Now that Harry and Meghan have squandered all that good will, soured public opinion in both Britain and America, and contributed little to either society beyond a string of self-serving multimedia embarrassments and tedious court cases, it is hard to believe that we ever sincerely thought they could rebrand the monarchy.
But once upon a time, there was a handsome prince who met a beautiful Hollywood star and even republicans like me who had little interest in the Royal Family watched the fairytale wedding and found ourselves softening, imagining there was something exciting and hopeful about this modern, transatlantic, interracial couple committed to feminism, humanitarian causes and equality. Could they, as The Crown rehashed several decades of scandal on Netflix, make the Royal Family relevant? Could they make it cool?
Unfortunately, as it transpired there was little “modern” about their understanding of the monarchy. In fact they appear to have expected it to operate as it did several centuries ago: an absolutism in which its members are entitled to do whatever they want, treat or discard others with total impunity, be waited upon by staff who will unquestionably submit to whatever they ask and still expect to be embraced by an adoring public. That’s not how it works. You can’t exploit royal titles to your own gain. So they left.
The years since “Megxit” in 2020 are recounted in Tom Bower’s merciless new biography Betrayal, which follows 2022’s bestselling Revenge. It charts Harry and Meghan as they establish a new life in Montecito California and attempt to posit themselves as earnest, hard-grafting entrepreneurs. The Netflix deal, the Spotify deal, their Archewell production company, the Sentebale charity scandal, the publication of Harry’s salacious memoir Spare, the lengthy High Court privacy trials, the ruinous destruction of Harry’s relationship with his father and brother amid the deaths of Prince Philip and the Queen and Charles and Kate’s respective cancer treatment, and the ever-mounting body count of allegedly mistreated staff… It is the period during which the Markle Sparkle dimmed, and sympathy for the pair began to evaporate.
The Sussexes during their interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2021 (Photo: Joe Pugliese/Harpo)The 79-year-old Bower is famous for his scathing hit jobs on the powerful and wealthy and contempt for his subjects reeks from the 400-plus pages here: to him, they are whiny, complaining hypocrites who can’t get their story straight. It is clear the author has disdain for American sensibilities (there’s a snarl to his mentions of “the Californian”, and justified mocking of phrases like “my truth”, “intentionality”) and dismisses Harry’s openness about his mental health struggles and even Meghan’s comments about feeling suicidal or the racism she has experienced. No matter their treatment by Buckingham Palace or the press, he obviously believes – wrongly in my opinion – that both ought to have bitten their tongues.
There is limited empathy for the trauma of Harry’s life, acknowledgement of the real challenges of joining a rigid and bizarre thousand-year-old institution, or criticism of any other members of the royal family (except, hastily toward the end, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor). His book is forensic, damning, regularly juicy and, for many long stretches about Harry’s court case against various newspaper groups, quite boring. Once filleted for gossip about collapsing publicists, Meghan’s demand for a coat of arms representing a songbird with its tongue cut out, it’s one for the “Sussexologists”.
But his accusations about the insincerity and deluded exceptionalism of the mercenary couple are hard to argue with. His unforgiving portrait of two of the most divisive people on the planet doesn’t just make the notion that they could rebrand the monarchy look ludicrous, but also the notion that they could destroy it.
This pair, with their inconsistent storytelling, their relentless complaining, their laughable television output, their dysfunctional charities, their media faux pas, their petty swipes at their families (one unedifying anecdote has Meghan announcing Archie’s loose tooth on the day after Kate published a photo of Louis missing teeth)? Topple the monarchy? They can’t even stick to a brand name without ending up in a legal dispute.
Harry and Meghan fancy themselves world leaders – but they had a lot more power within the monarchy (Photo: World Health Organization/AP)She is suffering an identity crisis – unable to decide if she is a female founder, a princess, a regular American mom, a duchess, an LA latchkey kid, an outspoken free-speech advocate, a reclusive, private homemaker, switching between them whenever it suits her. He, as we have long known, is suffering a purpose crisis. Without the clear destiny of his brother, he has clutched at military, charity and family in hopes that one of them would give him direction, and perhaps all of them could have, had he committed to them with some conviction and good advice.
Instead, he appears to have absorbed an American way of thinking in which leveraging personal profit should be part of everything he does. Bower paints a picture of a man growing even more entrenched in resentment and isolation, no longer the spare to his brother but the spare to his wife.
It seems absurd to point out Harry and Meghan’s “entitlement”, and they have at least had the boldness to criticise an unfair and unjustifiable system like the monarchy, that runs on entitlement alone.
But their behaviour exposes the nuances of our complex feelings about this system and how it continues to exist. I thought it was pretty spicy when they ceased to be working royals and left – respected their shocking protest, that railed against centuries of archaic rules and injustices.
Now I consider it to be a pathetic and petulant move from two people who expected all the privileges of a prince and princess but did not want to contribute, as other members of the family do, to appearances and tours and duty and “showing up”, if they did not stand to make any profit of their own or agree to be benevolent ambassadors for the country. That is the deal, and why the monarchy is tolerated. It’s a Faustian bargain but if you want state-funded police protection, if you want to sign off letters “HRH”, if you want to demand that everything you do is in the “public interest” or expect any other special treatment that the rest of us plebs are not afforded, you earn your keep.
The former “Fab Four” made a rare and brief show of unity after the Queen’s death (Photo: Kirsty O’Connor/WPA Pool/Getty Images)What Harry and Meghan never understood is that they are not “world leaders” by default. Their entire selling point was as charismatic, young, sexy ambassadors for this country, and when they left, so did that “seismic influence” we were promised.
Yes, we are still fascinated by their publicity grabs, there remains a grim voyeurism about their strange lives, and we will always wonder whether he will reunite with his father and brother and come home. But the reality that has been borne out over the past few years is that no matter how many podcasts they launch, no matter how many galas they show up at, no matter how many “royal” tours they make to other countries, people just don’t care very much about “Brand Sussex”. What does it stand for? Jam? Human rights?
It is a shame. Because people really did care before, when they had the power to change “Brand Windsor”, to transform the institution from within and say something new to the rest of the world about modern Britain. When they decided to become plain old celebrities, to trade on their name without a talent, to talk to the rest of the world about nothing except themselves and everyone who has wronged them, it became clear that there was very little remarkable about them at all.
‘Betrayal: Power, Deceit and the Fight for the Future of the Royal Family’ by Tom Bower is published by Bonnier, £25
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