Their move to the United States has seriously undermined Harry’s position in other ways too. Meghan, it must be remembered, is an American citizen. Harry cannot become an American without losing his title and royal rank, both of which he would have to renounce to become naturalised. At the very most, he can only become an American resident. That is a process that takes time for most people and, judging by the abusive way he and Meghan have spoken about Donald Trump, it is very unlikely that the President will be cutting any corners on their behalf. This means that Meghan is the only partner with earning capacity at the moment. Even if Harry accompanies her to events, he will not be able to be financially recompensed until his status is regularised. Meghan will therefore be the only earner in the family for the foreseeable future. In the event of a divorce, that puts her in an even stronger position financially.
Meghan is a planner. She is proudly strategic, thorough, and considered. She seeks and takes the best advice. Long before her and Harry’s departure from Britain, she had her business manager Andrew Meyer reincorporate in Delaware Frim Fram Inc., the California-based company which ran The Tig and was shut down in 2017 before her marriage to Harry. The merit of Delaware is that Meyer could be listed as the company secretary without its owner’s identity being revealed, but the mere fact that Meghan opted to revive a company rather than start an entirely new one shows that on some level she intended to leave traces rather than assure herself of the privacy a new name would have done. This her admirers will say is reflective of the fact that she is such a loyal person that she even retains connections to her old companies, while her detractors will conclude that she leaves clues lying around so that the press will make the connection and write about her, in the process helping her to fulfill her ambition to become the most famous woman in the world.
Whatever her motive, Meghan and Harry set about fine-tuning their other priority as soon as they arrived in the United States. Controlling the British press while also managing their publicity in America so that the public would see only the facade they wished to present became their prime target. This did not require quite as much skill or finesse as the uninitiated might imagine. Meghan had People magazine in her pocket and Sunshine Sachs behind them. The American press, as previously stated, is basically a lot more amenable to printing what celebrities want than its British counterpart. As long as Meghan and Harry could drip feed People, Page Six and a few other vital portals the stories they wanted written, that was their American coverage taken care of. They had also done a Diana, cooperating with two amenable journalists, Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand, who would be publishing a book in the summer of 2020 which detailed their version of events. They had no doubt that this would become a worldwide bestseller, increasing their fame and adding to their fortune by opening up all sorts of new opportunities for them.
The British press was another story entirely. Harry’s irrational and longstanding hatred and Meghan’s determination that reports about her must reflect only what she regarded as fair representation were backed up by Sunshine Sachs’s aggressive tactics. They were all still feeling their way towards victory, namely the muzzling of any dissent while rewarding tame journalists with information. But they were building up to another attack, which would come soon enough.
In the meantime Instagram proved useful, as the couple proclaimed their desire for privacy on the one hand while on the other hand embarking upon a series of posts that increased their profile. Harry, still in England working out the details of their departure from the Royal Family while his wife had returned to Canada at the first opportunity, then launched a second excoriating attack on the British press, stating that Meghan’s privacy had been violated by a paparazzo photographing her with a long distance lens as she walked their dogs Guy and Oz, with Archie strapped to her front and two protection officers, one Canadian, the other British, bringing up the rear. Once more admirers and detractors of the couple were at loggerheads, the former sympathising with poor Meghan, who couldn’t even take a walk with her two protection officers, baby, and dogs without being interfered with by what Ken Sunshine so eloquently called the stalkerazzi, the latter deciding that Meghan, who was photographed smiling broadly for the benefit of the camera, must have colluded with the photographer as no one walks around like that unless they know they’re being photographed.
To the British press, this was reminiscent of Diana, who was always accusing them of violating her privacy while covertly setting up photo ops with them. It left them unmoved but irritated at what they regarded as the couple’s hypocrisy and uncalled-for victim-signalling. The Royal Family are public figures, supported by the state, i.e. the British taxpayer, and when they are out in public they are fair game to be photographed, especially when it appears as if the photos were staged.
Americans, with their different approach to the press and no royal family of their own to provide them with a common point of reference, might find it difficult to appreciate to what extent Harry and Meghan’s complaints damaged the couple’s
