Prince Harry fumes over Meghan Markle’s ‘secret Instagram’ plan, royal insider claims

With “echoes of South Park” in his ear, royal insiders claim Prince Harry is at odds with Meghan Markle’s next move to climb the Hollywood ‘pecking order’.

Prince Harry is reportedly at odds with Meghan Markle’s plan to stem the couple’s falling popularity in the US and slide down the “Hollywood pecking order”.

As approval for the House of Sussex fell to an all-time low, Ms Markle is said to be planning a return to Instagram to turn it all around “with one tap of a well-manicured finger”.

Royal insider Neill Sean said the move “has caused some ructions between the two” after Prince Harry spent the past three years warning of the dangers toxic online culture.

“By wanting to return, according to a very good source, this has proved incredibly embarrassing, but more importantly, something of an argument between the one-time royals, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex,” Mr Sean said.

“Harry, with echoes of South Park, doesn’t agree with the world of social media at all. Absolutely not. Meghan, on the other hand, understands in this 21st Century world, if you want to sell something, particularly your brand, you need to connect. That’s the deal.”

Ms Markle teased in her now-infamous interview with The Cut six months ago that she was secretly “getting back … on Instagram”, and speculation ran rampant with the emergence soon after of an @Meghan account that posted a previously unseen childhood photo of the Duchess but has since been silent.

The rare, single-name handle usually reserved for celebrities, and the profile picture of a pink dahlia – the nickname given to her by mother Doria Ragland – led the account to gain a following despite, now, having no posts.

The couple’s official @SussexRoyal account has been silent since March 2020. Sussex biographer and unofficial spokesman, Omid Scobie, said a return to Instagram was “wishful thinking”,

“A source says she has no account on the platform at present or on the horizon,” Mr Scobie said after a “lengthy broadsheet essay” detailing her impending return to the social media platform claiming she would be “laughing all the way to the bank”.

The latest episode of South Park has taken aim at Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. Picture: Comedy Central

The couple’s popularity in the US sunk to an all-time low after the episode. Picture: Comedy Central

The speculated, denied, but won’t-go-away rumour of Ms Markle’s return to Instagram comes after her former friend, TV presenter Nick Ede, claimed the couple didn’t realise they wouldn’t be considered “Hollywood royalty” among the manicured lawns of Montecito.

“I think they came in and thought that the number one people on the block and they’re not really,” Ede, who says he lost contact with Markle when she started dating the Duke of Sussex, told the Express.

“They’re kind of quite far down really in that pecking order. And I think that’s been an issue with them, in that sense of stepping down.”

“I think the thing is that you forget that in Hollywood, royalty isn’t somebody with a title,” he explained. “It’s J. Lo, it’s Sharon Stone, it’s Beyoncé, it’s the Kardashians. That’s their royalty.”

The one thing standing in the way of a return to Instagram, alleges Mr Sean, is that Prince Harry has adamantly against it.

“And this has caused some ructions between the two. None more so, of course, if you remember that Prince Harry went on record in speeches to say that certain elements of the internet was full of toxicity,” Mr Sean said.

Meghan Markle, Prince Harry make surprise appearance following, pregnancy news in Spotify ad, promoting their podcast Archewell Audio.

“The bottom line is, it wasn’t good for your mental health. So there’s Meghan, getting her manicured fingers ready to tap away on Instagram and there’s Harry saying, it’s not good for you. You can see the dichotomy and dilemma now that they have between them.”

“She will need this to sell whatever she’s planning to do next and rest assured, she’s not rested on her laurels by removing herself from such a worldwide, free, platform.

Obviously the bigger idea was to use their podcast to try and right their wrongs, that’s failed. The docuseries has failed. And the book has become something of a laughing stock. But the bottom line for Meghan is, she thinks she can retrieve it all with one tap of a well manicured finger.”

Originally published as Prince Harry fumes over Meghan Markle’s ‘secret Instagram’ plan, royal insider claims