Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's biggest nightmare unfolds

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are staring down at a horror week thanks to events entirely beyond their control.

COMMENT

Well bust out the single malt and break out the deep-fried Mars Bars: Bit of all right and King Charles’ right-hand man, Lieutenant Colonel Johnny Thompson of the 5th Battalion Royal Regiment of Scotland has been promoted by His Majesty.

This week came the news that the legion of royal Twitterati (X-erati?) have been waiting for; that the King has made the only sensible decision and decided that dreamboat Lt Colonel Thompson is too much of a boon to regal operations to let him return to his military post when his rotation as equerry ends.

Too bloody right! Why let go of the man who really puts the ‘O!’ in monarchy?

Lieutenant Colonel Johnny Thompson has had a big promotion.

That’s the good news and with November nearly upon us, because I’m not sure anyone in Montecito will be busting out Mars Bars, deep fried or otherwise, as Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex stare down what I think we can officially term, a bummer of a week.

Maybe I’ll be proven wrong, and this time in a month all we will be talking about is President Joe Biden having tapped Meghan to lead a national gender equity task force and tapped Harry to walk his dog.

However, the way things currently stand, Harry and Meghan are facing a rat-a-tat-tat of high-stakes and high-emotions thanks to events entirely beyond their control.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are about to enter a horror week. Picture: Angela Weiss / AFP

Let’s do this sequentially, shall we?

First off the plate will be, in early November, when Harry’s sometime “arch-nemesis” brother Prince William, the Prince of Wales zipping off to Singapore for the third annual outing of his hugely successful, $96 million Earthshot Prize and the first Earthshot Week. (The actual awards night is on November 7.)

No one needs a crystal ball to predict the adulatory column inches the event will attract or the torrent of high-sheen Instagram videos that the Kensington Palace social media team will be pumping out to sell prince as a top flight global statesman with all the urgency of a home shopping host trying to make quota.

My point is, prepare for a Willy The Warrior onslaught. (Fair play to the 41-year-old – Earthstot is an amazing bit of work. Gold stars all around.)

Thus it’s poor old Harry time: He is about to have to bear witness to a swath of press coverage about just how brilliant a philanthropist his older brother has become.

Added to which is the fact, that in watching the bells and whistles Earthshot bandwagon be rolled out again, the duke will be reminded of what he and Meghan gave up when they hung up their royal spurs – the connections, the cash, and the awesome convening power of royalty.

(This all reminds me of Gore Vidal’s eternally apt, “every time a friend succeeds, something inside me dies”.)

The Prince and Princess of Wales at the 2022 Earthshot Prize ceremony at the MGM Music Hall in Boston, Massachusetts. Picture: Angela Weiss/AFP

Then, the day after the Prize is held in Singapore and before the green biodegradable confetti has been swept up, the spotlight will swing to a Tampa, Florida courtroom on November 8 where Samantha Markle is suing the duchess for defamation.

Just what the world – and I’m assuming Meghan herself, wants – another grinding instalment in the world’s least enjoyable soap opera, Markle versus Markle.

Samantha’s court filing reads, per Newsweek, alleges that “Meghan continues to participate in and perpetuate the lies around her family and upbringing.”

The Duchess of Sussex’s lawyers are pushing to have the case thrown out, describing it as Samatha attempting “to turn a personal grudge into a federal case”.

The really messy part in all of this comes with the ‘d’ word – discovery. If, and it’s a big ‘if’, the judge rules the case can go ahead, this would trigger the discovery process which, per Newsweek, would involve the duchess having to “hand over to her half sister private texts, emails and other documents relevant to the case”.

If there is a patron saint of the courtroom (Gloria Allred? Marica Clark?) Meghan should consider getting in a few Hail Glorias while she can.

Samantha Markle is taking her half-sister Megan to court.

Next up, on November 12, comes Remembrance Sunday, when the remaining working members of the royal family, their number now so reduced they could be carted about in a modest mini-van, gather for the annual service at the Cenotaph.

Again, for Harry, this event must surely bring up a hell of a lot of complicated feelings.

The duke has repeatedly talked about the keen role his time in the military played in his personal evolution and has made supporting veterans a key pillar of his charitable work.

Yet, this annual day of reflection dedicated to those who have served is one that he has not been officially allowed to play a part in for years now.

In 2020, the first Remembrance Sunday after the Sussexes’ had decamped to within easy Range Rover distance of the Pacific Ocean and Oprah Winfrey’s tender TV embrace, came quite the commotion.

It emerged that Harry had requested permission for a wreath to be laid on his behalf, a request that Buckingham Palace had met by getting out their favourite red fountain pen and scribbling ‘denied’ all over it. It was a decision that, according to the Times, left the duke “deeply saddened”.

That same year someone inside Team Sussex had the clanger of an idea to stage their own ‘royal’ commemoration, with just Harry, Meghan and a professional photographer in dutiful tow, heading to a Los Angeles cemetery. There the Sussexes laid flowers on the graves of two Commonwealth soldiers and then released the images to the world.

Harry and Meghan's Remembrance Day photos had caused controversy due to their curated nature. Picture: Lee Morgan

What, you would have to assume, was intended to be a thoughtful and touching gesture by the Sussexes instead just came across looking like a self-serving bit of PR puffery, that they were cosplaying royalty from 8500 kilometres away.

So come November 12 this year, how might the duke feel watching his family gather to mark this most important of days, with him, the only Windsor to have served on the front line, now excised from proceedings?

Just in case feelings are not running high enough in Montecito by this point, there is the fact that the ruling in Harry’s high court phone-hacking case against the Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN) could be handed down any day now. (Remember how Harry became the first member of the royal family to enter the witness box in 130 years back in June? No? Well, it has been a bloody busy year for those of us in the trenches of Windsor Watch.)

Sit tight, we have more to go here.

On November 14, Charles will mark his 75th birthday, an event he will celebrate, I’m assuming, by finally letting Camilla bust out the really good Bolly and bringing out the Nando’s takeaway menu.

The Sunday Times reported this week that, at some stage, His Majesty will “host a ‘low-key’ private party for close family and friends”.

The most obvious question: Will Harry and Meghan make that guest list? And moreover, would they actually go?

King Charles is reportedly keen to celebrate his 75th in a low-key event. Picture: Nicky J Sims / POOL / AFP

Frankly I find it hard to see the Sussexes turn up on Charles’ Clarence House doorstep bearing a decent bottle of California chardonnay and plastered on smiles ready to make nice in very close proximity to the King, Harry’s stepmother “bodies left in the street” Camilla or Kate, the Princess of Wales, a woman who will go down in the history books for having been reluctant to share her lip gloss with her sister-in-law.

Just imagine the stilted small talk as footmen pass around limp Waitrose vol-au-vents and Princess Anne bluntly turns down Meghan’s offer to have her astrological natal chart done. (As Anne put it when a wannabe kidnapper attempted to wrench her from her limousine in 1974, “Not bloody likely”.)

In all likelihood, Charles’ birthday will probably end up being high on organic seed cake and low on emotional fence-mending with a wayward son.

Two days later, on November 16, will come the release of the first half of the final season of The Crown, which will deliver the deeply emotional crescendo of the Netflix hit, recreating Diana, Princess of Wales’ final turbulent months and her death in Paris.

Adding a further layer of complication to all of these emotions, these messes, and mini-sausage roll-mandatory outings is that while the House of Windsor is busy with big prizes and big birthdays, the Sussexes’ star is on the blink. Professionally, he and Meghan seem stuck in neutral as they continue to put the ‘meh’ in Megxit, with them not having announced a new project or business deal in more than two years.

Things aren’t going well with the Sussexes. Picture: Timothy A. Clary/AFP

(There is their reported adaptation of novel Meet Me At The Lake however Netflix has yet to officially confirm the project.)

There is one more anniversary to mention here. Halloween will mark seven years since the final night of relative normalcy that Suits star Meghan Markle had before she was outed as Prince Harry’s girlfriend. On that day, along with Princess Eugenie and her now husband Jack Brooksbank, the foursome headed out to a post-apolcystic themed party.

As the duchess ‘four of us snuck out in Halloween costumes to just have one fun night on the town before it was out in the world that we were a couple. It was a post-apocalypse theme, so we had all this very bizarre costuming on, and we were able to just have one fun final night out.’

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.