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There was not a knee-high sock in sight.
The way that William and Kate chose to present their young children to the world, often sending out photographs of them in pastiche Victorian clothing replete with smocked shirts (and those long socks of course), was always a cause of some bafflement among the public.
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Not so Harry and Meghan, who to mark the New Year posted an utterly relaxed image of Harry holding their baby Archie on the shores of Vancouver Island in Canada, in which the baby sports a pair of Ugg boots, a bobble hat and a camel coat from British brand Boden.
Needless to say, for all its apparent casual insouciance, Archie’s look wasn’t just thrown together.
The $47 hat, for example, was made by Make Give Love, a socially conscious company based in New Zealand, (which says it has been “overwhelmed” with demand, and is receiving “multiple orders a second” for the headgear since the post went live) teamed with a pair of Uggs given to the couple on their royal tour of Australia just after the pregnancy was announced.
Click on the couple’s Instagram post, and it transpires that the photo is actually the opening shot of a video sequence (set to the perfectly inoffensive Coldplay song ‘Clocks’) recapping the year.
It is interesting to note what Harry and Meghan have chosen to highlight, what they believe are the major achievements of the year: her guest-edited issue of Vogue (panned by the critics, but hey), the launch of their responsible travel brand Travalyst (the launch was somewhat overwhelmed by the metaphorical fog of private jet fumes), images of their trip to Africa where Meghan memorably declared herself a “woman of color,” and the birth of their baby son.
While the post made no direct reference to their plans for 2020, and Buckingham Palace did not give The Daily Beast any information in reply to an email asking about Harry and Meghan’s plans for the coming year, a line in the Insta post reading: “We’ve loved meeting so many of you from around the world and can’t wait to meet many more of you next year,” has prompted speculation that the couple are planning some significant international travel in 2020, possibly along the lines of the trip to South Africa which was proceeding triumphantly until Harry launched legal action against U.K. paper the Mail on Sunday just before the end of it.
The trip was also somewhat overshadowed after both Harry and Meghan gave self-pitying interviews in which they appeared to bewail their royal life.
While Meghan and Harry would no doubt like the world to focus on their philanthropy over the next year, and they are believed to be especially focused on focusing on America, the case against the Mail (Harry and Meghan allege the paper illegally contravened her copyright by publishing extracts of a letter sent by Meghan to her father) is likely to consume a disproportionate amount of media oxygen when it gets underway, probably in April this year.
The Mail have made quite clear they have no intention of settling, and for Harry and Meghan to back down now would be a disastrous display of weakness, given that Prince Harry claimed that the Mail on Sunday “purposely misled” readers “by strategically omitting select paragraphs, specific sentences, and even singular words to mask the lies they had perpetuated for over a year.”
Both parties are now locked in to seeing this through to the end and, even if they do win, the victory will be pyrrhic for Harry and Meghan if Meghan’s father is hauled into court to testify.
On a more positive note, there are few who do not believe that Harry, 35, and Meghan, 38, will be hoping she gets pregnant again this year (indeed, there has been much gossip that the six-week vacation has been about family planning as much as a respite from the goldfish bowl of royal life). Harry said in an interview in the issue of Vogue guest-edited by his wife that they wanted to have two children.
The bigger issue is whether the six-week break has allowed them—and the wider royal family—to find a new accommodation that both sides can live with.
There was much general unhappiness in Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace last year at the way in which Harry and Meghan frequently flouted the unwritten rule that requires members of the royal family to get at least a verbal sign-off from above before doing anything that might attract publicity, good or bad.
Meghan and Harry challenged this convention repeatedly, but most obviously with the Vogue issue and the ITV interviews, neither of which were raised with or signed off by the Queen’s closest advisers.
The debacle surrounding Prince Andrew, the endgame of which unfolded entirely while Meghan and Harry were on their break, has thrown things into sharper focus.
It has shown that Prince Charles, who now runs the day-to-day business of the family, will have no compunction in firing family members who engage in freelancing if it goes wrong.
The omission of their photograph from the Queen’s desk during her Christmas Day speech was a shot across their bows; it showed, very visually, that no matter how much they may think they are invaluable and untouchable, the monarchy is perfectly capable of marching on without them.
Harry and Meghan know their own stardom, of course. They know their fans, and they market themselves to them directly. They are presently vying with William and Kate for primacy on Instagram (at the time of writing, Will and Kate: 10.6 million followers; Harry and Meghan: 10 million). But no-one is indispensable in a monarchy, and acting too grandly, or separate from the rest of the family, can be damaging.
It is a lesson that Andrew absolutely failed to understand and he has now paid the ultimate price: excommunication.
Whether or not Harry and Meghan are prepared to toe the line or insist on continuing to forge their own path without seeking say-so will be the defining issue for them in 2020.
