If you love The Daily Beast’s royal coverage, then we hope you’ll enjoy The Royalist, a members-only series for Beast Inside. This is a special edition to mark a day of high drama as Prince Harry and Meghan Markle decided to quit their senior royal roles.
Become a member to get The Royalist in your inbox every Sunday.
“They didn't even tell the Queen”
ADVERTISEMENT
LONDON—The British press reacted to Meghan and Harry’s sudden departure from the royal family’s “senior ranks” like jilted lovers, lashing out after being scorned and abandoned by the royal family’s most box-office couple.
In truth, the relationship between the media and the Sussexes has been a one-way affair for years; the couple hated their role as the media’s favorite talking point. They signed off with another withering attack on the “frequent misreporting” by Britain’s royal correspondents.
By way of vengeance, the newspapers have responded with their most powerful weapon: telling the British public that Harry and Meghan have upset the Queen.
“Queen’s Fury” at the “Rogue Royals,” the first edition of Thursday’s Daily Mail blared. “Queen’s Dismay,” lamented the ultra-royalist Daily Express.
A comment piece inside the Daily Mirror claimed Harry’s “petulance has let down the Queen.”
Even worse, the newspapers are going big on the revelation that Buckingham Palace received no advance warning of the announcement.
“They didn’t even tell the Queen” spat the Daily Mirror front page, aghast.
TV presenter—and former newspaper editor—Piers Morgan claimed the Sussexes’ decision proved that he had been right to distrust the American princess all along. “People say I'm too critical of Meghan Markle—but she ditched her family, ditched her Dad, ditched most of her old friends, split Harry from William & has now split him from the Royal Family. I rest my case,” he wrote.
The newspapers decision to round on Harry and Meghan was boosted by Buckingham Palace’s unprecedented spin operation. The BBC’s veteran royal correspondent Nicholas Witchell said: “I have never known Buckingham Palace to let it be known that there is disappointment and hurt among the royal family about the behavior of other members of the royal family.”
Second billing after the treatment of the Queen, came the perceived hypocrisy of the couple claiming they would no longer rely on royal handouts, while keeping many of the perks of the job. “Harry and Meghan choose independence—except they’ll keep Frogmore Cottage and earnings from Prince Charles,” wrote Robert Mendick, the chief reporter of establishment journal the Daily Telegraph.
Not a single front page on Thursday morning’s newspaper stands will offer a defense of the decision. No wonder Harry and Meghan are sick of them.
—Nico Hines
How will they make money now?
The tantalizing, if extremely distant, prospect that Meghan Markle could play herself in a future series of The Crown was opened up by the announcement that she and Harry wish to have, henceforth, “financial independence.” Perhaps this might also include a return to acting.
In a bafflingly obtuse piece of writing on the “funding” section of their box-fresh new website, sussexroyal.com (as opposed to, say, sussexordinaryperson.com), they say that they “value the ability to earn a professional income, which in the current structure they are prohibited from doing. For this reason they have made the choice to become members of the Royal Family with financial independence. Their Royal Highnesses feel this new approach will enable them to continue to carry out their duties for Her Majesty The Queen, while having the future financial autonomy to work externally.”
The Sussexes give no detail on what kind of work they plan to undertake (although they have recently trademarked their Sussex Royal brand for items such as T-shirts and magazines) instead repeating variations on the mantra that they are now “members of the Royal Family with financial independence.”
Work may, in truth, be optional: Harry is said to be worth some $40 million thanks to legacies from his mother and great-grandmother and Meghan around $5 million.
The website states, with an air of sorry-but-our-hands-are-tied-regret, that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex “are classified as internationally protected people and will therefore still be protected by the Metropolitan Police,” a situation “mandated by the Home Office.”
Police protection for the entire family is said to cost some $450 million, according to anti-monarchy campaign group Republic. The website is elusive about what exact number of British pounds they are giving up financially by opting out of the Sovereign Grant, preferring instead to say that it’s not much, arguing that the grant covered only a measly 5 percent of their office expenses anyway. (The Daily Mail, however, estimates their official funding to be worth some $6.8 million, which certainly sounds like a lot of paper clips.)
The website also says that Harry, Meghan, and Archie will continue to occupy their residence in Windsor, Frogmore Cottage, refurbished at a cost of $3 million to the British public “so that their family will always have a place to call home in the United Kingdom.”
Well, isn’t that cute? Some might call it having their cake (bought for them) and eating it!
Harry and Meghan have made a “declaration of war” on royal family
Clearly, the royals felt like their characters in The Crown were getting all the best drama and dramatic exit lines, because—if press reports are to be believed—Buckingham Palace is in a state of meltdown over Harry and Meghan's decision to quit their senior royal roles.
A senior source told The Sun: “Their statement was not cleared with anyone. It breaks all protocol. This is a declaration of war on the family.”
“There is fury over how they’ve done this without any thought for the implications for the institution... There are so many unanswered questions but they’ve just up and done it without a thought for anyone else.”
The Queen is allegedly “deeply upset” (read as: even the Corgis are in hiding) and Princes William and Charles “incandescent with rage” (read as: butlers and wait staff are wearing protective gear, in case of suddenly thrown crockery).
William and Harry are reportedly still at daggers drawn, which the events of today has made clear.
“William was blindsided by Harry and Meghan’s decision and statement,” a source told Us Weekly. “There’s still a rift between the two brothers. It’s sad because when they were younger, William would be the first person Harry would go to with big news like this. William is incredibly hurt, but at the same time he has his own family to focus on and is trying to move forward with his life.”
Indeed, Harry and Meghan and the rest of the royal family are not speaking at all, according to reports. A source told The Daily Beast that Harry and Meghan felt “totally unwelcome” in the family.
“There hasn’t been this complete 180,” a source told People. “Nothing has changed. They don’t speak, no one is checking in, no one is texting.”
“There is a lot of hurt about this,” a source told People about how senior members of the royal family felt, on hearing the news of Meghan and Harry's plans to quit via television.
Courtiers bitch loudly: “What more did they want?”
The departure of Meghan and Harry from royal life has led to a veritable tidal wave of vintage, extremely catty, unsourced anonymous quotes from royal sources.
The Daily Mail quotes an “exasperated aide” as saying: “People had bent over backwards for them. They were given the wedding they wanted, the house they wanted, the office they wanted, the money they wanted, the staff they wanted, the tours they wanted and had the backing of their family. What more did they want?”
A second source tells the Mail that Harry and Meghan's own U.K. press team were kept in the dark, adding: “The level of deceit has been staggering and everyone from the top of the royal household to the bottom feels like they have been stabbed in the back.”
The Sun quoted a source as saying: “Their statement was not cleared with anyone. It breaks all protocol...” The Sun’s source declared: “Harry and Meghan wanted it their way or the highway. So they’ve gone and exiled themselves. It’s extraordinary.”
Ace Telegraph reporter Camilla Tominey has a source telling her their future royal role was on a “knife edge” before Christmas as they spent their six week sabbatical in Canada deciding whether they wanted to remain in the Royal Family, or break free from ‘The Firm.’ “It was a make or break. And they decided to break away.”
And don’t forget The Daily Beast. A source told The Daily Beast that Harry and Meghan “just felt totally unwelcome” in the family, adding that Harry “went from being an easy-going guy who was a bit of a laugh to this neurotic, faux-woke millionaire.”
Unanswered questions
So many, and a lot around money, which—as we make clear above—are raised and not fully answered at the couple’s new website. As one source told The Sun: “They want to keep Frogmore and some of their staff. But no one knows how that is going to work... And they want to keep up their level of royal security. How is that going to work if they are off acting like celebrities?”
When and how will Harry and Meghan manage their desire to live in both North America and the U.K.? And is Canada the place for them?
How will their relationships with the royal family improve or deteriorate? Right now, after the events of the day and how the news broke, Harry and Meghan are pretty much persona non grata. Do they and their royal relations care enough to change that, or is their shock-and-awe tactic a bigger statement of how they intend to treat the royal family as an institution. Is it their way now, and only their way?
When and how do Harry and Meghan plan to make money? And if they don’t want a traditional royal life of duty but want to make money—and generate publicity for themselves and their causes, by remaining royal in name—how will that work exactly?
Won’t the public start getting uneasy if it seems their taxes are helping fund what seems like royal freelancing? How will the royal family feel about two of its members happy to use and cash on in its name, but not be involved in its day-to-day operation and maintenance?
