there was a gesture that was “warmly welcomed” by Charles, the Telegraph reported at the time.

The prevailing mood was one of incredible optimism about the future of the monarchy and the buoyancy of public feeling towards Crown Inc. Who knew that a Suits star would be just the heavy-hitter that a bunch of Hanoverian descendants and their Jack Russells needed?

It really says something that just two years after that sunny day in London, the bristling Sussexes were househunting in California having junked royal life.

That May 2018 garden party image, of not only a family but a family business too that seemed, outwardly, to be positively thriving should haunt Charles.

The prevailing mood was one of incredible optimism. Picture: Dominic Lipinski/AFP

This is what could have been, outwardly at least.

I know, I know, what Harry’s tell-all Spare, his plethora of TV interviews and their Netflix marathon o’ feelings made abundantly clear is that despite the big public smiles, already by the 2018 point things were far from tickety-boo behind-the-scenes. It might have come later, but just ask that poor dog bowl.

After their wedding, Harry, Meghan and Prince William and Kate, the Prince and Princess of Wales were hardly cheerily meeting up for doubles tennis and we now know tensions were rising faster than sea levels.

But the situation did not have to devolve, to fall apart so disastrously, that Harry and Meghan would end up making TV and jam and waves on the West Coast while Crown Inc hobbled along and struggled to recruit younger Brits to their side.

Looking back at the events of 2018 and 2019 and there are any number of moments where cooler heads should have prevailed and where someone with the late Queen or the current King’s ear should have been urging their principals to step in and sort this all out.

Something could have been done to prevent things getting to such an extreme, intolerable point that the Sussexes yanked the Megxit ripcord.

The situation did not have to fall apart so disastrously. Picture: Dominic Lipinski/AFP

The tragedy of Harry and Meghan’s hasty, messy departure from the UK was on full display on Wednesday this week when the remaining working members of the royal family, aside from William and Kate, took their places besides the King and Queen for this first garden party of the year.

I don’t mean to diminish the work and the contribution of the Princess Royal, of Prince Edward and Sophie, the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, and of the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, all of whom are still busy carrying the royal can, but they make for a drab, pallid lot.

Take Sophie. If news.com.au ever made the call, I would happily knock up several thousand words rhapsodising about her work on combating sexual violence in war zones. (The duchess travelled to Ukraine this month to do just this). But is the 59-year-old a figure who can or will rally an entire nation to the side of the monarchy? Does she wow crowds with her innate magnetism? Does she represent an evolving, modern royal family?

See what I mean?

They make for a drab, pallid lot. Picture: Jordan Pettitt/Getty Images

Buckingham Palace needed the fizz and delight and excitement that Harry and Meghan brought with them to the royal cause, a truism that has never been more painfully clear than with William and Kate out of the picture right now.

That photo of the duchess at that 2018 garden party, her very first public duty as an HRH, should be one that comes back to torment the King as he sleeplessly stares up at his handpainted trompe l’oeil ceiling. If only someone sanguine, someone neutral, someone who could take the longer, dispassionate view, had interceded back then. If only …

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.

Originally published as Meghan photo that still haunts Charles