Harry and Meghan ‘not doing particularly well’ while royal cousins’ fortunes explode
Harry has pulled in tens of millions of dollars telling all, but his cousins have ended up far wealthier – without burning all their bridges.
Royals
Don't miss out on the headlines from Royals. Followed categories will be added to My News.
For a family so into horses, it makes sense the royals have a few dark ones.
And I don’t mean those stray second cousins who were a little too keen on cocktails with that nice Mr Mosley back in ‘34 or whose wives came from a disconcertingly close branch of the family tree or who for some reason keep getting sent very large cheques from an anonymous PO Box in the Kazakh capital of Astana. (Hey Andrew …)
I mean Mike and Zara Tindall.
She, for anyone newly playing along at home, is the daughter of Princess Anne, a woman who is the living embodiment of the word “redoubtable” and the human personification of an oat cake.
All of this makes Zara 21st in line to the throne, the niece of King Charles and one day the first cousin of King William V.
She is also rich. Properly yes-I-might-buy-some-more-diamonds rich, a situation that, prepare yourself, came about by her working for it. The Sun recently estimated that the Tindalls are worth $58.4 million.
And trust me, we will get into the whys and the what-fors, but the punchline here is, if you crunch the numbers and tot up the remainders column, carry the two and multiply by the value of the pound, it turns out that Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex is, gasp, not doing particularly well.
Could he – having burned every bridge between Montecito and Clarence House with an untold number of jerry cans of petrol and bile in return for some nice round dollar figures – have ended up … a comparatively poor cousin?
Did the duke torch his old life only to end up in only similar financial circumstances to a multitude of relatives still merrily welcomed across the Buckingham Palace doorstep?
People talk about deals with the devil, but who knew he was such a stingy bastard?
So, numero crunching time.
The exact dollar amounts that Harry and wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex have earned since the Megxit-quake of 2020 are fuzzy, but here’s what has been reported.
Of the $148 million ($US100 million) Netflix deal they signed that same year, the Daily Mail’s Alison Boshoff says that, per a Hollywood source, that actually only banked $22.3 million ($US15 million) for Harry & Meghan. They also get an estimated $4.47 million ($US3 million) annually to cover Archewell overheads, of which they “keep a small portion personally”.
If we take a wild guess and assume a “small portion” equates to, say, $1 million a year for the four years the Netflix marriage has been in place, that brings the total to about $26.3 million.
What of Spotify, a voice down the back asks? Good question.
The original figure the platform was reportedly going to pay them was $29.8 million ($US20 million) however, when the streamer parted ways with them in 2023, the Wall Street Journal reported that they hadn’t “met the productivity benchmarks required to receive the full payout from the deal”.
Let’s be generous then and guess they got half, so $14.9 million.
The real big ticket item in all of this was Harry’s tell-all-and-all-and-some-more, Spare, for which he was reported to have been paid $29.8 million ($US20 million) as an advance.
(Some outlets have suggested this figure was higher and others have claimed that the sum was actually for a multiple book deal that might also have included Meghan. But, for simplicity’s sake, let’s just assume he earnt all of it for his book).
The grand total value of these deals? $71 million.
Not bad for a man who has no tertiary qualifications and had only ever worked for his Gan Gan before pitching up in the US to supersize his bank account.
Where things get particularly interesting, though, is when we hold that up against his cousins.
There are the Tindalls, whose relationships with Musto sailing, shooting and equestrian clothes, Land Rover and Rolex, along with her highly successful eventing career and his podcast The Good, The Bad and The Rugby have helped propel their financial rise. (It has to be noted that, according to The Sun, the couple’s “advisers insist they do not recognise that $58.4m figure”).
Brother Peter Phillips’ net worth has been estimated at over $30 million, though that does sound on the high side.
Next, Princess Beatrice, who married dishy Anglo-Italian property developer Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi. No precise numbers are known, but the man is clearly doing all right, with his company Banda property having developed over 400,000 sq ft of London property with a gross development value of $1.3 billion, with Edo having sold buildings he owned for $9.7 million back in 2018 and being flush enough to have bought the princess an engagement ring with an estimated value of $116,000.
On Harry’s maternal side, we have dreamboat Louis Spencer, Viscount Althorp. When he inherits he will not only become the Earl Spencer and get the keys to one of England’s grandest private homes (with at least 90 rooms – one loses count probably), he will also be worth more than $215 million. (And that figure comes from a 15-year-old Sunday Times Rich List, so it is probably much higher today).
Louis’ sister Lady Kitty Spencer and her husband Michael Lewis’ fortune has been put at anywhere between $119 ($US80) and $297 ($US200) million. Suffice to say, they are doing fine.
Others in the royal orbit make the Sussexes’ $71 million look cute, like William’s brother and sister-in-law, James and Pippa Matthews. Their net worth has been pegged at about $3.89 billion. Yes, with a ‘B’.
The Sussexes’ earnings have put them $71 million-ish ahead of where they would have been otherwise but … was it actually worth it? To lose so much, only to end up in the same money ballpark as his cousins?
The duke might have a much heftier personal bank account today than five years ago, but it has come at the highest of high costs. His “Pa” King Charles has now been too busy to see him the last three times the duke has been in London, he has not spoken to his brother Prince William in two years and it has been reported that he has no intention of inviting him to his coronation.
Realistically, the only time that Harry might ever again be allowed to cross any sort of threshold at an actual royal or Windsor family event will be for Charles’ (hopefully many years if not decades from now) funeral. After which, I imagine he will be shown the door only to hear it slam irrevocably and finally behind him.
By comparison, his cousins have managed to create for themselves the sweetest of lives.
They still get invitations to the Royal Box at Ascot and to Balmoral and to Sandringham shooting parties and to gin-laced knees-ups to watch the Bake Off finale at Clarence House – while still ending up with vast quantities of dosh.
They have all made money by staying just the right (and let us stress here, only just) side of accusations of cashing in too egregiously on their royal adjacency. (Notable failure – Peter Phillips’ toe-curling 2020 Chinese milk ads which were the most blatant cash grab since Fergie put her name on a juicer for the US home shopping network, really).
There is another major difference between Les Cousins Royale and the Sussexes: Their expenses. Beatrice, Peter and Mike and Zara all live on royal properties where you’d have to wonder how much rent they actually pay; Harry and Meghan have a reported $14 million mortgage.
Nor do Les Cousins have to find the millions that Harry and Meghan need every year to foot the bill for their security.
Lastly, that $71 million, it must be noted, needs to last them decades more. Meghan’s yet-to-hatch lifestyle biz American Riviera Orchard might end up being worth a fortune, but Harry’s future money-making prospects are limited. With his story having been repetitively told to the point of public indifference, unless he writes another memoir about his father and brother, the days of him being able to pull in these sorts of eight or nine-figure deals are past him.
There is one thing that Harry got from Netflix and Spare at least – he got to tell his story. He got to vent and to cathart and to unburden himself to his true heart’s content.
Maybe today his soul is lighter and freer having finally been able to explain himself to the world. If only it hadn’t come at such an exorbitant personal cost.
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 Harry and Meghan ‘not doing particularly well’ while royal cousins’ fortunes explode
‘Humiliation’: Andrew’s brutal family snub
Prince Andrew was spotted leaving with his ex-wife just minutes before an important moment for his brother, the King.
Kate stuns at royals’ Christmas service
Kate Middleton glowed as she joined Prince William at a church service with their kids, nearly a year after her cancer diagnosis.