Katy Hall: What Meghan and Harry’s move says about mental health

After announcing their plan to step down as senior royals, it’s become very apparent that it’s Harry’s baggage that led the move, not Meghan’s manipulation, writes Katy Hall.

It’s often said that when it comes to relationships, everyone has their baggage – a sentiment that couldn’t be truer for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

Since Meghan arrived on the scene three years ago, most people assumed it would be her baggage that ultimately brought the couple undone. Her family, her previous employment, her high turnover of staff, her reportedly making Kate Middleton cry.

But with the couple announcing this week that they plan to step down as senior members of the royal family and work towards financial independence, it’s become apparent that actually, it’s Harry’s baggage, not hers, that has led to this.

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Let’s just pretend for a minute that Meghan and Harry are not a very famous, very wealthy Duke and Duchess, but rather just a regular newlywed couple.

If you were Meghan and you saw your husband reliving a profound childhood trauma every time he stepped out in public, would you want him to go on simply so that you could continue to receive a clothing allowance? Probably not.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex say that in the future they plan to divide their time between the UK and North America. Picture: Samir Hussein

If you were Harry and saw what felt like the entire world passing unfair judgment on the woman you love, day in and day out, would you tell her to keep calm and carry on? I can’t imagine so.

And as a couple, you’d almost certainly do whatever was necessary to try and inoculate your child from it all.

The temptation to pile the entirety of the blame on Markle, put it down to her being an American witch and brand her the Yoko Ono of the house of Windsor has reached fever pitch.

But it’s far more likely that this would have eventually come to pass irrespective of who Harry chose to spend his life with.

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Long before Markle came onto the scene Prince Harry had been open about the “total chaos” his life became after losing his mother, Princess Diana, when he was just 12 years old.

During an interview with The Telegraph in 2017, Prince Harry admitted that he had come “very close to a complete breakdown on numerous occasions” due to the constant pressure of living in the public eye. Given the entire world watched him walk behind the casket of his dead mother before he’d even reached high school, that’s easy to believe.

Harry’s trauma began long before he met Meghan. Picture: supplied

Add to that the ever-present rumours of his paternity, the countless stories about his mother and father’s various extramarital affairs over the years, and the insensitive conspiracy theories involving his mother’s death (the wildest being that his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II ordered her hit) and suddenly it’s clear that for Harry, it’s less baggage and more a dozen jam-packed cargo containers.

Then, two whirlwind years into his relationship with Markle, the couple had married, welcomed a baby, and undertaken two royal tours.

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It was during this second tour in Africa that Prince Harry again hinted that all had not been well for some time.

“I thought I was out of the woods and then suddenly it all came back … Every single time I see a camera, every single time I hear a click, every single time I see a flash, it takes me straight back” the Prince told ITV journalist Tom Bradby, adding that the loss of his mother was still, 23 years later, “a wound that festers.”

Prince Harry and baby Archie in Canada. Picture: Instagram

During the same interview, the Prince said that he would not “be bullied into playing a game that killed my mum.”

Days later, when it was revealed Markle was suing a British tabloid, Prince Harry released a statement saying that while the new family “continued to put on a brave face” he could not “begin to describe how painful it has been.”

“I’ve seen what happens when someone I love is commoditised to the point that they are no longer treated or seen as a real person. I lost my mother, and now I watch my wife falling victim to the same powerful forces,” the statement read.

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There is still much for researchers and experts to learn about how acute trauma works long-term. But anyone with the most basic understanding can assume that losing a mother at a young age would be heartbreaking for anyone. Add uninvited fame, a lifetime of pressure and a dysfunctional family to the mix and you can see how someone might come to think that the best course of action for all that baggage would be to simply set it on fire and walk off into the Canadian sunset with the woman and son you love.

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Originally published as Katy Hall: What Meghan and Harry’s move says about mental health