This was a shoddy way to treat the Queen, writes ROBERT HARDMAN… Yes, the monarchy will survive but what will the true cost be of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle turning their backs on the Firm?
The New Year has barely begun and the royal commentators are already dusting off the ‘annus horribilis’ moniker again.
For it is hard to see last night’s decision by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex to step back from the Royal Family as anything other than the start of a process with which the whole country is all too wearily familiar.
Brexit will not be the only seismic departure for which January 2020 is long remembered.
Turning their backs: The Duke and Duchess’s departure from their senior roles and subsequent Fab Four is how the start of 2020 will be remembered. A joint approach will be needed to handle this predicament similarly to Prince Andrew’s disastrous interview to Newsnight
However, let us be clear: though this is the prelude to much anguish for the Queen, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge, the monarchy is not in crisis. The direct line — reinforced just last week with another enchanting portrait of the Queen and heirs one to three — is as sturdy as it was yesterday morning. This is not an Edward and Wallis moment. This is not ‘Rexit’.
The sixth-in-line to the throne and his wife have decided to declare unilateral independence from a thousand-year-old institution on their own terms.
Coming just a month after another second son — Prince Andrew — inflicted a very different sort of damage on the institution, it is going to require some hard talking and painful home truths.
Just as the Queen and the Prince of Wales had to join forces to deal with the crisis created by the Duke of York following his disastrous interview to Newsnight, so there will need to be a joint approach in their handling of this predicament.
Prince Harry and Meghan released a statement on their official Instagram account in which they today revealed that they will be stepping down. In understated Palacespeak, courtiers spoke about their anxiety which boiled down to an expasperated: ‘We haven’t a clue what the hell is going on’
The Sussexes will be mortified even to be compared to the Duke of York, of course. But there can no longer be any question of letting ‘Harry be Harry’ and hoping it all just goes away.
There are also political implications here which have clearly been given zero consideration by the Duke and Duchess, as we shall see.
The Queen (pictured watching a flypast of Royal Air Force aircraft pass over Buckingham Palace in London on July 10, 2018) could end up being dragged in to politics as the Royal family tries to organise Harry and Meghan’s overseas semi-royal business
Last night’s statement followed the most preliminary of internal discussions — between officials — about how the Sussexes might forge a new modus vivendi. With little more than a few outline thoughts on the table, the couple then took it upon themselves to lay out their future as some sort of done deal with just a few loose ends to be sorted out.
Inside the Palace, the calmest courtiers sigh through gritted teeth that things are ‘complicated’. In understated Palacespeak, that boils down to an expasperated: ‘We haven’t a clue what the hell is going on.’
The Royal couple hold their baby boy Archie during a photocall in St Georges Hall at Windsor Castle
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex released this statement this evening announcing that they will be quitting as senior Royals
‘It’s just not fair on the Queen. It is disrespectful of her,’ says one insider. Another goes so far as to call it ‘a shoddy way to treat the Sovereign’.
The anger inside royal HQ is palpable. These are wounds that will not heal easily.
However honourable and well-intentioned Harry and Meghan’s intentions to continue ‘to honour our duty to the Queen, the Commonwealth and our patronages’, the very idea is fraught with contradictions. And that is before we even get to the all-important subject of money.
Britain’s Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Meghan, Meghan Duchess of Sussex reacts as they leave after her visit to Canada House in thanks for the warm Canadian hospitality and support they received during their recent stay in Canada
Royal duty is all or nothing. It is not something one ‘honours’ when one happens to be in a particular time zone. In referring to their future trans-Atlantic existence, the Sussexes have pointedly referred to ‘North America’ rather than Canada.
While Canada is in the Commonwealth, the U.S. is not. So what happens when duty calls in the UK or elsewhere in the Commonwealth and you are already committed to a red-carpet do in Hollywood?
Even more nebulous is the Sussexes’ claim that ‘we have chosen to make a transition this year in starting to carve out a progressive new role within this institution’.
The whole point of a monarchy is that it does not do ‘progressive new roles’. It is not the regal wing of the Liberal Democrats. It stands for stability and continuity.
It has to move with the times, of course, and it must never be a barrier to progress. It should always seek to assist it; witness the work of organisations such as the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award and the Prince’s Trust.
Rumours abounded before they confirmed this evening that they would be splitting their time between the UK and North America. Here they are pictured in Sydney, Australia, on October 19 last year
But it is not for members of the family to rewrite the compact between royalty and state which has evolved over centuries purely because they feel put-upon by the media.
And it is even more damaging to do it in public without having the courtesy to tell the family first.
Though the Sussexes were clearly aggrieved that talk of their plans had leaked to a newspaper yesterday, it has dismayed the rest of the family that their solution has been to chuck the whole thing into the open. That is not the royal way.
Harry and Meghan (pictured on December 21, 2019) ‘have chosen to make a transition this year in starting to carve out a progressive new role within this institution’. The whole point of a monarchy is that it does not do ‘progressive new roles’. It is not the regal wing of the Liberal Democrats
As always in such matters, it is money which goes to the heart of the problem. It is very admirable of the couple to ‘work to become financially independent’ but that is a notoriously difficult path to tread. The Earl and Countess of Wessex found that some years ago when they did their best to pursue commercial careers but were accused of exploiting royal connections. They felt they had no option but to revert to the tried and tested template of the ‘working royal’ and they have been a great asset to the institution ever since. It may be a life of privilege, funded largely by the Queen from the Privy Purse and not from public funds, but it is a life governed by codes and expectations and strict limits on the use of royal status.
The Prince of Wales (pictured, alongside William, George and The Queen is already moving closer to adopting a modern ‘Prince Regent’ role, which would see him control day-to-day royal affairs while his mother remains monarch
The Sussexes’ position is not sustainable. If a member of the family seeks true financial independence, making a living from non-royal activities, accusations of exploiting the royal brand are inevitable. That, in turn, can tarnish the rest of The Firm.
One royal insider warns that this could lead to something the Queen has spent her whole life trying to avoid – being dragged in to politics. For when it comes to semi-royalty, who pays for what? When the Home Secretary is pressed to find cuts in the police budget, it will be hard to fall back on the old standard reply that ‘we never comment on royal security’. What about semi-royal security? And how are British – or ‘North American’ – embassies and high commissions supposed to respond when the Sussexes decide to travel overseas on semi-royal business? It has been a question which diplomats have sometimes raised with the Foreign Office in connection with the Duke of York’s travel overseas but the global profile of Sussexes is of an entirely different order of magnitude.
Friends of the Sussexes have heard the Duke angrily pointing out in private that very little of his costs fall on the taxpayer anyway. However, though most of the costs of his growing household currently fall on the Duchy of Cornwall – and will fall on the King in a future reign – there are still demands on the public purse for security, royal residences, royal transport and staff.
All these things could have been addressed and, in large part, resolved if negotiations within the Palace had been continued in private. However, as the Sussexes are about to find out, negotiating in public is much harder.
Meghan signing a guestbook at Canada House. The couple both appeared to be refreshed and in high spirits following their break
There is, however, a precedent for all this. Some, no doubt, will point to the Duke and Duchess of Windsor as a royal couple who ended up in semi-detached self-imposed exile through their love for one another but, in truth, their predicament bears no comparison. It was imposed on them by constitutional necessity.
No one is telling Harry and Meghan to go. They are a not an embarrassment to the Monarchy but an adornment. What makes this whole business so sad is the luminous sense of promise less than two years ago on that magical day at Windsor Castle as more than a billion people looked on around the world.
Almost exactly 100 years before another member of the Royal Family was getting married. But HRH Princess Patricia of Connaught had elected to make a choice in 1919. Back then, the daughter of Queen Victoria’s third son was expected to marry royalty and had once been tipped as a future Tsarina of Russia. Instead, she chose to marry a (very posh) commoner, Alexander Ramsay, at Westminster Abbey. In doing so, she readily agreed to surrender her royal styles and titles on her wedding day, though not her place in the line of succession. She was given the title of ‘Lady Patricia’ for the rest of her life. As such, she is the only member of the family who has entered a church as a Princess and left as ‘Lady’.
I doubt it is a template which will appeal to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. But that is the clearest example of someone offloading the ‘senior’ royal status which Harry and Meghan wish to shelve.
Meghan will be closer to her celebrity friends Beyonce and Jay-Z (pictured at the European premiere of The Lion King in July, 2019). In referring to their future trans-Atlantic existence, the Sussexes have pointedly referred to ‘North America’ rather than Canada
How pointless all that talk of a ‘slimmed-down Royal Family’ looks now. With three ‘senior’ members of the family now out of the frame – the Duke of York very much against his wishes and the Sussexes by their own design – that crucial but unsung day-to-day work of regional visits and generally representing the Monarch will now land on fewer shoulders.
The Queen will now be more grateful than ever for the oft-neglected input of the Princess Royal, the Wessexes and the cousins, royalty who seldom flourish in the spotlight but who now, more than ever, will be needed to help to keep the show on the road.
That show will go on, of course, because it always has and because this is an institution that has always been far stronger than any individual.
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