Meghan and Harry

by Lady Colin Cambell

  What caused further offence in Britain was Harry and Meghan linking the Cambridges’ trademarking of their brand with the Sussexes’. By bringing in the Cambridges, the statement revealed how adept the Sussex public relations machine was at muddying the waters in their favour and to the detriment of others. Once more, the trans-Atlantic difference could not have been more pronounced. In the US, people did not even notice the importance of the point being made, largely, of course, because the British Royal Family is not their own institution but merely a source of glamour, admiration, interest, or indifference, depending on the perspective of the reader. In Britain, however, the swipe was noticeable, notwithstanding there being no justifiable parallels between the situations of the Sussexes and the Cambridges. There has never been any concern at the palace about the Cambridges indulging in commercial activity that might result in negative consequences for the monarchy, nor has that couple ever baulked at revealing their commercial intentions to the powers-that-be. The same was not true of the Sussexes. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s commercial plans had been a bone of huge contention at Buckingham Palace for the past year. They wanted the licence to do as they pleased, without reference to the palace. No oversight, consultation, and certainly no recrimination such as occurred when the palace discovered that they had struck a deal with Disney and she had taped the voiceover from Elephants Without Borders in autumn 2019.

  At the time of writing, the harbingers are that Meghan and Harry have set themselves up to be cooperating royalty to American liberal billionaires, with each party promoting the other’s philanthropic ventures and garnering the rewards of their humanitarian enterprises. How seriously Meghan and Harry as a double act will be taken in the years to come depends on many variables. These include the following they amass, the mutually advantageous links they forge with financial institutions and people like Bill and Melinda Gates and Oprah Winfrey, even whether there is or isn’t much news that day, causing their latest posting to achieve greater or lesser attention. I do not foresee them retiring from public view any time soon, because Meghan and Harry both understand that fame is a commodity with a price tag, and the coinage isn’t only money but also glory and the ability to use their profiles to further their causes.

  As regards fame and fortune in America, Meghan is right. America is not the United Kingdom. Its values are in some ways entirely different from ours, and what works there does not work here, and vice versa. My good fortune is to have been partly educated in the United States and to have lived in New York until my mid-twenties. I have friends and family there, and visit often. I can therefore see both sides of the coin. The British press might wish to delude itself into believing that Meghan and Harry will wither on the vine and die without their attentions, but nothing could be further from the truth. Even as a busted royal flush, Meghan and Harry, or Meghan on her own, will continue to have appeal. Maybe not as much as they would have had, had they retained their rank, or, should they be divorced, had she remained his wife, though that might change depending on which billionaire she marries afterwards.

  There will always be institutions who want what are billed as first tier speakers or celebrities, even though they are no longer of the first rank except in PR circles. In the commercial world, there are also companies which will pay good money for celebrities like the Sussexes to assist them in marketing their wares, upping their profile, or enhancing their prestige. That too will remain a potential source of revenue. Meghan and Harry’s aptitude for publicity, together with her stated desire to be the most famous woman in the world, will doubtless continue to coalesce with her ambition to end up having the world’s largest Instagram following. One will feed the other, while she uses her entrepreneurial skills to exploit both for her maximum financial and reputational benefit. I for one will be very surprised if we don’t see a lot more of the Meghan show, with or without Harry, in the future. She is an operator of the highest order, and I fully expect her to do all she can to operate at the highest level, for as long as she can, and for all the rewards she can obtain for Harry and herself. All of this will be done while she and Harry espouse humanitarian causes in rhetoric that will appeal to those of their political bias. Critics will be dismissed as racists, anti-feminists, and everything else that can be thrown at them by her team as well as by her and Harry’s supporters. The one thing that these people will never acknowledge is the possibility that others might simply not like Meghan because they aren’t convinced by her.

  As for Harry, I doubt that he will persist in sharing his suffering with the world except as and when it engenders the response they both require. He will doubtless come up with other strings to his bow as he sings for his supper and plays a tune that his and Meghan’s admirers want to hear. You can only share your grief so often before it becomes a bore. Moreover, Harry’s grief accounts for only a part of his mental health issues, as one royal told me. ‘Harry blames his mother’s death for things that have nothing to do with it. He’s not overly bright and the fact is, Diana messed him up from the word go by spoiling him rotten. She refused to acknowledge his place in the scheme of things, just as she refused to acknowledge her own. Many of his underlying problems have been due to this lack of boundaries. He’s never going to be healthy until he faces the facts. Personally, I don’t think he has the brainpower (to do so).’ There is, of course, another way of looking at Diana’s legacy. By encouraging Harry to believe that he, as a human being, was special, she released him from the bondage of his position and enabled him to function outside of the royal world. It took Meghan’s influence to show him how he could establish his own platform outside of the royal box, but he has been empowered by his mother as well as by his wife, and will make his mark in the world in a way he could never have done without their input.

  The turn Harry has taken under Meghan’s influence is instructive. Prior to meeting her and becoming so empowered under her ministrations that he now feels that they are such potent forces that they can change the world, he used to have a degree of self-doubt born of the awareness that he was not a genius. Thanks to her confidence in herself and her encouragement that he shouldn’t let himself be ‘limited’ by all the ‘crap he was brought up to believe in’, he seems to have shed these inhibitions and now accepts her premise that they are both a lot brighter than the jeremiads who preach caution and the value of boundaries. They believe that the only thing they have to fear is fear itself, and since each of them is fearless in his and her own way, together they make a fearsome combination.

  The boundlessness that Harry and Meghan share must be very exciting. It must also make for some amazing prospects for them to consider. Meghan’s boundlessness, unlike Harry’s, was inculcated from an early age. She was brought up to believe, especially by her father, that she is a force to be reckoned with and that she has an entitlement born, not of rank or privilege or even talent or achievement, but of her right to ‘have a voice’ by virtue of being herself. Patently, she knows her strengths, most of which are allied to determination rather than education or even information. Undeniably, her strengths are considerable. Critics such as Gina Nelthorpe-Cowne suggest that she might have so overused them that they are morphing into weaknesses. Meghan has given free rein to her desire to rule, to control, to call the shots, to achieve without the consent of others when they stand in her way or do not agree with her, as she has demonstrated time and again since she married Harry and decided to take on the royal establishment and beat them at their own game. She is firmly convinced that her way is the best way, that she is entitled to what she wants for no other reason than that she has a right to it as a result of being the individual she is, and that those who stand in her way should not be allowed to prevail. This suggests a woman who is fully empowered, who is a formidable ally as well as opponent, who should not be underestimated. Her critics say that she teeters on the brink of megalomania, that she has encouraged Harry to become more potent than is healthy for him, that he lacks her control or intellectual pr
owess and will therefore be more at risk than she ever will be. Potent though their strengths may be, they have aimed too high to be in a healthy place.

  Meghan and Harry, however, espouse values and support positions which are popular with large swathes of people, and, as long as they continue to do so, and as long as she remains as measured and considered as she is, and as long as she persists in being the driving force in the relationship, the likelihood is that they will play the fame game successfully. Of course, this could change if she should enter politics, for there are huge differences between the fame and the political games, chief of which is that the former is mostly about front-of-house presentation, while the latter is frequently about what goes on behind-the-scenes.

  Meghan’s story is instructive in how powerful supreme self-confidence can be. It might get you a place at the top table, but if it then creates such odium that you clear the room, as has happened in Britain, you’re hardly in a beneficial position. Meghan’s limitless self-confidence has so far resulted in relative wealth, approbation, and the recognition that she used to confess on her blogs that she hungered for. The royal setting was too small and restrictive for her. While her detractors might conclude that she is like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard, the reality is, she saw that the setting of being a royal highness, a royal duchess, and a senior member of the most important royal family on earth, were simply too small for her ambitions and needs. As Harry himself has said, ‘She’s not changed. She’s the same woman I met and married.’ She saw the opportunity to create a new platform, one which would allow her the use of her voice, one that she could shape to her own requirements that would bring her the wealth, power, recognition, approbation and approval she yearned for. By achieving all of this, she will have shown everyone, both admirers and critics, that she is indeed an extraordinary, possibly even a unique, individual, and love her or loathe her, no one will ever be able to dismiss her again the way people used to when she was a lowly supplicant in Hollywood trying to make it.

  The reality is that Meghan’s needs and ambitions were simply incompatible with being a member of the Royal Family. But she was canny, and while she might have handled her exit in such a way that she has earned the contumely of the British people, she has nevertheless accomplished it in such a manner that she has set herself and Harry up successfully where matters to her: America. The way she did it says much about her. She understood the need for a good excuse. Like Diana Wales, who understood that she would lose supporters and her privileges if she admitted that she wanted her freedom, so blamed Charles for the collapse of her marriage when in fact she was more to blame than he was, Meghan had to come up with a better reason for leaving a situation most people would give an arm and a leg for. Rather than admitting, ‘I want the admiration of people, not criticism, and I also want to make hundreds of millions of dollars, billions if I can, and the palace is preventing me from doing it,’ she started saying that the royal way of life was ‘crushing my soul’ as well as ‘Harry’s’ and that she needed to get them out ‘for our mental health.’ In a few short sentences, Meghan had turned her desire to swap the limited and restraining royal platform for one which would give her the freedom of movement she required as well as the ability to control it, into a matter of life and death, with her and Harry at risk of a lifetime of mental illness.

  Not everyone in Britain was blind to how astute Meghan was at spinning things in their favour. One courtier who admires what he calls her ‘unblinking sang froid’ said, ‘You wouldn’t’ve been able to blast her out of here with an atomic bomb if she’d been given free rein to make all the money she wants to.’ What Meghan wanted was the freedom to exploit herself and Harry to the maximum commercial advantage, while remaining a working member of the Royal Family. Even so, she would still have sought to create an American platform, not only because there she wanted to gain the approbation she needed but because she would be able to control the narrative more successfully with a tame American press rather than an uncontrollable British one.

  At the palace there was genuine shock that Meghan would ‘stoop to using mental health as the cover for what is essentially greed and self-indulgence,’ as one courtier said. ‘Only spoilt brats think that their mental health is affected if they don’t get everything they want in life. Mature people cope with frustration and frustration is something that everyone has to cope with. You only have good mental health if you can cope with it positively. If you can’t, it means you’re a spoilt brat who needs to grow up.’ While her blogs indicate that she always had a propensity for believing that the frustration of not achieving her ambitions would affect her mental health, the palace misunderstood her attitude and believed that she was only exploiting it cynically, having become involved with Harry and discovering that he, William and Catherine already had such an interest in the topic that they had created the Heads Together movement in 2016.

  In the mental health sector, there is a general awareness that you can remain mentally healthy even as life deals you a bad hand and you have to tailor your ambitions to reality, but there are times when life so overwhelms you that you need help. Mental health is not the same as facile happiness. It is coping well with what is happening even when things are not so good, or maybe when they’re so good that they disrupt your equilibrium. William and Harry were well known in Court circles to have had their own mental health issues resulting not only from Diana’s death, but from the emotional turbulence of their early life. They were the typical children of divorce, and this gave them an insight into how misery affects mental health. Catherine, on the other hand, was from a happy family, but her brother James Middleton had suffered from depression, demonstrating that a happy family background does not guarantee good mental health.

  By alighting upon mental health, Meghan and Harry were placing themselves in an unarguable position whereby their desire to ‘stand on their own two feet’ and achieve ‘financial independence’ could be explained away as a ‘mental health’ issue. This had a powerful appeal to the younger generation, as well as to the Americans who were their ultimate target group. It also showed the palace what clever operators they were in spinning their ambitions into something with which their target audience could sympathise.

  According to one of Harry’s friends, ‘Meghan thrives only when she’s able to do as she pleases. He used to thrive mostly when placed in a secure structure with clear boundaries and clarified expectations, like the Army.’ According to his friend, ‘Harry did not necessarily have to be doing only what he liked to be in a good space.’ He was happy to share his part of any load with colleagues, even when the tasks were not pleasant. As long as they were necessary, and made sense in the relevant context, he was ‘up for it’. Meghan is not similarly self-sacrificing. What she likes, she likes; what she doesn’t, she wants no part of. She no longer sees any merit in changing herself to accommodate any system; the system must change itself to accommodate her. Say what you will about her, it takes gumption, courage, and ability to marry a royal prince, become a royal duchess, decide the lifestyle doesn’t suit you, and manage to do what no other royal wife has ever done before, namely convince him that there is a viable and even more attractive alternative which will give you everything you want. That is demonstrably self-actualisation in its frankest form, a paean to the efficacy of empowerment and determination. Although Harry has gone along with it all, the fact is, it’s Meghan’s creation, and she deserves the credit.

  Well, they’ve left. Meghan and Harry have got their way. They’ve freed themselves of a system that they regarded as limiting their possibilities and have replaced it with one of their own making. She instructed her friends to announce to the world via People magazine that she was happy that they’d left Britain, that they were excited about their prospects for the future. They’re now in California, laying the foundations for the lifestyle they wanted - Californian, A-List, luminous in a contemporary way. Despite their stated desire for privacy, they have moved to a place where the
paparazzi will have access to them in a way it never would have had in Britain or Canada. The truth is, both Harry and Meghan want ever-increasing fame; they simply want it on their terms. They want the Hollywood version, not the British, royal one. They do not want to do what the other royals do, which is get out of their beds at six thirty in the morning to get dressed so that they are ready for an 8am helicopter ride to the Midlands of England, where they will meet a group of workers, cut a ribbon or two, meet groups of school children before unveiling a plaque prior to having lunch with the Mayor and local worthies, after which they will continue with a series of unglamorous meetings and interactions for the remainder of the afternoon, before returning home for a quick change and an equally dull but worthy evening engagement. They have freed themselves to have what they have announced is an ordinary life, though ordinary is strictly relative, for it is the ordinariness of the hyper-privileged. They say they like going for long walks, doing yoga together, playing a lot with Archie, and cooking. They like a lot of downtime so that they can focus on themselves and Archie, whom they want to bring up to be an ‘ordinary’ person. This is plainly a simpler life, with fewer demands and more focus on themselves than would have been possible had they remained as working royals. But it’s doubtless only a part of the picture, for Meghan is a powerhouse who intends to make a great fortune and has not given up on her other great ambitions, including outstripping Diana, being the most famous woman in the world, with the largest Instagram following, and maybe down the line even becoming President of the United States of America. Much time is therefore spent in what her detractors might view as plotting and scheming, though her admirers will understand that it is the creative and resourceful strategizing of a truly extraordinary individual.