Richard Eden’s big, blaring exclusive this week in the Daily Mail was the juicy gossip that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have possibly purchased a second home in Portugal. While I enjoy the real estate adventures of the rich and famous as much as anyone, I failed to see how this news was some big f–king deal to the British press, or why the left-behinds would even care that much. Harry and Meghan have two young children who go to school/nursery school – they might enjoy some vacations in Europe in the years to come, and if that happens, it’s entirely their business and that’s all it will be, family vacays. Wealthy American and her expat husband vacation in sun-soaked Portugal, news at seven. But Eden is trying to do the most with his “exclusive.” Now he’s crying about this: “Why I believe Harry and Meghan’s new Portuguese home means we may NEVER see her in Britain again.” LMAO!!!
When she left Britain in 2020, the Duchess of Sussex welled up during a ‘bittersweet’ farewell to royal staff. My colleague Bryony Gordon, who was with Meghan and Prince Harry that day, said the former actress appeared to be ‘quietly devastated’ and had tears in her eyes at her last private function at Buckingham Palace.
At the time, I wondered if we would ever see Meghan again in this country. Now, it would appear that she has found a way of keeping a foothold in Europe without actually having to set foot in Britain, where she is becoming increasingly disliked with every bitter utterance she makes against the Royal Family.
As I revealed in today’s Daily Mail, the Duke and Duchess have bought a property on the coast in Portugal. The purchase may have allowed the couple to acquire a so-called Golden Visa, under which they would have visa-free access to the European Union’s Schengen area.
This could have been a major attraction to Meghan, who is a US citizen, where the property is concerned. When the couple got engaged in November 2017, Kensington Palace said Meghan would apply for British citizenship in due course, with a spokesman confirming that ‘she will go through the process [which] takes a number of years’. However, she eventually abandoned her bid to become a British citizen after she and her husband left the country in March 2020, less than two years after their wedding.
Acquiring a Golden Visa would help Meghan as she and her husband develop their plans to become the ‘rival royals’ across the water, enabling them to travel easily through European countries. We have already seen them undertake ‘quasi royal’ tours of Nigeria and Colombia, with more overseas trips planned. And it may be that Harry’s cousin Princess Eugenie and her husband, Jack Brooksbank, who also own a Portuguese property, join their rival-royal court. The Brooksbanks live in the CostaTerra Golf and Ocean Club, a luxury development of 300 properties by the sea in Melides, south of the Portuguese capital, Lisbon.
Eden is desperately trying to set up this narrative (please follow along as I translate royalist fan-fic to American English): Meghan was incredibly sad to be forced out of the UK against her will and she’s been desperate to come back to the UK for years, but she’s so deeply unpopular in the UK, so she’s decided to punish all of Britain by buying a home in Portugal and setting up a rival court and forcing the British media to cover her every move, moves which include weekly tantrums about the Windsors. End translation. It never occurred to Eden that Meghan and Harry are perhaps just… supporting Eugenie and Jack, and want to have a place close to Harry’s beloved cousin. That perhaps none of this is about royal and political machinations or the British establishment’s desperation to control the Sussexes?
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Instar, Backgrid.