by Omid Scobie
Following Meghan’s thirty-eighth birthday on August 4, the family of three set out from London to the Spanish island of Ibiza, where they stayed at an upscale gated complex. From Ibiza they flew in Elton John’s private jet to the singer’s house in Nice. The singer had invited them to stay for a while.
A firestorm erupted over the so-called hypocrisy of the prince, seemingly touting the virtues of conservation while flying on gas-guzzling private jets. Not to mention the fact that the Sussexes had decided against a trip to visit the Queen at Balmoral with Archie earlier in the summer, reportedly saying the infant was too young for the travel. Some of the press latched on to this, calling it a snub instead.
Elton John immediately came to the couple’s defense, stating that he had paid for the jet trip and its carbon offsetting (a practice that allows passengers to invest in projects like solar panels and sustainable forests, which would reduce the same amount of carbon dioxide as was released into the air by their private flight).
“I’m calling on the press to cease these relentless and untrue assassinations on their character that are spuriously crafted on an almost daily basis,” the singer tweeted.
With the controversy reaching its apex just days before the launch of Travalyst, the sustainable-tourism initiative he had been working on for most of the year, Harry regretted not heeding the advice of Sara. She had warned him about a potential media storm if he flew back on a private jet from Google Camp, which he attended to preview Travalyst. The earnest prince was the first one to admit when he made a mistake.
Meanwhile, Buckingham Palace had no comment, which only sought to reinforce Harry and Meghan’s desire to change their working model. At the core of their issues was their inability to speak for themselves. Instead, they had to rely on a large, slow-moving machine that was the institution of the monarchy. For an independent American woman like Meghan, this was especially frustrating, which was why she was so excited about the Instagram account @SussexRoyal that she and Harry had made public earlier that spring.
“Launching the account was a somewhat liberating experience for Meghan,” an aide shared. “Not having a platform of her own to talk directly to the public was one of the toughest changes for her, especially after building so much of her own brand on Instagram and her blog. @SussexRoyal meant that she finally had a place to curate.”
The couple began planning the account around the time they announced they were getting their own office under the auspices of Buckingham Palace. Instagram was nothing new to the Palace. William, Kate, and Harry had established @KensingtonRoyal in 2015. When Meghan married Harry, she began posting to the shared account as well. Even the Queen had shared on the platform, hitting send on her first post (a photo from the British Science Museum’s Royal Archives) in March that year.
For the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, the social media platform was more than a way to reach a new generation of royal watchers.
“People can get the news directly from us,” Meghan said at an early planning meeting with staff, during which several hues were considered before she and Harry picked the perfect shade of blue for their social media branding. In addition to deciding on the photos that always had to have a white border, Meghan drafted a lot of the posts herself in the early days. It was one of the things that kept her occupied during her final days of pregnancy.
The couple’s savvy social media manager, David Watkins, who had moved to the royal household from Burberry, was often spotted at engagements, shooting exclusive content for the couple, who wanted their account to feel informal and approachable. David was recommended by Isabel May, the former director of communications at Burberry and one of Meghan’s close friends in the UK since the two women were introduced by Markus in 2017. Isabel (or just Izzy to friends) was Meghan’s close confidant and also one of Archie’s godmothers, and she made regular visits to Frogmore Cottage. She became one of the few people in the UK who Meghan felt she could trust with “anything.”
As part of the new social media account, Harry and Meghan worked with a Palace aide to put together a slide show of unseen behind-the-scenes photos from their wedding the week before their first anniversary. The couple loved the process of looking back on moments captured on film from a year earlier and even watching video clips of their special day for the first time since it happened.
Instagram quickly become a vital part of the Sussexes’ new media strategy. They beat out the pope to break the Guinness world record for the fastest accumulation of one million followers in twenty-four hours. In fact, within a day, they had 2.1 million. And they kept pace with William and Kate’s account, which remained @KensingtonRoyal.
“It took a little time, but I’m starting to see Meg’s mark on so many things,” a friend said. “Sometimes those posts on the account remind me of her Tig days, and I love that. Her voice is getting louder every day.”
While Harry and Meghan’s Instagram account might have proved a powerful tool for gaining control over the narrative, it was also a place to share some of their favorite moments, like when they met Jay-Z and Beyoncé at the European premiere of The Lion King in London’s Leicester Square on July 14. Having Beyoncé hold Meghan’s hand while saying, “We love you guys,” made the fact that she had to carefully plan their three-hour outing around feeding times totally worth it.
The premiere provided yet another example of information about Harry and Meghan being skewed after the prince was videoed talking to Bob Iger on the red carpet.
He was overheard joking to the then-Disney CEO, “You know she does voiceovers . . .” in reference to Meghan, who had agreed to narrate a Disneynature documentary, Elephant. When the clip surfaced in January 2020, tabloids spun it into an example of the couple “shilling themselves” to a Hollywood executive. In reality, however, Meghan had already signed on to the project that she recorded in the fall of 2019 in return for a donation by Disney to the conservation charity Elephants Without Borders.
Instagram was another way for the couple to highlight their charities and patronages, such as the Diana Awards’ National Youth Mentoring Summit, which Harry addressed on July 2. “Being a role model and mentor can help heal the wounds of your own past and create a better future for someone else,” he said. “On a more personal level, it’s the power to change the course of a life, to be the North Star for a young person having trouble navigating their own path.”
Harry and Meghan enjoyed calling their own shots, which they were now getting the chance to do, to some degree. “Harry and Meghan liked being in control of their narrative,” a source said, which is why agreeing to fold their household into Buckingham Palace, instead of creating their own independent court at Windsor as they wanted, proved a big disappointment to them.
Harry, who wanted to do so much in the world, was growing frustrated that he and Meghan often took a backseat to other family members’ initiatives and priorities. While they both respected the hierarchy of the institution, it was difficult when they wanted to focus on a particular project and were told that a more senior ranking family member, be it Prince William or Prince Charles, had an initiative or tour being announced at the same time—so they would just have to wait.
As their popularity continued to grow, so did Harry and Meghan’s difficulty in understanding why so few were looking out for their interests inside the Palace. They were a major draw for the royal family. According to a New York Times article that compared the online popularity of the Sussexes to the Cambridges from November 2017 to January 2020, “Harry-and-Meghan-related searches accounted for 83 percent of the world’s curiosity in the two couples.”
The couple tried to air these frustrations internally, but the conversations not only didn’t lead anywhere, the details of them would usually leak to one of the British newspapers. At this point there were just a handful of people working at the Palace they could trust, including Sara, communications aide James Holt, communications secretary Marnie Gaffney (who was made a member of the Royal Victorian O
rder by the Queen, an honor recognizing personal service to the monarch or members of the royal family, during a June 2019 investiture), and their top aide, private secretary Samantha Cohen. Outside this core team, no information was safe. A friend of the couple’s referred to the old guard as “the vipers.” Meanwhile, an equally frustrated Palace staffer described the Sussexes’ team as “the squeaky third wheel” of the palace.
That was their dysfunctional backdrop when in late September Harry, Meghan, and twenty-week-old Archie flew to Cape Town, South Africa, to begin a four-country royal tour of southern Africa.
Arriving at the start of their tour in Cape Town’s Nyanga township, Harry and Meghan received a lively welcome from local performers and youth who had gathered to chat, dance, and exchange hugs. The atmosphere was a far cry from the negative stories that dogged the couple on a near-daily basis during the summer.
There was no airport arrival complete with red carpet as is usually seen on official royal visits. The ten-day tour was more familiar and casual. In a decision the Sussexes made together, Meghan—who brought a wardrobe of simple pieces she picked for comfort or had worn at previous royal engagements—left her engagement ring back in the UK. Their goal was not to impress people with their royal lifestyle but to connect to locals on a real level.
“May I just say that while I am here with my husband as a member of the royal family,” Meghan said in her address to the Nyanga township, “I want you to know that for me, I am here with you as a mother, as a wife, as a woman, as a woman of color, and as your sister.”
The tour was also an opportunity for the world to see Archie for the first time since his christening on July 6 in the Queen’s private chapel in Windsor Castle. At the ceremony—attended by 22 guests, including the Cambridges, Charles and Camilla, Doria, Princess Diana’s sisters, Archie’s godparents, and a few friends like Genevieve and Lindsay—Archie wore the same christening gown donned by George, Charlotte, and Louis at their baptisms. The Honiton lace gown is a replica of a dress that Queen Victoria commissioned for her firstborn child, which was worn by 62 royal babies—including five monarchs—over 163 years. Archie’s christening had been kept a completely private affair, which angered some of the media who were used to receiving access to the guest arrivals. Days of commentary were dedicated to fact that Archie’s baptism “broke tradition” and went against an unspoken deal that the royal family have with the tax-paying public who part-fund the Monarchy. “We have a public right to see Archie,” a morning television pundit argued. Not that Meghan cared. “The same people who have been abusing me want me to serve my child on a silver platter,” she told a friend. “A child who is not going to be protected and doesn’t have a title. How does that make sense? Tell that to any mother in the world.”
Similarly, the couple kept the 380 members of the press covering the tour in Africa away from their intimate meeting with Archbishop Desmond Tutu, instead opting to take their own picture that they released. At almost five months old, Archie (or “Bubba” and “Arch,” as his parents like to call him) gurgled and giggled to the delight of the Anglican cleric.
For Archie’s sake, Meghan based herself in South Africa with two aides for the duration of the tour, leaving Harry to travel to Malawi, Angola, and Botswana solo. In Angola, Harry shone a spotlight on landmine clearance, continuing the work his mother began in 1997 (when she famously walked through an Angolan minefield cleared by the Halo Trust to highlight the plight of local people seriously injured by military IEDs). Diana’s work had impact—a year after her death, an international treaty was signed to ban all IEDs, and in 2013, Harry vowed that he would continue her lifelong mission.
Meghan’s work schedule revolved around feeding and nap times. “It’s a handful, but every moment is so precious,” Meghan told a friend. Earlier in the summer, Archie started take baby swimming classes (after his parents anxiously looked up videos on YouTube about how babies hold their breath under water). During the trip, he continued to achieve new milestones, including mimicking the sound of a animals during their stay at the high commissioner’s residence in Cape Town.
After traveling over five thousand miles in five days (the longest he had ever been apart from Archie), Harry rejoined his wife and son. While he shared a few remarks to cameras throughout the trip, the prince kept most of the traveling press pack at arm’s length. Though he was pleased that the coverage of the tour had been positive, he also struggled to stay upbeat around representitives of publications he felt had spent much of the past two-and-a-half years writing negative, and sometimes false, stories about his wife and family. For nine out the ten days of the tour, Harry kept his feelings to himself. But the truth came out on October 2, when he dropped a bombshell statement that few had known was coming.
22
Half In, Half Out
At 7:13 p.m. on October 2, with just two days left of what was unanimously considered a highly successful tour of southern Africa by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, a message from their communications team dropped on the #SussexRoyalAfrica WhatsApp chat group. The text chain had been created for aides to update around twenty-five accredited reporters on the trip with logistical information such as bus times and flight itineraries.
“Evening all, for your information,” read the vague message that contained a link to a website, sussexofficial.uk, which no members of the media, whose job it was to follow the royals, had ever seen—because it was created for that very moment: an open letter from Harry accompanied by a legal case filed against the Mail on Sunday.
“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 newborn son,” the letter read.
“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” (a reference to the fact that in the UK, fish and chips used to be served in newspaper).
“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 battle was on.
The attached lawsuit brought by Meghan was for invasion of privacy, breach of data protection, and copyright infringement claims against the Mail on Sunday for printing extracts from the private letter she wrote to her father in August 2018.
Although Harry didn’t announce them with the news of Meghan’s lawsuit, he had also filed lawsuits at the same time against The Sun and The Mirror regarding their alleged illegal interception of his voicemail messages between 2001 and 2005. Though the royals traditionally used lawyers at Harbottle & Lewis, Harry and Meghan wanted to keep their legal proceedings separate—and away from prying eyes within Buckingham Palace, where they had been advised not to take legal action—so they enlisted Clintons for him and Schillings, the UK’s leading law firm in defamation and media-related cases, for her.
The duchess’s lawyers (who included barrister David Sherborne, who once represented Princess Diana) were prepared, setting out an extensive list of “false” and “absurd” stories to highlight a pattern of mistruths. There were plenty of articles that offered inaccurate details about their Frogmore renovations, including the addition of a tennis court and yoga studio, £500,000 spent on soundproofing their home, and another £5,000 for a copper bath. In the court papers, her lawyers also addressed a feature that attacked Meghan for enjoying avocados: “The connection made between the fact that the Claiman
t likes eating avocado and made avocado on toast for a friend who visited her with human rights abuses, murder, and environmental devastation is another highly tenuous and deliberately inflammatory one.”
Royals filing lawsuits against publishers was nothing new. In 1849, Prince Albert established the “law of confidence” with a lawsuit against a British printer who had made bootleg copies of etchings he created with Queen Victoria. Princess Diana used that precedent against the Sunday Mirror in 1993 for publishing photographs of her working out in a gym in leotard and leggings, winning approximately £1.5 million. Even the Queen has sued. She went after The Sun for publishing a leaked copy of her 1992 Christmas broadcast speech.
Harry and Meghan’s lawsuits were different from anything in Palace history. Or at least how they went about the process. An announcement of this sort was usually issued in formal correspondence on Palace email and then hosted on royal.uk, the official royal family website—such as when William sued a French tabloid magazine Closer for publishing topless photos of Kate in 2012. But this new move wasn’t supported by many at the Firm, and the couple was left to take matters into the their own hands. None of the press in Africa were expecting to receive major breaking news in a WhatsApp message.
The media was also perplexed about the timing of the statement considering how well the tour had gone. But there was a reason for the awkwardly timed announcement.
Changes to procedures at London’s High Court starting on October 1 would have meant their cases would have been heard in a division with judges who tended to side with publishers. Sources confirmed that Harry and Meghan’s lawyers rushed the lawsuits out at the end of September in an effort to keep the case before a more privacy-friendly Division. “Both were incredibly nervous,” a source said. “They needed to go in strong.”