Royal biographer Robert Hardman has written a new book about Queen Elizabeth II, and like all of the royal biographies in the past seven or eight years, despite whichever royal is on the cover, the actual books are about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. One of my favorite things is when some snooty courtier or deluded royalist claims that “everyone is over Harry and Meghan, no one even thinks about them!” Then why is every single royal biography full of endless Sussex stories? It’s almost as if the Sussexit completely broke the monarchy and they’ve spent six-plus years trying to justify or reimagine the way they treated Harry and Meghan. Well, I’ll give Robert Hardman a teensy bit of credit – at least he doesn’t make QEII sound like a crotchety old bigot who hated Meghan on sight for ~reasons~ which everyone knows but no one will say. Hardman acknowledges that QEII sort of liked Meghan and gave her a chance. Then all of the reimagining starts happening:
The 2018 train ride with Meghan: The monarch was also keen for Meghan to learn the royal ropes (despite subsequent complaints from the Sussex camp that the Duchess was offered little training). The Queen invited her to leave Harry behind and join her, one-on-one, for an overnight trip to Cheshire in the royal train. ‘The Queen was really wanting to give it a go,’ an insider recalled. ‘She was so sweet, she had brought Meghan a present and tried so hard. The train always left at 11 o’clock at night and the Queen was on the platform to welcome her. They had breakfast together in the morning and she was always trying to do small things, to show her the ropes and bring her in.’
The autumn of 2018: The Sussexes’ first official overseas trip together would be a Commonwealth tour, an extensive journey across the Pacific. It began with a happy surprise. The Duchess was expecting a baby. She made it clear that the tour would proceed as planned. And so it did. Back at home, work was under way to help Meghan build a portfolio of patronages with meaning. The Queen was keen on two in particular. After 45 years as patron of the National Theatre, she wanted to hand it on to Meghan, given her acting credentials. It was even suggested that the Duchess might have the occasional walk-on part in stage productions (a sweet idea, though one possibly unlikely to appeal to a former television star).
QEII wanted Meghan’s labor: Another important gift from the Queen was the Association of Commonwealth Universities. ‘It would allow Meghan a platform to give speeches with substance around the world. She could talk about, say, women’s rights in Africa but without being political,’ explained a Palace aide. ‘The Queen knew it was time to hand these on and was really excited for Meghan. The Sussexes were in a good place.’
Resentments: Within Kensington Palace, relations soon started to cool between the Cambridges and the Sussexes. Despite wildly over-optimistic talk of a new royal ‘dream team’ or, even more fancifully, a ‘Fab Four’, resentments were growing. The Sussexes, like any exciting new prospect, were attracting the bulk of the media attention and invitations at this stage. Yet, they had a smaller staff, a smaller budget and a very much smaller house. In March 2019 it was announced that the brothers would be splitting their offices. The Cambridges would keep their headquarters at Kensington Palace while Harry and Meghan would move their home to Frogmore Cottage on the Windsor estate and look for a new office at Buckingham Palace.
Splitting offices: Once there was a change of monarch, William would become Prince of Wales and inherit the Duchy of Cornwall. Harry, who would still be dependent on his father, would then have to swap cost centres and become part of the King’s operation. Hence the need to move the Sussexes to Royal HQ at some point. Why not now, while the Palace was undergoing major restoration work? The problem, say insiders, was the way it was handled. ‘They were dealing with two brothers but they treated it like a corporate split, with Harry being farmed off to a new sales division,’ was the impression of one Palace veteran.
Archie’s birth: The couple’s dislike and distrust of the media was such that, on May 6, 2019, when the Duchess gave birth to a healthy baby boy, Archie, both were back home even as the media received a bulletin saying that she had gone into hospital. The Palace was then accused of lying, and not only by the Press. The Metropolitan Police had gone to considerable trouble to create a strategy for crowd control around the hospital. ‘People from the Met were calling up the Palace and asking why we had lied – which we hadn’t,’ said one royal staffer caught in the middle. ‘The Sussexes just hadn’t told anyone. I think it was one area where no one could tell Meghan what to do. It was a case of “I’m going to show you who’s boss”.’
Harry & Meghan’s exit announcement: They were certainly not expecting the Palace to move as swiftly and firmly as it did, with an almost immediate response from ‘Royal Communications’. It stated baldly that these were ‘complicated issues’ and would ‘take time to work through’. In fact, they would not take much time at all.
What an admission: What the Press instantly branded as ‘Megxit’ had a different name within the Palace. The family talked about ‘UDI’, a reference to the Rhodesian crisis of the mid-Sixties when the minority white government there issued its ‘unilateral declaration of independence’ from Britain. That had not ended well.
Meghan wasn’t allowed to call in from Sandringham: Meghan had already returned to Canada when the Queen invited Harry to Sandringham for a family meeting a few days later. There would be no conference call dial-in from Canada either. No one could be sure who else might be listening in. Those on the Palace side look back with some sympathy. ‘That so-called “Sandringham Summit” was quite brutal,’ said one of those present. ‘But the Queen was absolutely solid from the start: No half-in, half-out.’ Grudgingly, the couple chose out.
They can never keep their stories straight about so many major plot points, it’s pretty crazy. Why did QEII only agree to meet with Harry when Meghan left the country? Why wasn’t Meghan allowed to call into the summit again? Why did the Sussexes feel the need to release their exit announcement in the first place, and was it because Kensington Palace leaked their plan to Dan Wootton? Why are they still blaming Meghan for the birth announcement mess when Harry wrote about it in Spare, saying that he used that moment to show HIS disgust at the press? Why are they still doing spin on why QEII and Charles tried to shuffle the Sussexes off to a dusty closet in BP? Why were they so insistent on “letting” Meghan continue acting while endlessly complaining about “the actress”? And the UDI stuff is completely f–king bonkers and it only adds to the colonialist catastrophe of the monarchy.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images, Backgrid.
