Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, madness goes too far

One social media post about the Duchess of Sussex’s most recent actions has triggered an extreme, eye-popping reaction.

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What must writing about the royal family have been like before The Dawn of the Age of Meghan? I’m imagining it mostly just involved finding new synonyms to describe pastel fascinators and feigning journalistic interest in HRHs off on away days to inaugurate Welsh seniors centres and the occasional recycling plant. (Well, Princess Anne is certainly still up to the latter, bless.)

We are a long, long way past those simpler, perhaps fanciful, times.

One social media post proves my point.

Earlier this month, Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex packed their 14-piece (I’m guessing) set of Rimowa luggage and took themselves and their team to Nigeria for a three day tour in support of the duke’s Invictus Games. It went like clockwork:

They were a rousing success, Meghan dazzled in a series of fabulous ensembles and hands were wrung back in London over the out-in-the-wilderness Sussexes looking uncomfortably royal and popular and young and lots of other concerning adjectives for a greying institution.

Then, about a week after the Sussexes were wheels up and back off home to California, Save the Children (StC) UK shared posts on X and Instagram showing a visit by the duke and duchess to their offices in Abuja, Nigeria. While there, Harry and Meghan, prepare yourself, sat around a table and spoke to StC Youth Ambassadors Maryam and Purity who are “are tireless advocates for children’s rights”.

The social media reaction was stunning.

Harry, Duke of Sussex, and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex pose for a photo with children after a charity polo game in Lagos during a visit to Nigeria. Picture: Kola Sulaimon/AFP

“Will never give money to this charity again.”

“Why are you sharing this visit by two wicked people who should be kept well away from

children? We shall withdraw our direct debit donations immediately.”

“These 2 have tried to destroy the Royal Family! … This disgraceful.”

“Why did you invite a couple with empty titles that betrayed with lies the family that gave them everything? They don’t represent any country so they won’t help your cause at all.”

“Instead of this being kept as a private visit this will now be used as propaganda to how Arsewell has helped this charity but do nothing and get grants”

Stop right here. Step back. Here are two people being vilified for wanting to help save kids’ lives.

Things have gone far, far too far when people are talking about withholding money from a children’s charity out of venom towards the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

You don’t have to be a devoted member of the Sussex Squad or think they are the two of the most hard done by people since the bubonic plague was in its heyday – heck, you don’t even have to remotely like them – to view their StC visit as an indisputable, will-brook-no-disagreement good thing.

They are being vilified for wanting to help save kids’ lives. Picture: Andrew Esiebo/Getty Images for The Archewell Foundation

The couple undertake this simple, straightforward outing, a textbook charity visit, and they are being treated like they were caught with their hands in the StC petty cash tin and with their pockets full of Post-It notes and biros nicked from the NGO’s stationary cupboard.

But, the madness didn’t stop there. Several days later, StC UK shared a post supporting Kate, the Princess of Wales’ Early Years business taskforce putting out a report. The social media responses continued this same line of attack, lambasting the charity and calling the duke and duchess “scammers”, “fake grifters” and “frauds”.

And yet somehow Harry and Meghan, doing some paradigmatic royaling, triggers some people to just unleash in the most astonishingly horrible way. There is a line between criticising the couple and perennially reading them as cartoon villains constantly up to no good.

They have done some wonderful things. Picture: Andrew Milligan – WPA Pool/Getty Images

The problem is that people can’t, or quite simply won’t, distinguish between what the Duke and the Duchess of Sussex have done as two humans with an over-developed compulsion to share (and earn money) and what they have done, and are doing, as humanitarians.

In giving their Oprah Winfrey interview while Prince Philip was in hospital and we now know, dying; in Her late Majesty knowing in her final months that her grandson was writing a memoir and making a multi-part Netflix series with Meghan; in Harry having levelled a rat-a-tat-tat of recriminations and grievances at his immediate family on TV and in print and in return for tens of millions of smackaroos … well there is plenty there that cooler minds or news.com.au writers might not exactly agree with.

However, none of that has anything to do with their charity work.

The extreme, extreme polarisation of the discourse and conversation around the royal family, including the Sussexes, has gotten to such an exaggerated sense- and logic-free point where Meghan could single-handedly bring peace to the Middle East and she would be lambasted for failing to have fixed Taiwan and China too.

Also, some foolish things. Picture: Andrew Esiebo/Getty Images for The Archewell Foundation

Maybe this is all indicative of much larger cultural shifts where the entire world is increasingly factionalised and siloed and opinions are reinforced in social media echo chambers but in the royal world, this translates things having gotten to a point where the Duchess of Sussex cannot win.

Personally I think Harry and Meghan have done some wonderful things and some foolish, mistaken things and about 894 things that fall somewhere along that spectrum. But nuance has long since left the building.

To delve into royal Twitter these days (look, I just can’t bring myself to call it X) is to be submerged in a toxic soup of conspiracy theories about the duchess especially, with her generally painted as being Catherine de Medici done up in Carolina Herrera. (How long until someone accuses the duchess of trying to poison her foes à la ol’ Catherine?)

Social media is a toxic soup of conspiracy theories about the duchess. Picture: Kola Sulaimon/AFP

Whether you think Harry and Meghan are valiant crusaders fighting the good fight or self- serving and myopic or anywhere in between, that has nothing to do with the fact they continue to get up and to try and help the world in some way, at least some days of the year.

And how many of us precisely can say the same thing?

So, if you would like to do exactly that, you can donate to Save the Children Australia here.

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.