Kate sentence that destroyed Harry and Meghan
A new book has revealed that the Princess of Wales helped mastermind a palace plan to fight back against the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
COMMENT
Society snapper and master of the badinage Cecil Beaton once famously described the Queen Mother as a “a marshmallow made on a welding machine.” It’s a cracking bit of imagery and one it’s time to dust off and haul out for the 21ts century.
While the Queen Mother, Gordon’s number one customer and reason the company’s stock price took a dive after her passing (I’m guessing) might never have met her great-granddaughter-in-law Kate, the Princess of Wales, but I reckon the 41-year-old is her natural heir. The princess, as far as we know and to my eternal disappointment, might not be one for calling for “drinky poos” at 1130am daily but she is unequivocally a thoroughly modern “marshmallow.”
Proof: The fact that it has now emerged that Kate played a leading role in delivering one of the biggest blows to Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex in years. (Well, at least the second biggest blow after he lost his favourite XBox controller in the move to Los Angeles.)
The scene: A Kensington Palace sitting room of sorts. (If it’s the one seen in a handful of photos of Kate’s home then it looks like it was designed by a 63-year-old named Majorie with an enduring yen for mahogany and priceless knick-knackery.)
It was March 2021, in the immediate, stunned aftermath of Harry and wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex’s coup de grace of an Oprah interview in 2021, and the world was reeling.
The duchess had just come out and point blank suggested that the royal family had a very serious issue with race, implying that decisions regarding titles and security might have had a racial dimension and that there had been “concerns and conversations” about her unborn baby’s skin colour.
Of all the claims lobbed by the Sussexes during the two hour spectacle of feelings- of the palace’s shocking disregard for Meghan’s mental health; of a reptilian family business that put self-interest before ducal distress - it was the question of race that posed the greatest danger to the Palace.
After all, Her late Majesty was the head of the Commonwealth - an association of a third of the world’s population, the vast majority of whom are people of colour. Britain, so the narrative went, was meant to be a proudly multicultural society, built on the unifying belief that everyone likes decent vindaloo.
Which was why, out of the myriad grenades lobbed by the Sussexes, this was the one that the royal family could not try to imperiously ignore while inwardly praying it all went away. (Sorry chaps, never going to happen.)
Which brings us to the recently updated edition of Courtiers, Valentine Low, the Times’ royal writer of 15 years’, superlative book about the inner machinations and manoeuvring of those who sit at the right hand of the monarchy.
Over the weekend the Times ran an extract from Courtiers, a cracking read for anyone who understands that The Crown is a confection of creative licence and an unthinkably large wig budget, and it revealed what happened next in that Kensington Palace sitting room.
Low writes that Kate and husband Prince William, “sat together on a sofa as they discussed with their officials how to deal with the Sussexes’ incendiary allegations.”
A statement had been roughly drafted in response to the Oprah interview, you see but it was as an insider told Low, “a much milder version. The debate was, do you rise entirely above it and offer the olive branch of [Harry and Meghan being] ‘much loved members of the family’? Or is there some moment when you have to intervene and offer a view?”
William and Kate were reportedly on exactly the same page.
“They wanted it toughened up a bit,” the insider has said “They were both of one mind that we needed something that said that the institution did not accept a lot of what had been said.
“He said, ‘It is really important that you guys come up with the right way of making sure that we are saying that this does not stand.’ She was certainly right behind him on it.”
All of which sounds like it was a perfect exemplar of them being a married couple on the same page about everything from bedtimes to batting back across the net history-making - and shaking - allegations about race.
However, Low has revealed that it was the Princess of Wales (back then, of course, the Duchess of Cambridge) who was adamant that the devastating Sussex salvos had to be dealt with and not dodged.
So, with Kate the duchess a driving force, back that first draft went to the staffers who ably wield the macbooks and that iconic line - “recollections may vary” - was added in.
Now, at this point, some inside the Palace had qualms that the line might “rile” the febrile Sussexes.
However, according to another of Low’s sources, “It was Kate who clearly made the point, ‘History will judge this statement and unless this phrase or a phrase like it is included, everything that they have said will be taken as true.’”
And thus, about 40 hours after Harry and Meghan’s Oprah interview had aired in the United States, that famous statement with the “recollections” line went out and royal biographers the length and breadth of Hampstead opened new Word docs to begin their new books.
If the Duke and Duchess of Sussex had thought that their claims regarding race would go unchallenged by a shocked or a nervous or an uncomfortable, collar-tugging Firm then kapow! That one sentence was a rejoinder that refused to let their interpretation of events stand go uncontested; and which accounted for royal pushback against their narrative.
The consequence of the “recollections” line was that it represented clear pushback against Harry and Meghan’s version and made it clear that they would not get to a monopoly on the truth; it denied them the clear through shot they might have thought they would get to own the narrative.
According to a source that Low spoke to, Kate’s role in the statement is “yet another example of how Kate is often far steelier than she appears.”
“She does not get as much credit as she should, because she is so subtle about it. She is playing the long game,” the source had said. “She has always got her eye on, ‘This is my life and my historic path and I am going to be the Queen one day.’”
(Shall we pause here and briefly contemplate the Earth-rattling hooha if Meghan had ever used a phrase like “my historic path”?)
The fascinating thing in all of this is that Kate - a woman the world sees all done up in florals and adoringly patting babies in the home counties - would actually seem to be far more of a hard-nosed powerplayer with one eye on her legacy at all times than people might think.
In the 12 years since joining the HRH HQ, the princess seems to have become remarkably adept at the realpolitik of royalty and has managed to build up certain reserves of authority and respect. Which is to say, Kate has managed to transform herself from an ornamental bit of royal window dressing into a genuine power player.
If we want to condense Beaton’s “marshmallow” line down to nuts and bolts, what he was really saying was that appearances can be deceiving. Kate might be best known for her bouncy blow dry but the woman is battle-ready but to underestimate her is a mistake.
After all, just ask Harry.
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.
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