Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s new life in tatters

‘Whispers’ are only getting louder about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s not so rosy life in California.

Harry and Meghan’s new life in tatters. Picture: Archewell

COMMENT

Shakespeare is just as famous for his comedies as his tragedies. Depending on the day/week/month/Netflix cycle, the ever-winding, ever-wending tale of Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex can really go either way. Tragedy or comedy? Comedy or tragedy?

Things are rarely dull in the ducal stakes.

This week we’ve received new details which suggest that, should Will of the Quill have ever turned L’affair Sussex into something for the stage, it would fall into the sad sack department.

Cindy Adams has been a New York gossip columnist since Andy and Bianca were propping up banquettes at Studio 54 and three-martini lunches were de rigueur. This week she turned her attention to Harry, whom she says is not exactly embroidering ‘Live. Laugh. Love’ on a scatter cushion to mark his American life.

“Those claiming to know say whispers about Meghan and her non prince of a guy are getting louder. Like how now they’re not insanely euphoric yippee happy with their lives,” Adams wrote in the New York Post.

“He dislikes California.”

“Those claiming to know say whispers about Meghan and her non prince of a guy are getting louder.” Picture: Archewell

Which is, indeed, a right royal bugger given that he and Meghan have exuberantly torched their bridges in the UK like two pyromaniacs with a fresh box of Red Heads.

Adams’s “whispers” are not the only signs that things are less than vision board-worthy in the duke’s new ‘free’ life. Relations with his British family can best be put at somewhere between tricky (King Charles) and ‘burning fire of a thousand suns’ (Prince William), no one quite knows what has happened to his old British mates, his career prospects are iffy, the charity he has been closely involved with for years stands accused of rape and torture in the Congo, and he still has approximately 91 legal cases making their way through the bowels of the British legal system.

This very life, however, is one that the Sussexes have built for themselves and is meant to be the life they yearned for during those grey UK years, as their free spirits and bright ideas were being quashed by the bloodless forces of (pause for thunder clap) The Firm.

In 2024, the duke and duchess now have a massive house that puts their old joint, Frogmore Cottage, in the shade and all the freedom a man with two A levels and a mouldering collection of hunting tweeds could hope for. Goodbye London Guildhall dry chicken breast functions full of gouty aldermen and hello Katy Perry and Beyonce concerts, fundraisers with Oprah and rides on a freebie private jet.

Prince Harry and Meghan at the premiere of Bob Marley: One Love in Jamaica. Picture: MEGA TheMegaAgency.com

Except, this is a life that has come at a very high cost, one which was on display earlier this month when Harry staged that international flight to see his father King Charles, after His Majesty revealed he has cancer.

Harry made the 47-hour round trip to see his father face-to-face for all of 30 minutes, though royal sources told the Times that the meeting was “short on account of the King being tired from the previous days’ cancer procedure.” Still, as far as has been reported, Harry was not invited to continue things with Charles at Sandringham, where they could have had a more leisurely catch up in the King’s new topiary garden.

During that same quickie trip, it became clear that his brother Prince William would have preferred to set his remaining hair (singular) on fire than to have to meaningfully dialogue with his sibling over a turmeric latte. A friend told the Times last year of William’s reaction to Spare: “inside he’s burning.”

“It’s simply not possible to exaggerate how bad and how damaged the relationship is, and how angry William is at Harry for betraying him for money,” an old school friend of the brothers has told The Daily Beast’s Tom Sykes.

Meghan and Harry at the Invictus Games Vancouver Whistlers One Year To Go Winter Training Camp in British Columbia. Picture: Andrew Chin/Getty Images

Then there is the great friend puzzle. Harry was, for many years, famous for the chummy coterie of public school boys who orbited around him in a miasma of spilt lager and Marlboro smoke, all lads who looked like a real larf. Where are they now? Both The Sun and the Daily Mail questioned why Harry stayed in a hotel during his recent London trip to see his father and not with one of his old mates.

The Sun this week ran a piece calling him “Harry No Mates” and claiming that he

“has only one pal left in the UK”. (The duke himself admitted in Harry & Meghan that he had “lost a few friends” since moving to the United States.)

Charles and William are not alone in giving Harry a less than joyous welcome. YouGov polling done this month shows that 63 per cent of Britons have a negative view of the Duke of Sussex. That’s a mind-blowing nosedive given that just over five years ago, in late 2018, he was the most popular member of the royal family, even beating the late Queen. (At the time, 77 per cent of Brits had a favourable view of him, according to YouGov.)

Harry’s current crop of problems extend beyond UK territorial waters. Back in California, in the land of mantras and on-demand, at-home colonics, things do not appear to be all sunshine and rainbows. Freedom, it turns out, is not cheap nor does it come with a monthly cheque with a coronet in the corner.

Harry’s current crop of problems extend beyond UK territorial waters. Picture: Marcus Ingram/Getty Images

This week we got to chapter 677 of Harry and Meghan’s hurly-burly, topsy-turvy career with the news that the duchess has found a new home for her podcasting efforts. Last year Spotify tactfully dumped the Sussexes and on Wednesday it was revealed that the duchess’s Archetypes podcast will be re-released by Lemonada Media. (‘Who?’ said the Internet.)

What of Harry though?

Their original Spotify deal was for both of them to make audio content, the duke’s ideas, according to Bloomberg, including wanting to interview Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump about their childhoods. (Dictators Dish? Tyrant Talk?)

Meghan’s Lemonada deal makes no mention of the duke.

Earlier this month, Netflix’s chief content officer Bela Bajaria told an industry event that reports of the Sussexes’ TV-making death are greatly exaggerated. The couple has

“a bunch of development” she said, including “a movie, a TV show and a couple of unscripted shows … the movie’s great.”

The clock is ticking. The couple announced their five-year deal with the streamer in September 2020, meaning it would seem to run out next year. The window for Harry and Meghan to prove they have what it takes as producers has about 18 months left to run. No pressure now or anything. It’s not like they have $77 million riding on it … Oh wait. Last year The Sun reported that Netflix had only paid the couple half of the $155 million their deal is worth, with the remainder dependent on their forthcoming output.

The couple announced their five-year deal with the streamer in September 2020, meaning it would seem to run out next year. Picture: Twitter

Then, there is the really grim portion of recent events. In 2017 Harry joined the conservation charity African Parks as president before joining the board in November last year. In late January, the Daily Mail reported that the armed rangers from African Parks stood accused of committing unspeakable acts of rape and torture against the Baka people.

Since the highly disturbing claims emerged Harry has managed to fly to Las Vegas to hand out a football trophy and launch a new website with Meghan but has not said a single, solitary word about these horrific claims. (African Parks says it has launched an investigation through an external law firm.)

Really the question we should be asking ourselves is, what exactly is working out for Harry right now? Maybe, just maybe the duke is gloriously happy and unburdened by money worries, family worries, charity worries and legal worries. Maybe he wakes up every day and says his gratitude mantra, warm in the knowledge that he will never be sent to officially visit a Welsh lighthouse during a gale or have to make stilted small talk with Emmanuel Macron while he sniffily assesses the Pigs in Blankets on offer.

Maybe …

Or maybe there is something to Adams’ “dislikes” claim. (Did someone just tell Harry about the San Andreas fault?)

The way things are looking, Much Ado About Sussex is looking more and more like a tragedy. Now onto act three, part 999, in fair Montecito, where we lay our scene. We open on a monotonously beige home office and Netflix is calling about where their movie is …

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 Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s new life in tatters