There are those who maintain that the pictures on the Queen’s Christmas desk are really the choice of that year’s TV producer. If so, he or she would surely have requested an image of the hottest set of British royal personalities of the moment – Harry, Meghan and their new baby Archie, who were a matter of avid fascination to TV audiences around the world. Who cares about King George VI in Timbuktu? The absence of a single Sussex from the 2019 assemblage of significant royal faces reflected a deliberate decision on the part of Queen Elizabeth II. She would be providing no brand endorsement opportunities this year for Sussex Royal.
The new royal picture that the Queen did release in the middle of December 2019 and as a new decade approached showed Queen Elizabeth II herself, the future King Charles III, the future King William V – and, going even further, King George VII in the shape of little Prince George, just coming up to seven years old. The prince had been placed on a red-carpeted step in order to bring him up closer to the level of his great-grandmother. What a fascinating and historic image to remind us of the essence of the royal system! The current monarch with three future monarchs. All the living heirs – and not a suggestion of a ‘spare’.
According to insiders, this formal photograph, taken in the Buckingham Palace Throne Room a week before Christmas 2019, was the idea of Prince Charles, anxious to promote his cause of the ‘slimmed-down monarchy’. Palace sources have also let it be known that the plan of depicting the direct line of royal succession was enthusiastically supported by Prince William, who was not saying anything for the record – but who wanted to send his younger brother a message.
The message was received and it was taken to heart. ‘For Harry and Meghan,’ wrote Sussex scribes Scobie and Durand, the Queen’s Christmas choice of pictures ‘had been yet another sign that they needed to consider their own path’.
The couple had taken refuge with Archie for the Christmas break – and for several weeks of rest and reflection before that – on a wooded, four-acre Vancouver Island estate off the west coast of Canada.
‘Away from the courtiers and all things royal,’ wrote Scobie and Durand, ‘they could think for themselves.’ It was a sort of sabbatical.
Meghan had located the secluded haven through Canadian contacts she had made during her seven Rachel Zane years in Canada filming Suits – and all of a sudden it looked as if the Sussexes might have found their ‘Malta’.
Canada was very much British Commonwealth – an ideal base that met the Geidt–Manning requirements – while the pleasant urban area of Vancouver, just three hours on the plane in a single shuttle-hop from Los Angeles, had effectively become a northern suburb of Hollywood in recent years. Numerous American filmmakers lived and worked there. Lifetime TV’s two successful romantic drama movies about Meghan and Harry had even been shot there. At Thanksgiving the previous November, Grandma Doria had been able to fly up easily from LA to spend time with the family.
Whether or not Harry and Meghan chose to remain on this particular island property that was currently for sale for US$14 million–$18 million, they might well be able to make this corner of Canada their base for the next few years, both as family home and as the international headquarters of Sussex Royal. Vancouver could provide a marvellous launching pad for their Commonwealth work – particularly the sometimes-neglected Pacific side of things – and they could fly back to Britain at regular intervals to carry out some of their royal duties on the basis of their own chosen itinerary, free from the tyranny of the palace.
Before leaving London Harry had spoken to his father and grandmother with a few of his ideas about how things might change for himself and his wife within the royal structure. It was a pity that William was now so angry that he was not speaking to him any more. It was as if Harry had become un-brothered. But Charles and the Queen sounded reasonably sympathetic – although Harry had not really given them any specifics. He and Meghan ‘didn’t want to walk away from the monarchy,’ the couple later explained via Scobie and Durand. ‘Rather they wanted to find a happy place within it.’
Yet as the weeks went by and the two of them discussed the tumultuous sequence of events since the wedding – what had gone right and what had gone wrong – they came to realise that they simply could not just go back to the old way of things in Britain. It was a tough decision to make, but they would have to step back from their roles as senior royals. They could become some sort of semi-royals, they thought, and cut themselves off from access to royal money. Their three Hollywood As – attorney Rick Genow, accountant Andrew Meyer and agent Nick Collins – all flew up from Los Angeles with Keleigh Thomas Morgan, now the head of Sunshine Sachs in Hollywood, to hash out the practicalities, particularly when it came to income.
Money, both Harry and Meghan had come to realise, was at the root of the problem. The British newspapers were forever beating them round the heads about the cost of refurbishing their home at Frogmore Cottage. It was crucial that they should pay off – and should clearly be seen to pay off – the £2.4 million that had become a persecutory refrain in almost every story about their base in Windsor. Prince Charles had actually been quite sympathetic when Harry had discussed this particular issue with him, saying that he would help contribute – though why a couple whose combined net worth has been reliably estimated at £30 million–£40 million should need help from Dad to pay off their
