by Dylan Howard
Palace staff were said to be “shocked” at the hiring of an external agency not related to the Firm, especially as the couple had been represented by the Royals’ global public relations chief, Sara Latham. Latham’s former clients include Hillary Clinton, with whom she worked during Clinton’s 2016 presidential run. Now she was being passed over in favor of a high-powered crisis management firm.
With very British understatement, an insider at the Palace mused that “Hiring a Hollywood firm to represent you for PR while a member of the Royal Family is unorthodox to say the least.”
That September, Meghan had the chance to promote herself even further when she was asked to guest-edit the September edition of the British version of Vogue, a major coup for both Vogue and for the Duchess.
Kate herself had appeared on the cover of the centenary edition in 2016, wearing a tweed jacket and hat and leaning cheerfully on a gatepost. There were acerbic comments from some quarters; the writer Hilary Mantel sneered that Kate looked as if “designed by a committee and built by craftsmen, with a perfect plastic smile and the spindles of her limbs hand-turned and gloss-varnished.” But Kate’s self-effacing and lack of ego offended some feminists and equal-rights opportunists, who felt she should have used her platform more wisely. When Meghan was offered the chance, she grabbed it with both hands.
For the cover, she forewent a picture of herself in favor of fifteen women, mostly models and actors, but also the author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and New Zealand’s prime minister, Jacinda Ardern.
“The line-up is evidence that, in 2019, a new metric for global success is in play,” ran the breathless unattributed commentary to the shoot. “First, attract visibility. Then, convert visibility into a platform. Finally, use your platform to effect change.”
If the text hadn’t been written by Meghan, it was the product of someone who had clearly spent a lot of time talking to her.
The Meghan edition of Vogue—including interviews with a range of figures across her political and social portfolio—offered up a feel-good bible of wokeness and inspiration. But the project also underlined Meghan’s limits. She could chuckle with Michelle Obama about how cute their babies were when asleep, she could commission a poem from author Matt Haig that included a daring “fuck,” she could send Harry off to interview Dr. Jane Goodall, an eminent ecologist and climate expert. During that conversation Harry let slip that due to “environmental” reasons, the couple planned to have only two children.
But, ultimately, as a Royal, Meghan wouldn’t be able to do much about any of the problems she discussed, the key challenge she faced. In her role as Duchess, Meghan could flag up injustices and inequalities, causes she held close to her heart and, as a lifelong campaigner and outspoken advocate of feminism and racial equality, always had, ever since childhood. But, in the gilded Royal cage, she quickly realized that her impact was limited, something that seemed to drive her crazy. Anyone who knew Meghan knew she had always wanted to speak up for the causes close to her heart. Thinking that her new position might allow her to be more effective in solving the issues she highlighted would prove a serious mistake. This paradox at the heart of Meghan’s new existence was generating a huge amount of frustration for her, and for some of those who were following her.
The acclaimed author Helen Lewis explored this question at the root of Meghan’s public position, her inability to do little more than signaling, for an article in The Atlantic.
“Too often, feminism—even when not championed by a beautiful, wealthy aristocrat—gets stuck in this toothless, villain-free zone,” she wrote. “Markle can talk about marginalized women who struggle to find clothes for job interviews—and the charity SmartWorks, which she supports—but she cannot address the causes of poverty. The cookbook she oversaw to help victims of the Grenfell Tower fire in 2017, in which seventy-two Londoners died, can raise money for those affected. But there is a tacit agreement not to engage with discussions about the inadequate cladding on the apartment building, overseen by the local authorities, which made the fire so lethal.”
That autumn, the Sussexes began a major trip abroad to Africa. They were accompanied by the four-month-old Archie, who set a new royal record as the youngest Royal to make an international tour. Prince William was nine months old when he joined his parents on the road to Australia in 1983, and neatly, Prince George was the same age when William and Kate took him to Australia in 2014. Harry, meanwhile, made his first appearance during a royal tour in Venice with Diana, Charles, and William when he was six months old in 1985.
According to a source who spoke out at the time, Harry and Meghan planned to “do some serious work on the ground, particularly at a community level.” This motif of relaxed informality coursed through the trip, which included South Africa and Botswana. Harry also made a poignant trip to Huambo, Angola, where his mother had famously campaigned for landmines to be outlawed during her final African visit in 1997.
Harry and Meghan aimed to “meet as many South Africans as possible and make a difference where they can.” The insider added, “This isn’t a holiday and they don’t want it to look like one.”
GOING ROGUE
Harry felt himself in need of his spiritual homeland, Africa. It was here that the major rupture started that would change the shape of the family forever.
On October 1, 2019, while touring the continent, Harry released the following statement:
As a couple, we believe in media freedom and objective, truthful reporting. We regard it as a cornerstone of democracy and in the current state of the world—on every level—we have never needed responsible media more. Unfortunately, my wife has become one of the latest victims of a British tabloid press that wages campaigns against individuals with no thought to the consequences—a ruthless campaign that has escalated over the past year, throughout her pregnancy and while raising our new-born son. There is a human cost to this relentless propaganda, specifically when it is knowingly false and malicious, and though we have continued to put on a brave face—as so many of you can relate to—I cannot begin to describe how painful it has been. Because in today’s digital age, press fabrications are repurposed as truth across the globe. One day’s coverage is no longer tomorrow’s chip-paper.
Up to now, we have been unable to correct the continual misrepresentations—something that these select media outlets have been aware of and have therefore exploited on a daily and sometimes hourly basis. It is for this reason we are taking legal action, a process that has been many months in the making. The positive coverage of the past week from these same publications exposes the double standards of this specific press pack that has vilified her almost daily for the past nine months; they have been able to create lie after lie at her expense simply because she has not been visible while on maternity leave. She is the same woman she was a year ago on our wedding day, just as she is the same woman you’ve seen on this Africa tour.
For these select media this is a game, and one that we have been unwilling to play from the start. I have been a silent witness to her private suffering for too long. To stand back and do nothing would be contrary to everything we believe in.
This particular legal action hinges on one incident in a long and disturbing pattern of behavior by British tabloid media. The contents of a private letter were published unlawfully in an intentionally destructive manner to manipulate you, the reader, and further the divisive agenda of the media group in question. In addition to their unlawful publication of this private document, they purposely misled you by strategically omitting select paragraphs, specific sentences, and even singular words to mask the lies they had perpetuated for over a year.
There comes a point when the only thing to do is to stand up to this behavior, because it destroys people and destroys lives. Put simply, it is bullying, which scares and silences people. We all know this isn’t acceptable, at any level. We won’t and can’t believe in a world where there is no accountability for this.
Though this action ma
y not be the safe one, it is the right one. Because my deepest fear is history repeating itself. 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.
We thank you, the public, for your continued support. It is hugely appreciated. Although it may not seem like it, we really need it.
The sweet sign-off preceded the news that Harry and Meghan were suing the Mail on Sunday and had also issued legal proceedings against the owners of The Sun and the Daily Mirror.
The global reaction, as well as that within the Palace, was not long in coming. “It just feeds the media machine, and that is the one thing Harry really hates,” said Penny Junor in The Guardian, issuing a warning sign of what was inevitably to come. “In a way it is the very reverse of what he has said he wants for him and his family, namely, privacy.”
The statement was a bombshell.
It was almost unheard for a senior Royal to react to media gossip in such a way. Meghan’s ongoing refusal to deal with that situation had only made a delicate situation incalculably worse and left the door open for seemingly anyone related to the Markles to helpfully fan the flames. The British tabloids were a known quantity—venal, vicious, and unforgiving. Meghan had known this better than most, having absorbed the details of her idol Diana’s death, long before she knew Harry.
Tom Bradby, the former Royal correspondent at the ITV network’s “News At Ten” flagship bulletin, was about the only media correspondent Harry and William trusted. A long-term observer and pal of the pair, he was drawn especially to Harry and now, on the occasion of their trip across the African continent, was commissioned by ITV to make a documentary about the couple’s charity work with their full blessing and cooperation. What Bradby didn’t expect is that rather than focusing on the myriad charity causes and endeavors that had so long been close to Harry’s heart, the documentary became a personal profile of the pair, presenting them as hapless victims in a sea of hostility and strife. While many could legitimately sympathize with the awful headlines Meghan was receiving on an almost daily basis, the documentary sent shockwaves through the establishment and began the process that would lead to the couple exiling themselves from the family and the UK. The British press was furious that Harry and Meghan had legally challenged them—and specifically, the Mail on Sunday, for reprinting Thomas Sr.’s private letter from Meghan, claiming misuse of private information, breach of data protection rights, and infringement of copyright. Tradition dictated the couple should put up and shut up with the press, as it was considered all part of the job. “Never explain, never complain,” as the Royals would tell one another. But that era was over.
Now, in a major documentary, Harry and Meghan ignored all advice and seemingly contradicted their fierce injunctions for privacy by airing their grievances about being globally famous and about having to deal with critical coverage. The move paralleled Diana’s astonishing BBC appearance in 1995, during which she unburdened to the world about her dysfunctional marriage and her husband Charles’s infidelities.
The ITV documentary Harry & Meghan: An African Journey was supposed to focus on the couple’s important causes. Instead, their candid revelations hijacked the show’s narrative and stirred up a hornet’s nest of controversy within and outside of the family.
A doe-eyed Meghan revealed to Bradby that before her marriage, British friends warned her that the UK tabloids would “destroy her life.” “When I first met my now-husband, my friends were really happy because I was so happy,” she recounted. “But my British friends said to me, ‘I’m sure he’s great, but you shouldn’t do it because the British tabloids will destroy your life.’ And I very naively thought—I’m American, we don’t have that there—what are you talking about? That doesn’t make any sense … I didn’t get it. So, it’s been … complicated.”
This was an amazing claim coming from the woman who had already endured press attention ever since her days on Suits and who made regular appearances promoting her lifestyle brand on NBC’s TODAY Show. Furthermore, it again called into question just how much she was willing to admit she knew of the Royals before getting caught up with them—former pal Ninaki Priddy had explicitly stated that Meghan was obsessed with Diana and had Andrew Morton’s bestselling biography of her on her bedroom shelves. Meghan’s professions of surprise at the media attention caused a huge collective gasp of disbelief when the documentary was aired. But more was to come.
“I’ve really tried to adopt this British sensibility of a stiff upper lip,” Meghan said. “I’ve tried, I’ve really tried. [And] I’ve said for a long time to H—that’s what I call him—it’s not enough to just survive something, right? That’s not the point of life. You’ve got to thrive, you’ve got to feel happy.”
At this, the Queen’s phone no doubt started buzzing in alarm. The senior officials at the Palace weren’t alone in decoding Meghan’s words as being a steely ultimatum. The fact she was publicly stating that her life was so unbearable that she was just “surviving” was regarded as a serious and grave insult to the Royals, who had been working nonstop to try and accommodate her continuous behind-the-scenes demands to courtiers and aides and Harry’s blustering support of them. But it was becoming now abundantly clear that despite everything that had been done for the couple to make them happy and content, against all advice, flying in the face of tradition, duty and loyalty—this was a declaration of war.
“Look, any woman—especially when they’re pregnant, you’re really vulnerable, and so that was made really challenging … and then when you have a new-born,” Meghan added in the documentary. “Especially as a woman, it’s really, it’s a lot. So, you add this on top of just trying to be a new mom or trying to be a newlywed. And also thank you for asking because not many people have asked if I’m okay, but it’s a very real thing to be going through behind the scenes.”
The key takeaway was that Meghan was saying she was upset. This was greeted by bafflement at the Palace, especially with her two biggest fans in the family outside Harry, the Queen and Prince Charles, both of whom had made strenuous efforts to welcome Meghan into the family as much as possible.
One senior courtier said: “I know the Prince of Wales has several times reached out to Meghan. They get on and share a love of music. I know he invited her to a preview of an exhibition at the Palace. The Queen has been a source of strength too and invited them both to Balmoral, where family problems are usually aired.” There was further disappointment at Meghan’s comments from the teams that had been working around the clock to come up with suitable roles and challenges for the couple in the future, at great inconvenience to everyone.
But Meghan’s gripes were merely the lead-up to Harry’s sensational, if somewhat less polished, interview.
Here, Bradby sympathetically asked him about his relationship with William being under strain.
“Umm … part, part of this role and part of this job and part of this family being under the pressure that it’s under, inevitably, stuff happens,” Harry said awkwardly, shuffling his feet and looking like he fervently wished he was anywhere else. “But look. We’re brothers, we’ll always be brothers—and we’re certainly on different paths at the moment, but I’ll certainly always be there for him as I know he’ll always be there for me. We don’t see each other as much as we used to because we’re so busy. But I love him dearly and the majority of the stuff is created out of nothing. But as brothers, you have good days, you have bad days.”
No one had expected such a revelation of pain, of hurt and upset. Somehow, in comparison to Meghan’s performance, Harry’s painful shyness and agonizing discomfort at discussing his most personal and intimate familial relationships—which he simply hadn’t been brought up to do under Royal rules and protocol—was heartbreaking to watch.
The news flashed around the world in seconds. Social media was ablaze, with the couple’s fans and d
etractors equally vociferous and impassioned. Within the Palace, tensions were immediately running high.
“The Duke and Duchess have much to offer and could be a formidable asset for the Royal Family,” retorted one royal aide stiffly, the day after the documentary was aired. “But they need to work as a team with the rest of the royal household and, rightly or wrongly, there is a lot of distrust right now.” The aide was seemingly articulating the view of many, which had been previously left diplomatically unsaid within Palace walls, that there was a “startling lack of self-awareness” over problems Meghan and Harry created for themselves—including the row over their private jet use over the summer. One sensed that the ITV documentary was a signal for many in senior positions to finally break, with exasperation, the code of silence around the family and go public.
A source described as being “close” to the Sussexes quickly came forth to defend them, telling CNN that the newlyweds had “single-handedly” modernized the British monarchy. The source then amazingly claimed that the Royal Family “was not doing enough to protect the star couple from negative media attention or to appreciate the value they bring to the 1,000-year-old monarchy.”
Furious Palace staff shot back with an incognito advisor of their own, responding to the CNN claims to the Daily Mail: “[That]’s akin to saying that [Harry and Meghan] are too good for the Royal Family—which is extremely disrespectful to everyone who works for, and on behalf of, the Queen and other senior members of the Royal Family. The truth is that no-one is ‘anti’ Harry and Meghan, and no-one is briefing against them. And it is also just plain wrong to say they have ‘single-handedly modernized the monarchy.’ Modernization is an ongoing process led by the Queen.”