‘What could have been’: Secret royal plan that could have prevented Megxit revealed
Back in 2019, a palace plan was drawn up that could have prevented the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s sensational exit.
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In another universe, another timeline, another parallel dimension, Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex is a happy man.
He is living somewhere in Africa, maybe South Africa, and his days are devoted to saving elephants and comforting children orphaned by AIDS.
In my head, it is just a montage of a grinning Harry in various dusty shades of khaki helping leathery beasts and playing peekaboo with toddlers.
And this is not just the stuff of fantasy, but actually what could have been.
Today, with Harry and wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex facing an uncertain US future, it’s worth thinking about the road not taken and how one simple call made years ago could have prevented the great rupture of Megxit.
You see, in another reality, home for the Sussexes is not a moneyed enclave full of goji berry enthusiasts, but somewhere in Africa, in a plan that was cooked up by Buckingham Palace long before any unhappy HRHs had started spouting their truth.
There are few, if any, in the royal trenches as well-sourced as the Times’ Valentine Low, who has been covering the royal family for 15 years, and in 2021 it was he who broke the news that Meghan had faced bullying allegations. (Claims that the duchess has always strenuously denied).,
Last year Low published the superb Courtiers: The Hidden Power Behind the Crown and of late has been doing some promo work for the updated edition. (Get thee to a bookstore for an insidery, impeccably researched read).
Most recently he was a guest on the excellent Scandal Mongers podcast and this other, alternate Sussex life came up.
“I always think that Harry would be much happier if, having left the military, he went off to work on a conservation project in Africa,” Low said.
“I think that would have been absolutely the right thing for him to do but you know, clearly not something that Meghan would buy into.
“I mean the trouble is I don’t think being a sort of global celebrity is really what’s good for him or what he ultimately deep down wants.”
However, for a while there, Operation: Elephant-Helper was a very real possibility.
In April 2019, the Times broke the news that Palace aides had been drafting a plan that would see Harry and his wife Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, assume new roles, “probably in Africa” and which would “combine some charity work, an element of promoting the Commonwealth and some work on behalf of the UK”.
(Low, in Courtiers, argues that actually, this notion of Harry going to African had been on the drawing board since “before he had even met [Meghan]”).
This pretty radical idea was being thought of as the Sussexes’ “Malta Moment”, a reference to the two years the late Queen and Prince Philip spent on the Mediterranean island early on in their marriage.
Harry, meanwhile, in his memoir Spare, writes that in 2019, he and Meghan had discussed spending “at least part of each year somewhere far away, still doing work for the Queen, but beyond the reach of the press”.
The couple would be “free from the British press, free from the drama, free from the lies. But also free from the supposed ‘public interest’ that was used to justify the frenzied coverage of us”.
No matter who or when someone had the light bulb moment of sending the duke and duchess off out to find their bliss a whole continent away from the Palace, it would have been the perfect solution – the duke and duchess could have escaped the spotlight to do the work they cared about.
As we now know, in April 2019, relations between the Sussexes and William and Kate, the Prince and Princess of Wales were already in a frayed, fraught state, meaning this escape plan would have provided some much-needed breathing room.
Tempers could have cooled, hurts let go of, and arguments over bridesmaid dresses forgotten. Namaste and all that.
Look, I know, Africa would not have been some miracle fix that marvellously sorted everything out, a panacea to end all panaceas, but I don’t think it’s going too far out on a limb to say it could well have prevented Megxit.
It could have been a pressure valve as temperatures climbed, as brothers fought, as sisters-
in-law may or may not have made each other cry, and as the British press gathered steam pointing out things like the hypocrisy of Harry and Meghan’s private jet use.
So what went wrong with the Great Africa Scheme?
According to Low, things fell down because of issues with funding and security arrangements.
Meanwhile, in Spare, Harry writes that while the late Queen “signed off”, his father had told him “to put it in writing, which I’d done immediately. Within a few days it was in all the papers and caused a huge stink”.
However, just imagine how different things would look today if Out of Africa: Sussex Edition had come off. Spare would likely not exist and Harry and Meghan’s biggest Netflix concern would probably be Fergie having made off with their account password.
Sure, come Christmas time when King, his sons and their families gathered outside St Mary Magdalene at Sandringham for the iconic Christmas moment it would be possible to detect a hint of strain in the group photos, the smiles not quite reaching the eyes of William and Harry, but hey – the centre would have held.
The royal family might still vaguely be a whole.
Instead, today, the duke is living in, and paying for, a California mega mansion high on square footage and low on subtly, which is situated in a town that seems increasingly riddled with paparazzi, while the Sussexes contend with floundering careers and far-from impressive public approval ratings.
During Low’s podcast appearance, he said of Harry, “I think he’s definitely in danger of becoming a sad figure”.
So, how did we get here, not there? How did Harry end up stuck in the interminable traffic of LA’s Pacific Coast Highway, not tenderly patting the trunks of elephant calves and living out this Attenborough-esque paradisiacal other life?
Low identifies Palace “inertia” as being one of the points where things fell down in the lead up to Megxit and which contributed to le cataclysme Sussex. (Like the Big Bang but with more for mantras and phone calls to Oprah).
According to the Courtiers author, “the first signs that things were going wrong with Harry and Meghan were evident about a year before they left”.
However, what was crucially lacking was that “no one was really in charge of dealing with the problem. The people who worked immediately for Harry and Meghan …[were] struggling to deal with it.
“The people ultimately in charge of the palace … Harry hated them and they hated Harry and Meghan, as they would certainly admit in private. There was no one person who [was] going to take charge of it and just take the situation by the scruff of the neck.
“I think it could have ended more happily. I think Harry and Meghan would still have left but it could have been dealt with a lot better.”
Instead, as we all know now, the situation was left to fester until things erupted, Vesuvius-
like, in January 2020 with the Sussexes’ peremptory announcement that they were done with full-time working royal life.
The rest, of course, is not just history but a TV show, a book and a podcast.
What we can now say decisively is that the Palace “inertia” ultimately had a seismic, outsize impact on the Crown Inc. and the royal family. Imagine the heartache and hurt and sadness and money and time that could have been saved if someone had made the Africa idea work.
In this regard, to me, the Firm failed and failed badly.
Something to think about for anyone stuck in woeful LA traffic.
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 ‘What could have been’: Secret royal plan that could have prevented Megxit revealed
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