Vanity Fair’s former editor Tina Brown has described the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s decision to quit royal duties as a ‘disaster’ and accused Meghan of having ‘the worst judgment of anyone in the entire world’.
That verdict might seem a little harsh, but Brown is a royal biographer and wise counsel who met Princess Diana for lunch just two months before her fatal accident in Paris.
As someone who has chronicled Prince Harry and Meghan’s moves since they relocated to California, I share some of Brown’s views. So here are ten of the fateful mistakes that I believe the former actress has made since ‘Megxit’:
1) The Duke and Duchess of Sussex released the bombshell announcement that they were stepping down as working royals in January 2020 before they had held talks with Queen Elizabeth. And they had launched their flashy SussexRoyal website, having already applied to trademark 100 items including pencils and bookmarks six months earlier. This was grossly presumptuous and offensive to Harry’s grandmother, who deserved the respect she had earned through her decades on the throne. The late Queen duly banned them from using the ‘royal’ title.
Meghan and Harry launched a flashy SussexRoyal website after stepping down as working royals in January 2020
2) Meghan apparently hoped that her interview with Oprah Winfrey, whom she had been courting since before she married Harry, would herald her entry to Hollywood. In fact, the explosive sofa chat in March 2021 may have helped end her chances of being embraced by America. Going on national television to attack the family she married into, when she was already estranged from most of her own, backfired horribly. And choosing to go ahead with the interview even though Prince Philip was seriously ill in hospital rubbed salt in royal wounds.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s explosive chat with Oprah Winfrey in March 2021
3) Choosing to name their daughter Lilibet, who was born three months later, was a crass decision. Lilibet was the pet name from childhood for Queen Elizabeth, used only by her closest family members. Harry and Meghan claimed that they chose it as a tribute, but a palace source told the BBC that the Queen had not been asked beforehand. This was disputed by the couple’s spokesman. Whatever the case, it came as little surprise that the Queen did not pose for a photograph with her great-granddaughter when she visited the Sussex family at Frogmore Cottage during their visit for her Platinum Jubilee celebrations a year later. She was reportedly so upset by Harry and Meghan’s Lilibet decision that she told aides ‘the only thing I own is my name. And now they’ve taken that’.
The Sussexes’ daughter Lilibet, whose name they claimed was a tribute to Queen Elizabeth
4) After the duke and duchess signed their $20million (£15.4million) deal with audio giant Spotify in December 2020, they both appeared on the pilot episode of their podcast, along with a string of famous guests, including Sir Elton John, James Corden and Tyler Perry. However, when their first podcast series, called Archetypes, was finally broadcast in August 2022, Harry was conspicuous by his absence. Meghan’s decision to present the series alone was a mistake. Spotify thought it was signing a power couple, not a whining former actress. The first series was also the last for Spotify, with one of its executives branding the Sussexes as ‘f***ing grifters’.
5) One of the most striking moments in the six-part 2022 Netflix docu-series Harry & Meghan was the over-elaborate curtsy which the duchess performed to show how she had greeted Queen Elizabeth at their first meeting. Meghan may have intended to demonstrate how keen she was to impress Harry’s grandmother, but it came across as mockery. And Harry’s uneasy grimace as he watched her performance lingers long in the memory.
One of the most striking moments in the 2022 Netflix docu-series Harry & Meghan was the over-elaborate curtsy which the duchess performed to show how she first greeted the Queen
6) One of the ways that Queen Elizabeth tried to make best use of Meghan’s talents was by inviting her to lead Commonwealth organisations, giving her an international role. Meghan was appointed as vice-president of the Queen’s Commonwealth Trust, with Harry made president. And when they quit royal duties, the couple declared that they would continue ‘to honour our duty to the Commonwealth’. However, their Netflix series attacked the Queen’s beloved Commonwealth, with one contributor labelling the voluntary organisation of nation states ‘Empire 2.0’. As then Tory MP Sir Hugo Swire said at the time, this was ‘either deliberate mischief-making or astonishing ignorance’.
7) Appearances at scenes of tragedies are always a delicate matter for members of the Royal Family, but Meghan’s visit in 2022 to meet the parents of victims of a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, ran the risk of being seen as a public relations exercise. Instead of waiting for a dignified amount of time to pass, the former actress rushed to the scene two days after the massacre, laying flowers in the full glare of cameras. The fact that her close aide Mandana Dayani recently cited the visit as an example of Meghan’s compassion made it sound like an attempt to burnish the duchess’s tarnished image.
Meghan lays flowers at a makeshift memorial in Uvalde, Texas, two days after a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers and injured 17 others in May 2022
8) Much thought goes into clothes worn by female members of the Royal Family when on duty, as Meghan has publicly acknowledged. So was her $7,629 (£5,891) outfit for a 2021 visit to underprivileged children at a school in Harlem, New York City, really appropriate? The duchess wore a $5,268 (£4,068) Loro Piana loose-fitting pyjama-style burgundy cashmere coat with matching $1,779 (£1,374) trousers and $581 (£449) Manolo Blahnik red stilettos. Public records show that 94 per cent of the children at the school qualified for free meals.
9) Everyone knows that Harry and Meghan despise the popular Press, but that hatred can lead them to make foolish decisions. I contacted Meghan’s office in March to inform them that I planned to run an item about her plans to launch a lifestyle company called American Riviera Orchard. Meghan was apparently so desperate for the news not to appear first in the Daily Mail that she immediately launched the Instagram page for her company, complete with a glitzy video. Eight months later, the company has still not started selling any goods and interest seems to be waning. A textbook example of how not to launch a business.
Branding for Meghan’s lifestyle company American Riviera Orchard
10) Nothing highlights the demise of the duke and duchess’s aspirations to be a ‘power couple’ than Meghan’s solo appearances on red carpets in Los Angeles. While her Hollywood agents might have advised her that she needs to be seen, her royal status is diminished each time that she competes for attention from the cameras with the massed ranks of American stars, sometimes in less-than-regal outfits.
Nothing highlights the demise of the duke and duchess’s aspirations to be a ‘power couple’ than Meghan’s solo appearances on red carpets in Los Angeles
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