Meghan and Harry showed up by embarrassing leaked emails

As embarrassing emails leaked about Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s conduct, Kate Middleton didn’t need to say a word.

Catherine, Princess of Wales has had a much better week in the press than Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex. Picture: Chris Jackson and Yui Mok – WPA Pool//Getty Images

If ever anyone should write a job description for a princess, it would make for some slightly grim reading: Woman required to knock out heirs and spares; promote British industry; never look deadly bored making small talk with mid-tier, nervously sweating Albanian civil servants during palace receptions. Tiara-wearing experience a plus.

This week Kate, the Princess of Wales was back at it, visiting a Yorkshire textile mill for what looked like the most tedious outing possible short of visiting a paint factory and having to watch some samples dry.

Luckily by Wednesday, she was back at her usual early years work, taking part in a sensory session at the Orchard Centre in Kent, which supports children with special needs and their families.

Cue heartwarming images of the princess having plonked herself on padded mats on the floor with the kids and their parents, with foam, tinsel and shredded paper, at various points, flying about the place.

While it was probably big gold star time inside Wales HQ, the timing of these photos of the Princess of Wales on the ground could not have been worse for Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

Catherine, Princess of Wales during a visit to Standfast & Barracks printworks. Picture: Dominic Lipinski-WPA Pool/Getty Images

Right around the time that Kate was plopped on that Kent floor tickling tummies (awwww), the Daily Mail US was putting on their reporting hat, having gotten their hands on emails surrounding a visit made by the Sussexes in 2021 to a Harlem primary school.

Just in case you don’t have an on-call encyclopaedic knowledge of Harry and Meghan’s movements, and given enough happened since 2021 in the royal world to fill a five-volume set, here’s a quick refresher.

Princess Catherine visits AW Hainsworth in Leeds, England. Picture: Chris Jackson/Getty Images

It’s a year after Megxit and Harry and Meghan, having gotten themselves a large US mortgage and an armful of big dreams, pitched up in New York in September of that year for an ersatz royal visit. On the agenda: Some forelock tugging dignitaries (then New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, his wife Chirlane McCray and New York governor Kathy Hochul) and the couple doing plenty of striding in and out of Very Important Meetings (with the US’ UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the World Health Organisation).

It was a wonder the duke and duchess didn’t kit themselves out in matching baseball caps embroidered with the words, ‘Statepsople at work!’ (Colon – ‘We still matter!’)

As part of that visit, they also made the nearly 70 blocks trip from their hotel, The Carlye, to Harlem’s PS 123 Mahalia Jackson school where the duchess, wearing more than $10,000 worth of clothes, read her book, The Bench, to year two students.

The school is, according to the Sun, “among the poorest in New York.”

At the time, photos seemed to suggest that the couple’s visit was being filmed for some sort of project.

We now of course know all about Harry & Meghan, the Netflix multi-partner which is a must-watch if you like people talking about their hurt feelings for six hours straight and boring bits of iPhone footage.

It hasn’t been the greatest week for Meghan in the press.

The PS123 visit is not a significant narrative moment or really features much at all, if my memory serves. [Note to ed: Please don’t make me rewatch.]

Which brings us to this week and the Mail who, via a Freedom of Information Act request, has obtained emails which have thrown up a series of less-than-flattering details about the Sussexes’ school visit.

For example, according to the report, “representatives for Harry and Meghan raised the idea of bringing cushions and a new carpet to a public school in one of New York’s low-income areas to better fit with Meghan’s aesthetic.”

A publicist for Penguin Random House, who published the duchess’ book (and Harry’s guts-spilling Spare too), wrote at one point: “My team is looking into all things carpet, cushions, decor etc. More to come”.

Then there is the duke and duchess’ team allegedly tiring to “to gag teachers and pupils as young as five,” at the school. This was first reported by the Sun earlier this week and the Mail piece provides further details.

According to the unearthed emails, “students and faculty at the Harlem elementary school were even asked to sign consent forms for filming that also banned them from discussing the project or making ‘negative’ remarks about the famous couple who were visiting.”

(The Mail reported that “Archewell said that it followed standard practice when it came to the NDA.”)

Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex’s school visits are being scrutinised. Picture: Matt Dunham/POOL/AFP

The takeaway from wading through all of this is that the Sussexes come across as not only high-maintenance and demanding, but who also used a public school as a backdrop for a pretty blatant PR outing. (The New York Department of Education also deserves plenty of over-the-coals-hauling for their readiness to let their students be used as background players.)

Sticklers in the room will be quick to argue that exploiting cute kids, the elderly and charities the length and breadth of the British Isles for publicity purposes is fundamentally what the Crown Inc does day-to-day back in Blighty does too, and there is certainly some truth to that.

However at least when a princess or a duchess is posted off to the Home Counties to visit a daycare centre or a gardening project helping to turn around anti-sical louts by teaching them how to plant petunias or whatever, it’s mutually beneficial. Said royal will turn up and help shine a spotlight on some organisation staffed by underpaid, overworked people who care and said princess or duchess gets to bathe in the warm, golden glow of their shiny hall.

The royal-charity nexus is generally an all around win-win.

Can the same be said for the Sussexes’ Harlem sally? While I’m sure the kids the couple met will remember the moment forever, bigger picture, what did PS123 get out of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex pitching up?

According to the Mail’s reporting, the wording in a draft press release about a donation of reading books by Meghan to the non-profit that supports PS123 was reworked by her publisher, Penguin Random House “to make it seem like a larger number.”

Likewise, “A news release from the publisher was amended to say that Archewell ‘worked with’ Procter & Gamble to provide free personal health and hygiene products for the school, rather than just the consumer products giant providing the items.”

On one hand, here we have PRs doing nothing but their job but on the other, what looks like a couple who are intimately attuned to

I don’t doubt, for a second, that Kate’s visit to the Orchard Centre was not planned with military precision such that you could imagine some moustachioed colonel in full dress uniform moving pieces on a board with a big wooden pointer back at Kensington Palace plotting how the engagement would unfold.

Catherine, Princess of Wales at Orchard Centre in Sittingbourne, Englan, which supports children with disabilities. Picture: Paul Grover – WPA Pool/Getty Images

So too would, I’m assuming, the princess’ staff have reconnoitred the centre, had meetings with the organisation and worked out in minute detail what Kate was going to do, who she would speak to and what would be going on while she was there.

But there is a world of difference between something being planned to the Nth and worrying about whether the playgroup mats might clash with a member of the royal family’s socks. It would be hard to conceive of someone whose image is more rigorously managed and patrolled than Kate’s and yet as far as has ever been reported, her team has never requested “decor” changes or asked parents to ever sign documents preventing them from ever posting ‘Kate sux’ on Twitter or X or whatever it’s called.

When Kate tootled off to Kent, you would have to assume she had no greater ulterior motive than to promote her Early Years work and the Orchard Centre but incidentally she has managed to throw the Mail’s claims about the Sussexes into sharp relief.

There is a line between careful pre-planning and being so image-conscious that you fancy bringing your own cushions to a public school. Question: Can you be hoist by your own “decor”? Maybe someone should ask the Sussexes.

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.

Originally published as Meghan and Harry showed up by embarrassing leaked emails