Meghan and Harry had asserted in their statement that they intended to be both at the same time. This was despite no member of the Royal Family to date having been allowed to actively participate in commercial activities while at the same time retaining their royal rank with all the attendant privileges, responsibilities and conflicts. The palace did not want any member of the Royal Family to engage in commercial activities for their own benefit, and certainly not while being sponsored financially by the state. ‘What they’ve been proposing is rather like a priest who has taken a vow of poverty going into the usury business, then trying to convince everyone that he’s doing it for the good of humanity when it’s blindingly obvious he’s doing it for his own benefit,’ someone from the College of Heralds said. ‘The inelegant maxim of getting thieves to guard your treasure springs to mind.’
From the American perspective, what the Sussexes wanted to do seemed not only anodyne, but admirable. They were a grown man and woman, well into their thirties. They wanted to strike out on their own. Good for them. Independence should be encouraged. Best of luck to them.
Of course, America does not have a royal family and therefore such understanding as exists about its functions is superficial. When people like Caitlyn Jenner liken her family or the Kennedys to a royal family, they miss the point entirely. Royalty is not the same as celebrity, nor can politicians be likened to royals. Royals are representatives of their country no matter when or where they are. They are expected to behave at all times and in all circumstances up to a standard few members of the public could achieve and none would aspire to. Unlike celebrities, who differentiate between their private and public lives, no such distinction applies with royalty. You are a prince or a duchess at all times, not just when it suits you to be. If you are engaged in commercial activities, it is supposed to be on behalf of the institution of monarchy, not on behalf of yourself. Such profits as accrue should never be for your own personal enrichment, but for the benefit of the Nation.
What Harry and Meghan were proposing was therefore contrary to everything that had gone before, and was fraught with difficulties. The reality was that their eminence, whence came their desirability commercially, was based upon them being members of the Royal Family. Although each of them had personal attributes that burnished their appeal, the bottom line was that Meghan Markle’s commercial value pre-marriage had been fractional compared with what it became afterwards, and for all Harry’s jock appeal, no one would ever have found him anywhere as noteworthy or desirable had he been plain Harry Windsor instead of a Prince of the United Kingdom.
The British Crown, as stated earlier, is very sophisticated. It’s seen all the angles and knows all the tricks people pull. It knows that commerce can be a dodgy business. Philanthropy is often a cover for the purchase of respectability following acquisition of wealth by dubious means. Now that it was merely a matter of time before Meghan and Harry actively entered the commercial world, the Royal Family had to prepare itself for what would happen if things went wrong. The slightest slip could result in a loss of prestige for the Sussexes and, by extension, the monarchy.
Even more dangerous, however, was the Sussexes’ proposal to mix charity and commerce. Modern charitable organisations are run in such a way that the organisers receive handsome financial rewards. It is one thing for professionals to be on salaries that sometimes run well into six and even seven figures, but there is a real danger when royals start receiving sums like that for work which their peers do gratis. Should it emerge that Meghan and Harry were deriving financial benefits for their charitable endeavours, what could be regarded as fair recompense with anyone else would be viewed as corruption on their part. The outcome could therefore be toxicity, as Buckingham Palace knew only too well from the fallout when the Socialist Government of Spain went after the Infanta Cristina, second daughter of King Juan Carlos I, and her husband Iñaki Urdangarin, Duke of Palma de Mallorca. These Spanish cousins became enmeshed in a financial scandal involving their non-profit Institute. For a while it looked as if both the Infanta and her husband would be tried for fraud, but ultimately only he was. Nevertheless, the outcome was disastrous for the Spanish Royal Family. The king abdicated, his son-in-law was convicted and is presently serving a five year ten month sentence at Brieva Prison in Avila, while the Infanta moved to Switzerland with her children and is now persona non grata at the Spanish Court.
Because of Meghan’s previous business activities, and the surreptitious way in which the couple had gone about laying the foundations for their commercial and charitable endeavours, the worry was that they might end up receiving ‘expenses’ for their charitable activities which could be interpreted as ‘backhanders’. The last thing Buckingham Palace wanted was for any British royal to be caught up in a financial scandal such as had engulfed the Spaniards. They also hoped to ensure that the commercial and charitable activities which the Sussexes embarked upon could never be used, even far down the line, by anti-monarchist politicians, to embarrass the monarch or the Royal Family.
The courtiers are far more sophisticated than either Meghan or Harry, and understand potential pitfalls insofar as they are detrimental to the monarchy in a
