Meghan, Harry, William and Kate: what happened to the Fab Four?

Long before rumours of tensions started to surface, long before Megxit was even a word, the Cambridges and the Sussexes had, in private, gone from Fab Four to right royal mess.

Prince William, Catherine, Prince Harry and Meghan attend a service marking the centenary of WW1 armistice at Westminster Abbey on November 11, 2018. Picture: Getty

With hindsight, the saddest thing about the Harry and Meghan royal roadshow wasn’t just that it was so brief. It was, we know now, that it was over so soon after it began. Long before rumours of tensions started to surface, long before Megxit was a word, the Cambridges and the Sussexes had, in private, gone from Fab Four to right royal mess.

Today, as the battle royal rages back and forth across the Atlantic, what do we really know? Were the royal family cold and unwelcoming? Were the courtiers silent but plotting? Amid the recriminations, Harry and Meghan’s engagement interview in November 2017 makes for fascinating viewing.

“Catherine’s been wonderful and amazing,” the couple told the BBC, two years before the authors of Finding Freedom claimed the opposite.

The Fab Four attend a Christmas Day church service at the Church of St Mary Magdalene on the Sandringham estate in 2018. Picture: Getty

The royal family have been “solid support and my grandparents have been wonderful throughout this whole process”, Harry said. “They’ve been amazing,” Meghan added, describing the honour of meeting the Queen and how much respect she had for her. Even the corgis backed Harry’s choice of bride, he joked. They had only ever barked at him, but they took to Meghan straight away. The couple held hands throughout, gazed adoringly at each other and exuded professionally styled confidence.

In William and Kate’s 2010 engagement interview Kate peeped out shyly from behind a curtain of hair and said barely a word. “She’ll do really well,” William says right at the end, patting her briskly on the knee.

Rewind to his bachelor days, and Harry lived next door to William and Kate, at Kensington Palace. Extremely close to his brother and sister-in-law, he would pop over regularly from Nottingham Cottage to apartment 1A to have a cup of tea and play with his young nephew and niece. Harry had known Kate since she started dating William in 2003. He was a welcome visitor to their rented house just outside St Andrews and at weekends in a cottage on the Balmoral estate.

When William got engaged, Harry said that Kate was the big sister he’d never had. Picture: AFP

When William got engaged, Harry said that Kate was the big sister he’d never had. Kate, it was reported, helped to fill the emotional gap left by his mother’s death. Later, after the Cambridges moved to London, when he popped over she would cook his favourite roast chicken - the same meal Meghan and Harry were cooking when he proposed - and sit companionably watching Game of Thrones box sets. Kate, it was said, was “Harry’s linchpin”, giving him “sensible romantic advice”. In return she enjoyed his laid-back attitude and sense of humour.

“Kate has quite a different relationship with Harry than she has with William,” a source said in 2016. “Harry appeals to her sillier side because he is carefree, footloose and loves banter.” He teased her about her skyscraper stilettos at a thanksgiving service and was said to be closer to her than any other woman on the planet.

“Harry is totally at ease popping over to the Cambridges’ gym to work out next to Wills and he’s used to seeing Kate in her cashmere dressing gown, reading to Charlotte, or joining in cosy family suppers eaten from their laps,” it was said. Michelle Obama later revealed that when she and Barack, who was president at the time, went to Kensington Palace for dinner Prince George couldn’t understand why his usually raucous, fun-loving uncle was so unnaturally quiet. Harry had to explain to his nephew that he was on his best behaviour because of the company.

The trios’ private lives and public duties were intertwined. In 2015 they launched a shared Twitter account, @kensingtonroyal. They were widely praised when they launched their Heads Together campaign to remove the stigma surrounding mental health. In a sign of how warm their relationship was, Kate once gave Harry a “grow your own girlfriend” kit as a jokey Christmas present. By late 2016 he didn’t need it. He was dating Meghan Markle.

By February they were reported to be living together at Kensington Palace and within months they were engaged. The future looked rosy for the House of Windsor in the hands of the blockbusting Cambridge/Sussex double act. Yet in a matter of months, in 2018, the double act crumbled.

In February they did their “Fab Four” Royal Foundation Forum appearance. “Catherine, Harry and I are delighted to be here this morning,” William told the audience, “and we are particularly happy to be at our first Royal Foundation event with Meghan.”

Meghan, it was announced, would after her marriage become the fourth patron of the foundation, the main charitable and philanthropic vehicle set up by William and Harry in 2011.

“We wait a couple of months,” Meghan promised that day, “and then we can hit the ground running.”

Asked at the event if working so closely led to family disagreements, William replied: “Oh yes.”

“They come so thick and fast,” Harry joked. “Working as a family does have its challenges, of course it does, but we’re stuck together for the rest of our lives.”

The two couples shared a communications staff based at Kensington Palace that included Jason Knauf. An American, he was appointed communications secretary to the Cambridges and Prince Harry in 2015 and later added Meghan to his list of principals.

On a sunny day in May 2018, crowds packed the streets of Windsor for the royal wedding. Four months later, nobody was joking any longer about the difficulties of working together as a family. Knauf’s email from October 2018, revealed yesterday (Wednesday), detailed his concerns about unhappiness among some of Meghan’s staff.

“I am very concerned that the Duchess was able to bully two PAs out of the household in the past year,” Knauf wrote to Simon Case, who was at the time private secretary to the Duke of Cambridge and is now cabinet secretary. “The treatment of X was totally unacceptable. The Duchess seems intent on always having someone in her sights. She is bullying Y and seeking to undermine her confidence. We have had report after report from people who have witnessed unacceptable behaviour towards Y.”

The Duchess of Sussex has denied the allegations and said that they are part of a smear campaign.

By November, rumours were surfacing publicly of tensions between the two households. A furious Duchess of Cambridge was reported to have fallen out with Meghan even before the wedding after Meghan was said to have rebuked a member of her staff. “They’re my staff and I speak to them,” Kate was alleged to have said. There were rumours of a tense weekend at Anmer Hall, William and Kate’s Norfolk home, after Prince Charles told them to smooth things over. Other sources tried to play down any rift. “Kate and Meghan are very different people.”

Kate was said to have been reduced to tears at a fitting for a bridesmaid’s dress for Princess Charlotte. Meghan was said to be furious about reports in the press about staff turnover. Denials were issued. Suddenly the joint households were to be unjoined, as a matter of urgency. “What was a long-term plan became an immediate plan,” a source said yesterday (Wednesday).

And so, in the space of a year, it all unravelled. Megxit became an unstoppable force. Harry and Meghan decamped to California and the brothers fell out so spectacularly that gossiping courtiers speak only vaguely of a hope that the relationship may one day be repaired. The Queen has barely met her great-grandson Archie. The Duke of Edinburgh remains seriously ill in hospital while in America Oprah Winfrey edits her interview with his grandson. In his engagement interview Harry said that his mother and Meghan would have been the best of friends. Heaven knows what Diana would make of it now.

The Times