I have no idea why the Daily Mail keeps publishing old stories about Prince Harry and the Duchess of Sussex, but it’s really funny. The Mail keeps cherrypicking previously published Sussex stories specifically from Harry and Meghan’s courtship too. It’s like the Mail is still trying to get to the root of where it all went wrong for them. Recently, the Mail regurgitated the “remember when the Middletons tried to ban Meghan Markle from Pippa’s wedding” story, which I thought was funny and curious. Well, here’s another walk down memory lane – in 2022, that rancid old coot Tom Bower claimed that Meghan told off all of Harry’s bigoted friends at a shooting party. Once again, good for her.
Following Harry’s decision to step down from royal duties in 2020 and move to California with Meghan, he has lost touch with many of his old associates. The prince is now said to be lonely on the other side of the Atlantic, with his best friend now reportedly being his long-time security guard. Prior to Megxit, Harry’s oldest and closest pals were from his days at Eton College. But the friendship circle first got distant after they met Meghan and she ‘reprimanded’ them over jokes they made about transgender people and feminism, according to a book.
Following the episode, the alarmed pals whispered Harry was ‘f***ing nuts’ to be dating the actress who they said acted ‘princessy’, ‘woke’ and had no sense of humour. Shortly after Harry’s relationship with Meghan was revealed in November 2016, the duke invited 16 of his friends to a shooting party at Sandringham. Shooting has been a long-time hobby for the prince and he was looking forward to joking around, bantering and drinking with his closest friends.
With the Queen’s permission, the party descended on the 20,000-acre Norfolk estate, which has some of the finest shooting locations in England, along with their wives and girlfriends. Most of the crowd were old Etonians and were all ‘bonded by common assumptions, principles and loyalties’, according to Tom Bower in his 2022 book Revenge: Meghan, Harry And The War Between The Windsors. The plan was to meet for dinner on Friday night, go out shooting on Saturday, and leave after lunch on Sunday.
Bower writes in the bestselling book: ‘He had not anticipated Meghan’s reaction. Their jokes, involving sexism, feminism and transgender people, ricocheted around the living rooms and dining rooms. Without hesitation, Meghan challenged every guest whose conversation contravened her values.’
Mr Bower, who claims to have heard about the episode from Harry’s friends, wrote: ‘Again and again she reprimanded them about the slightest inappropriate nuance. Nobody was exempt.’ The gang concluded Meghan was a dampener on the party and beyond Harry’s hearing, they questioned her ‘wokery’.
The seasoned biographer, who has previously published works on Richard Branson, Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson, continued: ‘Driving home after Sunday lunch, the texts pinged between the cars: “OMG what about HER?” said one; “Harry must be f—ing nuts.” ‘”She’s a total nightmare” said others. Besotted, Harry was unaware of his friends’ reaction.’
I don’t know if Harry genuinely intended for the shooting party to be yet another “girlfriend test” or if he genuinely wanted Meghan to meet his friends, but I would assume that Harry never intended to put Meghan in a situation where she was seemingly barraged with bigoted, racist, misogynistic and transphobic “jokes.” If any of this really happened – and I believe some version of it did – I’m proud of Meghan. She stood up for herself and what is right. This is part of a larger narrative which is still ongoing in the British media, which is that “woke Harry” is wrong to “change” and “cut off his old friends for Meghan.” When really, he grew up and developed different priorities, and perhaps it wasn’t until he started dating Meghan that he realized that so many of his friends f–king sucked. The larger question, for me, is: why does the Mail keep reminding everyone of all these old stories?
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.