Harry and Meghan escape from a battle royal
The Sussexes are escaping, the Windsors are hurting … and Meghan will cop the most blame.
The headline writers could not help themselves: Harry and Meghan have quit the royal family.
It’s a Sussexit. Get it?
It is, but mainly, it’s a Megxit.
Harry has for years borne the strain — and of course, enjoyed the privileges and pleasures — of being the best-loved member of Britain’s monarchy.
He stayed, even after they made him walk behind his mum’s coffin for several hours, after she died in a car crash.
He stayed, probably because, as a boy, he had no choice; and as a young man, it was impressed upon him that he had a responsibility to his family, and to Great Britain.
Civic duty means something to the royals.
The Queen has been serving for six decades.
And so he soldiered on, literally for a while there.
Meghan Markle, the TV actress from Suits, has lasted barely two years. What’s stunning is that she hasn’t crashed out on her own, like Diana, and Sarah, before her.
She’s taking Harry with her.
“It’s not enough to just survive something, right?” Meghan said during an ITV interview late last year. “That’s not the point of life. You have to thrive. You have to feel happy.”
This is a very modern, very American idea.
The couple’s statement is said to have come out of the blue, but it’s not like she didn’t give fair warning in that interview.
Hope of the side
Now they’ve quit.
Make no mistake, that’s what’s happened in London when Harry and Meghan dragged attention from Iran, from the Australian bushfires, to their personal Instagram account.
Meghan and Harry had quit, to spend less time with their family.*
It was not quite the abdication, but it was enormous news, and the Queen is not amused.
They were the hope of the side, those two.
They were supposed to be there, to modernise the royal family, Meghan being American, and divorced, with an African-American mum, and also older than her man, like any of that has ever been as controversial as, say, chopping the head off one or two of your wives.
Meghan probably thinks she’s done her best, enduring being shamed for such minor breaches of royal protocol as wearing jeans to Wimbledon?
Also for wearing a dark shade of nail polish, when nude is supposed to do.
Meghan knows they won’t literally kill her — they don’t do that any more — but she’d made plain that she was dying inside, spiritually, and certainly in terms of personal growth, which is important to Americans.
The pursuit of happiness. It’s in their constitution, and their DNA.
“We intend to step back as ‘senior’ members of the royal family and work to become financially independent, while continuing to fully support Her Majesty the Queen,” the couple’s statement said.
“It is with your encouragement, particularly over the last few years, that we feel prepared to make this adjustment.”
What is surprising is the way Harry is putting Meghan first.
He clearly adores her. You can see that, even in the way he looks at her.
He must have warned her that there would be a role she had to play — she quit the US and became Church of England — but it chafes, because she’s been independent.
Backlash
There will be criticism. That wedding — horse-drawn carriages and gun salutes — cost a bomb. In fairness, the public loved it.
Frogmore Cottage has been renovated on the public purse for them to live in, and now they don’t want it.
They’ve been flying around the world for two years — but again, in fairness, a lot of that was work.
Now there will be endless speculation over the final straw.
Is the royal family racist?
Sexist?
Too old-fashioned?
Too controlling?
Is there too much scrutiny?
Does Meghan, as a new mother, plainly and simply miss her own mum?
She has always been headstrong.
As a girl, she wrote to Procter & Gamble, makers of detergent. Why, she wanted to know, do you have only wives doing the washing up in your commercials? Why can’t you show everyone in the family helping with the dishes?
Chastened, the company agreed to change its ads.
Two decades on, she decided — having already been divorced — to marry into one of the oldest patriarchies on the planet.
The British royal family is now reeling.
The details hadn’t been thrashed out when the Instagram post appeared, which sounds like Meghan saying: “Harry, I’m serious. It’s them or me.”
New roles. In movies?
How will it work? Will they still live rent-free in Frogmore?
She seems to want to go back to California. The mind boggles at how much she’s going to be able to command for a movie role. Forget Hollywood royalty. She’s actual royalty. It will be like Grace Kelly fleeing Monaco to star in a Netflix series.
Like most rich kids, Harry has accumulated a personal fortune in the usual way — inherited it from his great grandma (the Queen Mother) and from his own mum.
He has also relied on his dad to make his way in the world. Most — which is to say, 95 per cent — of their income comes from the Prince of Wales.
Will that continue? The palace has said only this: “Under the current structure and financing arrangements, they are prohibited from earning income in any form.”
Something will have to change, then, although it’s not like the former king didn’t keep getting paid to live with his lover in Paris, back in the day.
The statement said the couple wanted to be “financially independent”.
Look, we don’t know the details, but that’s likely a bit cute. They’re going to have a pile of money.
They want to work on “charitable causes”. They also plan to “carve out a progressive new role within this institution”.
More woke, in other words.
They want to live mainly in the US, while supporting the Queen. That’s not exactly low maintenance (or good for the planet, in these days of flight guilt).
But they’ve done it. They’ve quit. And part of you may be thinking: well, good for her. For him, well, mid-30s is rather old to be rebelling against the family, but perhaps she’s given him the courage, or else no choice.
It may well be good for them. But it’s very bad for his family.
An aside: do they still want the titles?
The palace issued its own statement, upon which you could practically see pursed lips on this and other matters: “Discussions with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are at an early stage,” it read.
Buckingham Palace was keen to keep her. When Markle got married in May 2018, the royal family updated its website to include a line about her feminism.
Well, why not?
This Queen, and the last one, have been the best things to happen to them in terms of stability and dignity.
The support for Meghan’s activism did not continue much past the wedding. She had to shut down her personal Instagram account, where so many of her presentations about feminism had been posted.
In South Africa, she met female entrepreneurs and businesswomen, and mothers with HIV working hard in their communities to stop the spread of the virus.
She spoke about #metoo.
The first hint that she had Harry on her side also came in Africa.
Asked how she was coping with her new life, and the vilification she sometimes receives, Meghan became emotional. “Any woman, especially when they’re pregnant, you’re really vulnerable, and so that was made really challenging,” she said. “And then when you have a newborn, you know. And especially as a woman, it’s a lot.”
Harry clearly had her back.
“I will not,” he said, “be bullied into a game that killed my mum.” He’s killed the goose instead.
* That line is now everywhere, but the first to use it was Mark di Stefano of The Financial Times.