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Harry and Meghan want to make a new deal
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle want to broker an extension to the terms of their “Megxit” deal, and Harry will be returning to the U.K to negotiate the terms, according to the Sun on Sunday.
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“They want a more permanent agreement to continue as non-working royals in California despite big-money deals with Netflix and Spotify,” the paper reports. “Harry and Meghan are said to be keen to hang on to their royal patronages, despite taking on more commercial commitments in the US.”
After last year’s fireworks and bad blood—as detailed in Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand’s Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of a Modern Royal Family—talks this time are “less confrontational,” the Sun says. Harry and Meghan may also be spending more time in Britain in 2021, not just in Harry’s case to negotiate the newly reframed “Megxit”—it’s already being called a “mextension”—but also for the queen’s 95th birthday in April, the Duke of Edinburgh’s 100th birthday in June, and the unveiling of the much-awaited Princess Diana statue on June 1, on what would have been Diana’s 60th birthday.
The paper reported that the “olive branch” of Harry somehow being offered his military roles back (they were removed when he and Meghan officially stepped back as “senior royals” last year) may even be on the table in the “thawing of hostilities.”
Harry continues legal case against newspaper, despite apology
Prince Harry received a rare apology from the Mail on Sunday today over a false story it ran, but Harry isn’t dropping his legal action against the paper. The Mail on Sunday issued a groveling apology today for a libelous story it ran claiming that Harry failed to maintain contact with the Royal Marines when he stepped back from royal duties and made a donation to his Invictus Games Foundation.
However, the Telegraph reports that the correction does not mark the end of the case, and Harry has no intention of dropping a scheduled court hearing due to take place early in the New Year.
Meghan also has a case against the Mail on Sunday, claiming the Mail on Sunday breached her privacy after the newspaper published extracts of a letter she sent to her estranged father, Thomas Markle. The trial, which had been scheduled for January in the high court in London, will now be heard in autumn 2021 after Meghan successfully applied for an adjournment for confidential reasons, which have not been made public.
In its apology to Harry, the Mail on Sunday said: “An article on 25 October 2020 reported that Prince Harry had been accused by a top general of turning his back on the Royal Marines since withdrawing from his military roles in March and that, in an apparent snub to the Armed Forces, he had failed to reply to a letter from Lord Dannatt, a former Chief of the General Staff.
“We now understand that Harry has been in contact in a private capacity with individuals in the military including in the Royal Marines to offer informal support since March and that whilst he did not initially receive the letter from Lord Dannatt referred to in the article due to administrative issues he has since replied on becoming aware of it. We apologize to Prince Harry and have made a donation to the Invictus Games Foundation.”
Harry spent a decade in the army and carried out two tours to Afghanistan. As noted above, his military patronages could yet be restored to him when the terms of his and Meghan’s departure from the family are reviewed in March.
Why the queen won’t give Blair top honor
Rumors have long circulated that the queen was so angered by what the royal family perceived as grandstanding by Tony Blair over the death of Princess Diana that he was denied Britain’s most senior honor, membership of the Order of the Garter, as a result.
Membership of the elite group is restricted to a maximum of 24 members. They are allowed to call themselves “Sir” or “Dame,” get to wear even sillier costumes than your average British noble including knickerbockers and a white ostrich feather, and attend an annual church service at Windsor with Her Majesty.
All members are appointed personally by the monarch. A new member can only be appointed when an old one dies. Blair’s five predecessors in No 10 Downing Street, from Ted Heath to John Major, were all given the Order of the Garter. However, the tradition of making former PMs members of the order came to a shuddering halt with the palace’s refusal to honor Blair. Without Blair being appointed, his successors, Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Theresa May, have all been passed over for the honor for fear of suggestions of royal political bias or favoritism.
Now, however, The Sunday Times reports that a renewed effort is being put in by courtiers to unblock the impasse, particularly because three other coveted honors—the Order of the Thistle, the Order of Merit and the Order of Companions of Honor—have membership lists that see former Tory politicians massively outnumbering Labor ones. Of the 102 posts across the four highest honors, Tories hold 22 and Labor four. The imbalance is partly a function of the fact that in the past 40 years of the Queen’s reign, Labor has only governed for 13 years, but the exclusion of Blair and Brown is an entirely self-inflicted wound.
“There is concern in the palace that the senior orders are beginning to look politically unbalanced,” a source familiar with the discussions told The Sunday Times with a rather lavish sense of understatement. Courtiers are now suggesting that Gordon Brown be made a Knight of the Thistle to help balance out the numbers.
Useful cover could be provided by the fact that Gordon Brown is Scottish and the Thistle is seen as a Scottish near-equivalent to the Garter. One simple solution would involve the palace swallowing their pride and elevating Blair to the Order of the Garter as per precedent. However, the palace reportedly “just won’t do it,” the source said.
Bookish
Meghan Markle is considering trying her hand at fiction writing, according to a report in the Mail on Sunday.
Meghan and Harry’s new charity, Archewell, the paper reports, is trying to secure with the US Patent and Trademark Office the right to pen “fiction and non-fiction books on a variety of topics” under the Archewell brand.
Meghan, of course, used to have a food, wine and lifestyle blog called “The Tig” before she met Harry and recently wrote a powerful op-ed for the New York Times in which she revealed she had a miscarriage in July.
The queen’s coronavirus Christmas message
The terrible impact of the coronavirus pandemic was the central theme of the queen’s unusually somber Christmas message this year, although, being the queen, she didn’t actually deign to say the word coronavirus once. HM praised worthy individuals and institutions and even gave a shout out to the scientists who have found a vaccine for the virus.
After Harry and Meghan reportedly felt slighted last year after their pictures were left off the queen’s desk but William’s and Kate’s were not, this year the queen adorned her desk at Windsor Castle with only a photograph of her husband, Prince Philip.
She drew a parallel between the sacrifices made in times of war with the sacrifices made by those on the frontlines of the crisis, reflecting on her visit to the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey in November. The Unknown Warrior, she said in the Christmas message, “represents millions like him who throughout our history have put the lives of others above their own, and will be doing so today.”
In April, the queen gave a special coronavirus address, in which she echoed the words of wartime sweetheart Dame Vera Lynn, saying, “We will meet again.”
Yay! Prince Andrew plans another comeback!
Prince Andrew has still not apparently got the memo that that he and anything associated with him are no longer required. In his latest astonishing act of self-delusion he has appointed a long-term business associate as director of Pitch@Palace, his business investment scheme which brokers deals between tech start-ups and wealthy investors, amid claims he is planning to relaunch it next year, the Telegraph reports.
Many questions naturally arise, among them the issue of how Prince Charles would feel about Andrew hosting a soiree at the palace.
Pitch@Palace is one of Andrew’s sole remaining business interests. The charitable arm of the project was wound up last year as the Epstein storm clouds descended.
A spokesperson told the Telegraph: “Pitch@Palace Global Ltd, a company wholly owned by The Duke of York, can confirm that it has appointed accountant, Arthur Lancaster, as a director. Pitch@Palace Global remains in a pause position while its future direction and strategy is determined and whilst its operations continue to be significantly impacted by Covid-19 restrictions.”
This week in royal history
Happy birthday Savannah Phillips, grand-daughter of Princess Anne, who turns 10 on December 29. She’s the daughter of Peter Phillips and his now-ex wife Autumn.
Unanswered questions
The new year stretches before us, and could Meghan and Harry and the royals really be making nice after all the feuding and hurt feelings of 2020? And will any of their legal actions against the media reach conclusions in 2021—and will those rulings be in their favor? One encouraging sign for the couple on this front is that the Mail on Sunday just apologized to Harry over a “false and defamatory” report claiming he had fallen out of touch with the British Marines, after he launched a libel action against them in November over the story.
