Most damning line in Vanity Fair’s Meghan Markle exposé

The Sussexes are no strangers to critical articles, but one line in a newly published magazine story shows this latest take-down can’t be ignored.

The Roman Empire? It lasted 449 years.

The Plantagenets? They got in 331 years ruling over Ye Olde England. Blockbuster video? They managed 28 years of charging people late fees for Speed 2.

And the House of Sussex? Less than five years after Prince Harry and Meghan, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex touched down in Los Angeles to boldly go where no HRH had gone before and things are coming down around their ears.

Here we are, only weeks after Meghan returned to Instagram, giddily skipping along a beach (Joie de vivre! Flapping cotton! Toenails!) and all that optimism and her relaunch has well and truly come a cropper.

Meghan has returned to Instagram. Picture: Suzanne Cordeiro / AFP

The culprit: Vanity Fair’s new 8000-word cover story about the Sussexes, an at times scathing exposé that would have to be one of the most damaging bits of reporting that has ever come out about them.

According to the piece, staff needed “long-term therapy” after working with a “really, really, really awful”, “​​Mean Girls teenager” Meghan who would “throw people to the wolves” and her team shopped around a proposed book about a “a post-Harry divorce”.

He, meanwhile, is painted as a bit of a pathetic man-child who has no mates and didn’t twig that spending 400 pages airing royal family dirty linen like an eager washerwoman with a brand new mangle might come with repercussions.

But the single most devastating line? It’s one of the most superficially banal ones, with journalist Anna Peele revealing that to research the story she “spoke with dozens of people who have worked with and lived alongside the couple” and “over many months”.

Or to put it another way, this story is the furthest thing possible from a tabloid hit piece whose sole, anonymous source is the Sussexes’ former PA’s cousin’s girlfriend’s leg waxer.

“Dozens” means at least 24 people, at a minimum. That’s not a few dissenting voices kvetching but a full choir in full throat.

Nor can this report be written off as the supposedly biased work of the British press with their perma-axe to grind against Crown Inc’s self-styled refugees.

The couple have been featured in Vanity Fair. Picture: Vanity Fair

There is also the fact that the Vanity Fair name brings with it a degree of journalistic credibility. Before piece went to print it would likely have been scrupulously fact-checked by experienced sub-editors and the publication’s legal team would have gone over this with a fine-tooth comb and a big red pen. (It’s not as if the Sussexes are shy about lobbing lawsuits about the place now are they?)

At the time of writing, nearly two days since the piece was released online, the Sussexes have not publicly pushed back or responded to any of the wild claims.

And wild they most certainly are, with Peele’s story reading at times like something fanciful that ChatGPT might have cooked up if tasked by a morally deficient hack on deadline.

There is the Duchess of Sussex’s alleged treatment of employees, with one person who worked on media projects with her saying that as a boss she was “really, really, really awful” and the experience was “very painful”.

“She’s constantly playing checkers—I’m not even going to say chess—but she’s just very aware of where everybody is on her board. And when you are not in, you are to be thrown to the wolves at any given moment.”

One person said, of the bullying allegations made by royal aides about the duchess, “Oh, any given Tuesday this happened.” (The Duchess has always strenuously denied the claims.)

Someone who had worked on the couple’s US projects said, “You don’t tell them no” and that “I left because I couldn’t live with myself anymore”.

Harry and Meghan Marklehave been featured in the magazine. Picture: Raul Arboleda / AFP

The duo is also described as being “local villains” in the small, moneyed community of Montecito where they live, with one resident calling them “the most entitled, disingenuous people on the planet”.

For a hint of the ick, there is the claim of their marriage, that while they are “so hot for each other”, their “dynamic is caregiver and facilitator”.

“I don’t want to be like, oh, it’s an Oedipus thing or whatever, but it kind of feels like she’s reparenting him.”

I could go on and on and on here but you get the picture. It’s bad. PR-debacle bad. Hide- under-the-covers bad. How-the-dickens-do-they-do-damage-control bad.

Just to really rub salt into the wound you have to remember that for years Vanity Fair has been a fairly staunch Sussex cheerleader.

In 2017, Meghan glamorously appeared on the magazine’s cover wearing couture and shot by famed snapper Peter Lindbergh in a piece that was puffier than a featherweight marshmallow.

Since then, the publication’s online coverage has also predominantly tended towards the pro-Sussexian, its website a generally supportive stronghold in the swirling, polarised online currents that eddy around the Duke and Duchess.

The couple have been described as ‘local villains’ in Montecito. Picture: Andres Castilla / Colombian Vice-Presidency / AFP

While Peele’s piece was published to coincide with the fifth anniversary of Megxit earlier this month, the timing could not be worse for the Sussexes whose 2025 has only gone downhill since Meghan was doing her beachy Bambi bit on New Year’s Day.

Earlier this month, they came in for a drubbing from certain quarters for touring charred bits of Los Angeles and were labelled “disaster tourists”.

Then, as the flames continued to ravage the city, the duchess announced that she was delaying the release of her Netflix series, With Love, Meghan, her only choice really (slash the streamer’s only choice) given that a show all about voyeuristically marinating in a plush

So-Cal idyll would have gone down like a cup of room temp sick. Yumo.

All of this and with 11 days of the month left. What next? Will their house be hit by lightning?

In the meantime, maybe Harry and Meghan can learn something from those Romans and Plantagenets: Defeats come and go but empires take time. Also, Speed 2 is pretty rubbish.

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.