SARAH VINE
Sarah Vine sarah.vine@dailymail.co.uk
OK, I TAKE it all back. Following the King’s cancer diagnosis last week, I had naively hoped such a serious health crisis might bring — or at least start to bring — Prince Harry to his senses.
I thought it might make him understand the importance of family; maybe see the pressures the King has been under over the past few years; perhaps even feel a pang of sympathy for the old man.
But after the Duke and Duchess’s latest move — rebranding their Archewell website as sussex. com, complete with coat of arms — I give up. They are, I’m afraid, simply beyond redemption.
No wonder Prince William is believed to have refused to see his brother on his flying visit to the UK last week; no wonder Harry only had about half an hour with King Charles before going off to spend the night in a luxury hotel.
They must have known this was in the pipeline. They must have known this was Harry’s next step in his quest to have his cake and eat it.
Because it seems to me that this is not only a shameless name-grab and an attempt to commercialise the title conferred upon them by the late Queen after Meghan married into the Royal Family, but it also goes against her explicit wishes.
When the Duke and Duchess made the sad decision to turn their backs on royal life in 2020, they agreed they would not use their titles for financial or personal gain. Indeed, they had to mothball their website, sussexroyal. com, for that very reason.
And yet here they are, very obviously signalling their association with the institution of monarchy to promote themselves and their organisation on the global stage.
An institution, let us not forget, that they have both thoroughly trashed, traduced and dragged through the mud; an institution they appear to despise (witness their hob-nobbing with prominent Republicans in Jamaica last month), one they claim to want nothing to do with — and yet can’t seem to exploit enough.
I mean, Harry has always been an entitled little brat, but this really takes the biscuit.
Once again, I was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt when he dashed to the UK to see his poor Pa. But now I can’t help agreeing with those who said it appeared to be just a publicity stunt, a handy way of reminding the world in advance of this new rebranding that he’s a member of the British Royal Family.
Quite honestly, can the boy sink any lower?
His ‘people’, naturally, have hit back. A source close to the couple says: ‘ Prince Harry and Meghan are the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. That is a fact. It is their surname and family name.’ Which is, like so much that emerges from their camp, palpable nonsense.
Sussex is emphatically not their family surname. That is Windsor-Mountbatten, as evidenced on Archie’s birth certificate. And in any case, Sussex is not a name: it’s a royal title, conferred upon them by the late Queen. ( Inter alia, Archie himself has a courtesy title — Dumbarton — which his parents have apparently decided not to use in case he gets called ‘dumb’ at school.)
If they really wanted to be shot of their miserable lives as royals, if they really wanted to put all their so- called ‘trauma’ behind them and start afresh, they would simply style themselves ‘Mr and Mrs Windsor-Mountbatten’ and be done with it.
But, of course, they won’t because that would affect their currency as royals. Hence the name of the new website.
The only way this source could be correct in claiming that Sussex is their family name is if they had decided to change their surname by deed poll from Windsor-Mountbatten to Sussex. Which, I suppose, would theoretically be possible. But also incredibly, astonishingly, almost unbelievably crass, even by their standards.
It could land them in hot water, too: there is an argument that the abuse of Sussex, as a royal title, could potentially be in breach of the Companies Act.
It’s also interesting that the coat of arms the couple have chosen for the website is not Harry’s, but his wife’s, granted to her by the late Queen. Since she was a member of the Royal Family for all of about five minutes, and claims to have been so thoroughly miserable, one can’t help wondering why she would want to cling to such an obvious reminder of her hardships.
In any case, it’s out of date: it still shows the coronet of the Sovereign’s grandchild, rather than son, since Charles is now King.
But I don’t suppose any question of heraldic authenticity matters much to Harry and Meghan. They don’t seem to care that the British Royal Family is a much-loved institution, a key part of our national culture; to them it’s just a cash cow.
And the truth is, they need that brand for the simple reason that they have nothing else. Sure, Prince Harry’s book, Spare, may have been, as the website claims, a bestseller — but that was only because it dished the dirt on the royals.
Anything the pair try to do independently of their royal status falls flat, as evidenced by the lukewarm reception to the Duchess’s podcasts, her dreary children’s book — and the fact that Spotify has dropped them from their £18 million deal.
What was it that a Spotify executive called them? ‘Grifters.’ Those corporate guys don’t normally break cover like that unless things are really bad.
The awful truth the Duke and Duchess now face is that their principal currency — their glittering royal status — is an everdiminishing asset. And they have ill-advisedly squandered it via their persistent attacks on the very institution that confers any sort of cachet upon them.
Without it, let’s be honest, Prince Harry is just a balding, not terribly bright ex- soldier with Daddy issues; Meghan is just a moderately pretty, distinctly mediocre ex-actress, also with Daddy issues.
No wonder they’re so desperate to maintain that association.
After all, it’s not like they’ve made the greatest splash across ‘the pond’, despite all those celebrities
They’ve dragged the monarchy through the mud
The couple’s glittering royal status is an ever-diminishing asset
This latest move just smacks of desperation
at their wedding and that interview with Queen Oprah early on.
Their Hollywood contacts seem to have melted away like ice cream in the California sunshine.
They didn’t even make it to Sunday night’s Superbowl, where every power-player in that world was on show.
The reality is, this latest move smacks of absolute desperation. Harry and Meghan had every opportunity to build a genuine identity for themselves away from the royal sphere.
But that would have required hard work, dedication — and earning, rather than demanding, the respect of others.
Instead, they chose the easy route: not caring who they hurt or what damage they did along the way.
In so doing they made the final years of the Queen’s life a misery, and appear to have inflicted untold psychological suffering on everyone else in their family. All the while, of course, claiming to be staunch and compassionate advocates for mental well-being.
I’m certain that if the late Queen Elizabeth II had realised they were going to pull a stunt like this, she would have taken away their Sussex titles, as well as divesting them of the right to call themselves HRH.
Much as it would have pained her, she was never shy of doing the right thing. And if there was one thing she took very seriously, it was the reputation of the institution she dedicated her whole life to safeguarding.
This is the last thing the King needs as he faces treatment for cancer. But divesting Harry and Meghan of their titles is the only way to put a stop to their nonsense.
In any case, what has he got to lose? A toxic son who seems to care so little about him that he appeared to voice little public objection to him being branded a racist? Come on: no one needs that in their life.
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2024-02-14T08:00:00.0000000Z
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