Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, arrive for the annual Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey in London, Britain on March 9, 2020.Henry Nicholls/Reuters
When we last left the Duke and Duchess of Sussex – a.k.a. Harry and Meghan – they were fleeing the damp, overcast environs of Vancouver Island for sunnier climes.
The pair beat it to her hometown of Los Angeles, 10-month-old son Archie in tow, just before the novel coronavirus pandemic closed the Canada-U.S. border. And while they have been rarely seen in public since, it hasn’t stopped them from continuing to shatter long-held conventions back in Prince Harry’s homeland and incurring the wrath of those who have long benefited from them.
It pains many Britons that Harry – the irascible, charismatic, youngest offspring of Prince Charles and the late Diana, Princess of Wales – has seemingly turned his back on England. Or, at least, turned his back on his inherited role in the monarchy.
This has upset many, including the Queen, and even Harry’s brother, William, who has accepted with enthusiasm (or is that resignation disguised as enthusiasm?) his forever role in life. But there isn’t a group angrier than the British press, specifically the country’s infamous tabloids.
Recently, Harry and Meghan announced that they would no longer be engaging with these publications, and would no longer be corroborating stories or providing access of any sort. This, in contravention of a decades-old system in which the Daily Mail, and other grubby money-makers of its ilk, got exclusive access to royal event information. In return, the Queen’s family were supposed to receive favourable coverage.
It hasn’t always worked out that way.
Needless to say, the tabs are now getting their revenge, providing all sorts of space for the condemnation of Harry and Meghan and their allegedly selfish, self-absorbed ways. Imagine anyone turning their back on the opportunity to spend a lifetime in servitude to others, including your brother, and giving up the chance to spend your precious time on Earth cutting ribbons and sitting cross-legged on cold floors talking to school children.
Good for Harry, I say. He decided a long time ago he wasn’t going to put up with the same unwelcome intrusions into his existence that others before him did, or put up with the same bullying and harassment that ultimately cost his mother her life in a Paris tunnel 23 years ago, an event as painful to Harry today as it was then.
If he seems bitter, who can blame him?
Harry always seemed like someone who never enjoyed the fishbowl existence of being a royal. Yes, it’s a life that comes with few of the worries the rest of us have; namely, how the bills will be paid. But so what? It would be petty of us to think he and his young family have no right to sympathy, or at least some understanding, based solely on the grounds that he was to the manor born.
Harry is understandably upset with the treatment of his American-born, actress wife by many media outlets; being portrayed, as she has, as some sort of latter-day Yoko Ono, destroying yet another cherished British institution. If only she’d taken lessons from Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge, and played the game the way it’s supposed to be played.
But no, she had to be Wallis Simpson instead.
I support a free press. I don’t support a press that feels free to torment and persecute people. With power comes accountability, an old maxim the British tabloids have often ignored. But that’s what happens when you’re guided solely by profits and nothing else.
If Harry and Meghan no longer want to offer themselves up as “currency for an economy of clickbait and distortion” – as they wrote in announcing their decision to cut ties with the tabloids – more credit to them. And if they want to forge an independent life free of the shackles of obsolete orthodoxies and ancient traditions, better still.
While Harry and Meghan may now escape a lifetime of second-string royal assignments, theirs will never be a life without unrelenting scrutiny. The paparazzi will continue to hound, on behalf of the U.S. tabloids and their aggressive U.K. cousins.
It’s impossible to say if the couple will ever feel the need to return to Britain to assume life as “royals” in the conventional sense. Right now, that scenario seems unlikely.
Harry and Meghan are forging their own identity, and shunning most of the trappings of membership the Royal Family offers. This new path provides the chance for them to live life on terms they set for themselves, not for someone else. That’s something to be applauded, not shouted down.
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