Palace’s nightmare Meghan Markle and Prince Harry scenario comes true
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are on their way to New York and what they’ve got planned is something the royals must have been dreading.
COMMENT
Won’t someone think of New York? The city that never sleeps looks like it’s morphing into the city that can’t get rid of members of the royal family rolling into town to use the city as a backdrop for their own self serving, scene-stealing, spotlight-hogging ends.
Last month Prince William jetted in to bang the climate crisis drum and prove no man can make waders look even a bit dishy, even someone with a crown coming his way. Schoolchildren rhapsodised to the local news about him and crowds of hundreds of people stood around in the summer heat to catch a glimpse of the one-day regal pate.
A few months before that, in May, New York played host to Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s supposed “near-catastrophic car chase,” a situation which can most politely be described as a trainwreck of high emotion colliding with cold-hard facts.
The next day, instead of the world’s media breathlessly reporting on the duchess’ stunner of a dress and her usual feminism-lite spiel, a touch of egg was meeting a couple of royal faces.
But there is no rest for the wicked or the city of more than eight million people because Harry and Meghan will be back next week, with NY set to play a starring role -again – in the latest instalment of the never-ending soapie, Send In The Crowns.
On Friday, the Sussex machinery ground into action and proved it had been doing something behind the scenes for all these years besides putting out press releases, revealing to People that the very first in-person Archewell Foundation event is incoming.
Three years after the duke and duchess’ post-Megxit charitable arm launched, they are hosting their debut large-format event, one that is wholly the product of perky minds hopped up on cold brew, wide-eyed optimism and ashwagandha.
Next week, to mark World Mental Health Day on October 10, they will host “The Archewell Foundation Parents’ Summit: Mental Wellness in a Digital Age,,” which is both a mouthful and potentially a cracking idea. (The Summit is part of Project Healthy Minds’ World Mental Health Day Festival.)
Except, umm, look, this is awkward.
On the very same day King Charles’ other son and daughter-in-law will host a World Mental Health Day event featuring a mass of the proletariat herded into a well lit auditorium, only it will be 5,500 kilometres away in Birmingham.
In a situation that truly defines tragicomic, it turns out that both the Sussexes and William and Kate, the Prince and Princess of Wales have both planned marquee events, both on the same day and both focused on the same issue.
Oh my.
Indulge me and let’s briefly imagine the scenes inside Sussex HQ, all off-whites, linen and oil-diffusers puffing ylang-ylang into the air, and Kensington Palace, all decent oils paintings, half-eaten pieces of shortbread on teacup saucers, and aides bustling about in good wool suits covered in dog hair, when they all found out about the clash.
This is the very scenario that Buckingham Palace must have been dreading since January 2020 when the Duke and Duchess of Sussex huffed off to the new world to set out their own stall: A head-to-head, brother versus brother showdown, as they both fight to stake out the same territory.
In the days and weeks after Megxit entered the lexicon (and before Covid really took global flight) it looked like Harry and Meghan could and would pose a very real threat to The Firm and the Waleses. The fear was that the latter would come as looking decidedly dull and plodding as they opened youth centres while over in the US the exciting, dashing Sussexes would wholesale steal the show.
It looked, back then, like Harry and Meghan were set to establish themselves as the much more interesting, vital and ambitious outpost of the royal family, making the HRHs back in London look decidedly grey and as bland as two stale Rich Tea biscuits.
Instead, the Sussexes have managed to achieve nothing of any real charitable note on their tod while the Waleses’ big picture initiatives – Earthshot and Early Years – have positioned them as big-picture, blue sky-thinking whizzkids.
However that is only the score so far and to say that a lot is riding on next week’s event for Harry and Meghan would be a bit like saying the Titanic got a bit wet.
The Archewell Foundation has, thus far, failed to set the charity world on fire. Hell, it has barely even created much of a spark.
Since fleeing Palace-dom to feel their feelings and be paid to do so, their charity engagements have seen them stage quasi-royal outings, often with a photographer in tow (a 2020 Los Angeles charity drive; a LA preschool, a LA war graves cemetery), hold Very Important Meetings (the World Health Organisation, the United Nations) despite their total lack of official roles anymore, and them occasionally turning up to discuss mental health with the kids (appearing on the Teenager Therapy podcast in 2020; meeting with local youth group, AHA! Santa Barbara in May).
October 10 could prove an inflection point in this tale. If Harry and Meghan (and their army of aides, staffers and Warby Parker-wearing consultants) can pull off a great event, then it could help reframe them in the public imagination after what has seemed like an interminable stretch of Sussex navel-gazing and on-camera kvetching.
So far, they have struggled to truly establish themselves as leading philanthropic lights but in choosing an issue that a) they obviously care deeply about and b) must affect pretty much every family with children in the United States, they could be about to pull-off an impressive reputational reset.
Still, there is plenty that could go wrong for the Montecito residents.
Birmingham is five hours ahead of New York, meaning that William and Kate’s will get in first. Could this leave the Sussexes looking like they are but following in the footsteps of the Waleses?
Also, will one couple show up the other? Will one of these talkfests look like a limp facsimile of the other? Will one be all bells, whistles and smoke-machines with a pulsing, uplifting soundtrack, while the other is held in an overlit room and will look about as exciting as a regional Labour Party where the tea urn has gone on the blink?
Which is to say, will one couple come off distinctly second best?
Not exactly in the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s favour is that their event will be moderated by TV host Carson Daly who is a Project Healthy Minds board member. (If you are not in your late 30s or older and were tuned into the American cultural Zeitgeist in the early aughties you probably have no idea who Daly is.) World Mental Health Day Summit headliner Anderson Cooper, who interviewed Harry ahead of Spare’s release, is not part of the Archewell event.
Still, bottom line, this is Harry and Meghan stepping things up a notch or seven in terms of their US ambitions and them taking a much more substantive crack at the charity throne.
Will they triumph? Will William and Kate beat them to the punch and leave them looking like also-rans? Will Harry and Meghan put on the glama-a-rama razzle dazzle and blow them out of the water? Which new look version of monarchy in action will come out looking the most vital and meaningful?
So, buckle up New York, the Sussex caravan is about to roll into town. And Birmingham, someone make sure the tea urns are working.
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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