‘At the very top of the Duchess’s list, moreover, should have been her own grandmother-in-law,’ concluded Phillips. ‘Probably, though, the Queen never entered her mind. After all, she stands for an overwhelming sense of duty, humility and self-effacement – unity rather than division.’
The Sun took up the same theme from the working-class point of view: ‘A woman who genuinely wants to be a royal, championing society’s poorest, shouldn’t guest-edit a glossy mag stuffed with overpriced fashion for the world’s richest people.’
Dresses at £12,000 and a pair of high heels at £600 were ‘about as inaccessible to hard-working Brits as you can possibly get … And she should be non-political … OUR ROYALS SHOULD KEEP THEIR POLITICAL OPINIONS PRIVATE.’
Many of the comments were tinged with regret.
‘You started off so well,’ wrote Sarah Vine in the Daily Mail. ‘A breath of fresh air, just the right mixture of cool and confidence, the perfect consort for the nation’s beloved Harry.’ But no one seemed to have instructed Meghan in the basics of the longstanding royal ‘deal’ between crown and people: ‘We furnish you with the funds and prime real-estate to live a life of luxury, and [we] undertake not to cut off the heads of you or any of your relatives.
‘In return, you let us coo over baby Archie and try not to get all shirty when we ask who the godparents are … Proper royalty is about tradition and duty, self-effacing service and loyalty – year after year after year, season after season.’
It was a formidable chorus of disapproval – and not just from bitchy commentators. Editors weighed in with serious constitutional concerns about the monarchy trespassing into politics. Meghan evidently did not know – or, maybe, did not want to know – what it meant to be a Windsor.
That feeling was coming to be shared among the Windsors themselves – and Prince William was particularly disturbed. Many of the papers had identified Meghan’s proclaimed refusal to be ‘boastful’ by appearing on the front of her issue as a not-so-sly put-down to Kate, whose face had featured on the cover of her own Vogue a few years earlier.
But William’s concern went much deeper. Every paper had emphasised the need for royals to stay clear of controversy – as the Sun had put it: ‘The fundamental reason that the monarchy still exists is because it sits above politics.’ And the people’s paper had added a scarcely veiled threat: ‘We fear she is heading for a fallout with the public which now funds her.’
Money, power and survival. These were basic royal issues, and they were far too important to be threatened by trendy controversies in a glossy magazine. William had heartily endorsed his sister-in-law’s previous publishing initiative. The Royal Foundation had stepped in to support the Grenfell fire cookbook, administering the collection and distribution of the funds. The project had been ‘driven by a desire’, as the foundation put it, ‘to make a difference together’.
‘Together’ was the operative word. William did not see his future role as monarch – nor his current role as heir – as a matter of him working to maintain the nation’s feelings in harmony while his activist brother and his wife jumped up and down beside him cultivating political and cultural divisions in pursuit of their trendy vision of doing good. Windsors do not do ‘woke’.
William had been worried for some time that Harry was growing away from him, and this was confirmed when he tried to discuss the issues raised by ‘Forces for CHANGE’ with his brother. There was another classic Harry explosion, followed by a further, even deeper rift. As with the brothers’ arguments of 2016/17 over William’s attempts to make Harry ‘go slow’, the details of the showdown over Meghan’s ‘Forces for CHANGE’ are not known. But suddenly Harry, Meghan and Archie were no longer joining William, Kate and the other members of the royal family for their annual summer holiday with Grandma at Balmoral.
The official excuse, conveyed straight-faced by the palace, was that at three months Archie was still too young for the air travel involved. But that didn’t stop the Sussexes somehow managing to travel to Minorca for a week that August, and then taking Archie with them for a few days in the South of France with Elton John and his partner David Furnish.
‘The Côte d’Azur with Elton, but no Balmoral with Granny?’ asked one former attendant to Elizabeth II. ‘They seem to be getting their Queens mixed up.’
In the course of eleven days, Harry, Meghan and Archie travelled no fewer than four times on various excursions by private jet. Meghan might have wished she had heeded Anne McElvoy’s caution about the use of helicopters.
‘Prince Harry’s Heir Miles,’ ran one scornful heading in the Sun over a map showing an alarming number of private jet trips by Harry and Meghan. ‘DUMBO JET,’ proclaimed the same paper in the middle of August: ‘Eco-Warriors Meghan Markle and Prince Harry Fly on Private Jet Again to France after Gas-Guzzling Ibiza Trip.’
Ex-royal protection officer Ken Wharfe weighed in: ‘Frankly, it’s hypocritical. Harry can’t be preaching about the catastrophic effects of climate change while jetting around the world on a private plane.’
It was too good an opportunity for brother William to miss. On Thursday 22 August it was announced that he, Kate and their three children had flown from Norwich to Aberdeen – the nearest airport to Balmoral – on the routinely scheduled 8.40 a.m. flight operated by Loganair on behalf of the budget airline Flybe. They had sat in the same rows as the ordinary passengers, all paying like them a standard £73 per head.
‘According to their fellow travellers,’ reported the Daily Mail, ‘the Cambridges slipped onto the plane discreetly, shortly before take-off and sat in the front few rows, exiting first.’
But the Mail also reported that the 8.40 Norwich–Aberdeen flight would normally have been operated in an aircraft bearing a Loganair logo, and Flybe wanted the full benefit of the publicity of having had five
