Royal rule on ‘freebies’ that Meghan Markle kept breaking
Prince Harry has inadvertently revealed Meghan Markle did something that is a “serious breach of the rules”.
COMMENT
So far, 2023 has been the year of the royal sausage. Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex’s frosty “todger” has been the ridiculous story we didn’t know we needed, introducing us to the worlds’ most famous wilting willy. Then on Tuesday came hold-the-front-page revelation (from former royal butler to reality TV habitué Paul Burrell) that Aitch, as a child, was given fewer bangers at breakfast than big brother Prince William.
“How come he gets three?” a “miffed” Harry asked their nanny, who answered, “William needs filling up more than you. He’s going to be king one day.”
Arise, the Prince of Pork!
But in among all of this saucisson sniggering, there is one controversial detail in Harry’s 400-odd pages of guts-spilling in Spare that has largely been lost in the media melee about his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.
The problem isn’t to do with some elderly palace retainer looking back at the days of empire with misty-eyed longing and spouting off to Meghan, or some other HRH being given a chunk of Shropshire to the chagrin of the Sussexes.
Oh no, what we have to talk about are designer doodads, namely the lovely pretty things that flowed to Meghan after she traded workaday life in Toronto for palace-dom.
According to Harry, aka Dudley Do-Write: “She shared all the freebies she received, clothes and perfumes and make-up, with all the women in the office.”
At face value it’s a sentence that makes the former Suits actress out to be a super boss, a woman willing to share the spoils and silk scarfs of her exalted position with staffers whose annual salaries were probably less than her annual Philip Treacy bill.
But is anything ever really that straightforward or simple when we are talking about the world’s most famously dysfunctional dynasty?
The problem lies in the eternal paradox that is royalty or at least the way things stand for those working members of the House of Windsor who officially represent the sovereign. See, they are extraordinarily wealthy on paper, but often cash poor. They are some of the most famous people in the world but they are not celebrities. They play a role in the apparatus of state but they have no say or real power.
Which is why there are longstanding guidelines that govern what they can and cannot accept and this is where, reportedly, things started to go a bit sticky for Meghan.
To understand this situation, you have to go back to 2014 when the actress launched her lifestyle blog, The Tig.
According to Tina Brown’s Palace Papers: “Plugs for cosmetics, travel destinations, restaurants and self-care products made The Tig a dragnet for luxury freebies. She won a reputation among the marketers of luxury brands of being warmly interested in receiving bags of designer swag.”
All of which was entirely expected and just another juicy perk of the influencer-PR vortex.
But then came a certain date in London with Harry and destiny (Hallmark, call me, I’ve got more of these) and that’s when things started to get complicated on the pressie front.
Brown writes of a publicist who “was cc’d in a message to a member of Meghan’s team soon after she became the Duchess of Sussex”.
“Make sure [the publicist] knows that she can still send me anything. She’s always been one of the good ones.”
Writing in the UK Telegraph last weekend, Camilla Tominey reported that “when she first came on the scene, Meghan’s expectation was that she could keep some of the dresses she had been loaned”. (And the claim that the Los Angeles native shared around her “freebies”? That is “disputed,” per the same report.)
And thus came the approximately 78th culture clash, when Meghan met the monarchy and when Hollywood collided with Holyroodhouse.
The royal family actually has an official policy for presents, which you can read here should you enjoy whiling away your free time in one of the most boring corners of the internet. It states “gifts offered by commercial enterprises in the UK should normally be declined” unless they are for “a royal marriage or other special personal occasion”.
The standard practice, reportedly, is for the royal family to return gifts – and they pay for their own clothes, both on and off duty.
That’s why if you see the Princess of Wales turn up to some suburban playgroup engagement in a four-figure Alessandra Rich frock that somehow combines polka dots and stripes, it will have been paid for by Kate herself using her Coutts Rhodium card. (Or, more accurately, at least paid for using all those lovely Duchy of Cornwall millions now flowing into the Waleses’ bank accounts.)
Other accounts have pointed to this luxury largesse as a point of friction behind the scenes.
In late 2018, it was revealed that Meghan’s assistant Melissa Toubati had quit, and Valentine Low writes in his 2021 book Courtiers: “Palace sources have said that the clashes between Meghan and Toubati centred on the free gifts that some companies would send to Meghan.
“Toubati was apparently punctilious in following the household rule that members of the royal family cannot accept freebies from commercial organisations. Her approach did not go down well with Meghan.”
In March 2021, it was revealed that Meghan had been the subject of a bullying complaint, an allegation that the Duchess has always strenuously denied. Days later, The Sun ran a story saying: “The alleged [bullying] claims are believed to include rows that happened when the former actress was told by aides that keeping clothes sent by fashion labels was against royal protocol.
“Sources say boxes of designer garments were sent to Kensington Palace for Meghan after she was unveiled as Harry’s girlfriend.”
A source told the newspaper: “As an actress it was perfectly acceptable to take freebies sent by fashion chains and designer labels.
“But Meghan had to be told it was not the done thing when you are a member of the royal family.”
Which thus brings us to the crux of all this: Harry, in Spare, is trying to use the “freebie” situation to paint his adored other half in a glowing light when in fact he would seem to have accidentally confirmed these previous reports.
(The Duke also writes in his memoir that an assistant was “asked to resign by Palace HR after we showed them evidence she’d traded on her position with Meg to get freebies”.)
As Tominey writes of Meghan ‘sharing around’ the goodies sent to her, “If it were true it would amount to a serious breach of the rules on the receiving and registering of gifts.”
Look, let’s be realistic here. Accepting a free cashmere jumper or some fig and bergamot-scented thingumabob is hardly a Tower-worthy offence. But, what this situation highlights is what looks like the gulf that existed between the Duchess’ view of royal life and palace rigidity and protocol.
However, let me leave you with this. Meghan is not the only member of the royal family to have very controversially received lovely, expensive things. Days before the Meghan bullying story broke in 2021, the Times revealed that Queen Elizabeth had “continued to accept gifts of racehorses from the ruler of Dubai, even after his wife fled to London in fear of her life”.
This same generous horsey royal, sheik Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, had been found by the British high court to have abducted two of his daughters who are believed to be forcibly held in the Middle Eastern country.
The year before, Her Majesty was accepting those expensive equines from sheik Mohammed, one of those daughters, Princess Latifa, told a British court that she had faced “constant torture” after having previously tried to flee the country.
But hey, what are human rights when we are talking about the highest quality bloodstock though? You know what they say about gift horses …
Daniela Elser is writer and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
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