harry and meghan : Most liked Posts

Taken from Reddit…

Happy 100th Birthday Sir

Can I just give an alternative view to the Kate situation. My mother is also a narcissist (so many on this thread have narc mums we can spot them a mile off) and what I found was I would take and take her abuse and occasionally I snapped or fought back. It was in these moments she jumped into victim mode that I made her cry and was nasty to her. It’s quite possible that Kate was at the end of her tether with her dramatics and bullshit (just had a baby) and finally decided to speak her mind and stand up for herself. Meghan has now used this against her. Possibly the ONE time she ever fought back. This is what narcissists do. They conveniently miss out ALL of their abusive behaviour and focus on the one time you retaliated and tell everyone. OR she’s making the whole bloody thing up, either/or.

So I just watched (again) in its entirety since I missed a bit before, video on News18, of the Queen’s coffin being brought to Holyroodhouse. Let me say this. As a U.S. Army veteran who attended quite a few funerals at Arlington National Cemetery while on active duty and even after I left the ranks, I was always struck by the traditions we practice to show respect to our fallen; the caisson, gun salutes, the playing of Taps; all amazingly precise and beautiful.
What I witnessed today though, was absolutely breathtaking. The uniforms, colors and traditions are not only spectacular, but steeped in SO much more history than our U.S. traditions. There’s just something about the way the British military does things when it comes to ceremonies that no other country can do. Bravo to all the men & women who participated in todays events. You should be incredibly proud to know you have and are sending the Queen to rest in a way no other military ever could. Thank you!

HAS ANYONE ASKED THE NECKLACE IF IT’S OK???

Have we seen this???


Harry, Meghan and the palace insiders who saw what really happened

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After the death of the Queen, is there a way back for the Sussexes? Valentine Low speaks to members of the royal household about how the relationship between the court and the couple unravelled

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex at the Invictus Games in the Hague, April 2022
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Valentine Low

Friday September 23 2022, 5.00pm, The Times
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Prince Harry is looking nervous. He is in a hotel in Malawi at the end of the first day of a three-day visit there as part of his and Meghan’s 2019 tour of southern Africa. He’s got to tell the Queen that he and Meghan are about to detonate a bomb under what has, until then, been a very successful autumn tour. And he’s not looking forward to the prospect.

In two days’ time, Harry and Meghan will release an explosive announcement that Meghan is going to sue The Mail on Sunday over an article it published revealing the contents of a letter she wrote to her father. Harry will also publish a statement of his own, in which he will condemn the media and accuse the tabloids of waging a “ruthless campaign” against Meghan, vilifying her on an almost daily basis. The media’s behaviour, he will say, “destroys people and destroys lives”. But first, he has to make that phone call.



The couple going to church with the royal family, Christmas Day, 2018
PA
Harry often has an attack of the nerves before he has to speak to the Queen. So when he joined his team for a drink in the bar that Sunday evening, he sat there, so strung out and nervous that his private secretary, Sam Cohen, told him, “You need to have a beer.”
Looking back on the saga of Harry and Meghan’s alienation from the royal family, there are several moments when the final rift seemed inevitable. One of those was this tour, when they not only blew up their relations with the media, but ignored the guidance of the people who were supposed to advise them. It seems none of the staff accompanying the couple on the tour thought it was a good idea to release that statement. But the Sussexes were determined. They were on their own path and nothing was going to stop them.

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Even before Meghan came on the scene, Harry’s grievances with the media, especially the tabloid press, could lead to tensions with his staff. One insider recalls: “He was always messaging, making phone calls. It was nonstop. There were constant battles with the media and expecting the team to be on your side.… He was always on Twitter. You then had to be on everything too. Every minor infraction was a big deal.”
Harry’s enemies were not just in the media. “He definitely had mistrust of the courtiers at Buckingham Palace and his father’s palace,” said one source. This could lead to tensions within his own team who were based at Kensington Palace.
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“He would use this phrase the whole time, ‘the palace syndrome’, when you won’t fight the battles he wants, because you have been institutionalised. Giving in to the media was a key symptom of whether you had developed it. It was a constant test of loyalty: ‘Are you going to protect me? Or have you just become one of them, who won’t fight for me?’ It was exhausting.”
Kate has often played the peacemaker between the two brothers. Not that William and Harry were at loggerheads. They weren’t. But they both want to get involved in the same areas, such as conservation, and that could lead to tensions. Harry would also express his frustration at the people working for him. They were holding him back. Some of his advisers spent much of their time talking him down from the various things he wanted to do because it would not fit into the bigger picture of what the three of them – William, Kate and Harry – were trying to achieve.

The Sussexes at the Invictus Games, the Hague, April 2022
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Compounding Harry’s frustration was a long-held fear that his time was running out and that once Prince George turned 18 he would become irrelevant. “He had this thing that he had a shelf life. He was fixated [on] this. He would compare himself with his uncle [Prince Andrew]. He would say, ‘I have this time to make this impact. Because I can.’ Until George turns 18, was the way he was thinking about it. ‘Then I will be the also-ran.’ He was genuinely thinking of it as, ‘I have this platform now, for a limited amount of time. I want to move forward, move forward.’ ”
His staff assured him he was a very different person from Prince Andrew. They told him, “You can still have an impact in your forties, fifties, even longer. So long as you set the right foundations now.” But he never saw that.
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Harry’s obsession with the media, his sense of frustration, mistrust of palace courtiers and the constant loyalty tests of his own staff were all there before Meghan. But after Meghan turned up, it got significantly worse.

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No sooner was Harry’s relationship with Meghan made public in October 2016 than the massive invasion Harry had feared began.
Faced with hordes of journalists intent on trawling through every aspect of Meghan’s life, Harry became determined to protect his girlfriend. Meghan, meanwhile, told him that if he did not do something about it, she would break off the relationship. A source said: “She was saying, ‘If you don’t put out a statement confirming I’m your girlfriend, I’m going to break up with you.’ ” Harry was in a panic. Another source said: “He was freaking out, saying, ‘She’s going to dump me.’ ”

Communications secretary Jason Knauf
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Harry turned to Jason Knauf, the bright young American who was recruited by Kensington Palace in 2015 to be the communications secretary for the Cambridges and Prince Harry. His previous role had been running the communications for the crisis-hit Royal Bank of Scotland. He loved working for William and Kate and Harry.
Harry phoned Knauf, demanding that he put out a statement confirming that Meghan was his girlfriend and condemning the racist and sexist undertones of some of the media coverage. Meghan wanted public validation that this was a serious relationship. She was convinced that the palace was unwilling to protect her from media intrusion. She told Harry’s staff: “I know how the palace works. I know how this is going to play out. You don’t care about the girlfriend.”
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This, however, was just the beginning. Keeping Meghan happy – and, by extension, keeping Harry happy – was an ongoing challenge. Harry’s staff knew that Meghan was different from other royal girlfriends. She had her own opinions and would let people know what they were. In the spring of 2017, more than six months before the couple were engaged, she told one of Harry’s advisers: “I think we both know I’m going to be one of your bosses soon.”
There was also a lot riding on Meghan. The palace knew it could not afford to repeat the mistakes that were made with Princess Diana. Before the wedding, Meghan had a meeting with Miguel Head, William’s private secretary, who told her that the palace would do everything they could to help. There was no need to think that she had to take on her new role in a particular way.
Meghan thanked Head and said she wanted to concentrate on her humanitarian and philanthropic work and to support Harry as a member of the royal family. As one source said, “The entire place, because of everything about her and because of what Harry’s previous girlfriends had been through, was bending over backwards to make sure that every option was open.”
Sir David Manning, former ambassador to the US who was William and Harry’s foreign affairs adviser, also put his mind to thinking about how Meghan might fit in to the royal family and what married life could look like for them. However, the couple’s sense of frustration and their suspicion of the palace establishment was already causing problems. An early issue was security. In the immediate period after her arrival in London there was no straightforward mechanism for providing Meghan with full-time police protection, especially at a time when the palace was trying to slim down the level of security provided to members of the royal family.

Prince Harry with his private secretary Ed Lane Fox
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Such matters were decided by a Home Office committee called Ravec (the executive committee for the protection of royalty and public figures). Harry’s private secretary at the time, Ed Lane Fox, a former captain in the Blues and Royals who’d joined Harry’s close-knit team in 2013, argued Meghan needed to be protected immediately.
“Ed had to wage a huge battle to get them to understand that she would not be able to live her life without police protection. Meghan had no idea that this was even happening, because we did not want her to have another reason to think that she wasn’t going to be welcomed. Ed did amazing things for her behind the scenes, but none of them was really appreciated.”
To Harry and Meghan, the two months that it took to get a decision about her security seemed like an age. They felt as if the powers that be were simply unwilling to provide her with the security she needed.

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At this time, at the Queen’s request, the Lord Chamberlain, Earl Peel – the most senior figure in the household – went to see the couple to explain to Meghan how the palace worked. He recalled, “I liked her, actually. She was very forthright. Very, very polite. Very understanding. She wanted to learn.”
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However, relations between Meghan and the team at Kensington Palace were fraying fast. In late 2017, after the couple’s engagement was announced, a senior aide discreetly raised with the couple the difficulties caused by their treatment of staff. People needed to be treated well and with some understanding, even when they were not performing to Harry and Meghan’s standards, they suggested. Meghan was said to have replied, “It’s not my job to coddle people.”
Meanwhile, she wasn’t dealing with the more junior staff, even people whom William and Kate – and Harry, before Meghan came along – had been quite happy to engage with. It seemed that she wanted respect and having to talk to someone a bit further down the pecking order – in a small office, where there wasn’t much of a pecking order – wasn’t treating her with respect. “She would take it as an insult,” believes one source.

Angela Kelly, the Queen’s dresser
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Organising the wedding was particularly stressful. There were rows about scheduling, the wedding announcements, the gospel choir and, most famously, the tiara. In the months before the wedding, Meghan was told that the Queen would lend her a tiara for the big day, just as she had done for Kate Middleton seven years earlier. An appointment was made in February for Meghan to look at a shortlist of appropriate tiaras at Buckingham Palace. Accompanied by Harry, and under the watchful eye of Angela Kelly, the Queen’s dresser, who is also curator of the Queen’s jewellery, Meghan opted for Queen Mary’s diamond bandeau tiara.
Meghan then needed to make sure her hairdresser had an opportunity to rehearse with it before the day itself. Unfortunately, on the day her hairdresser, Serge Normant, was in town, Angela Kelly was not available, so neither was the tiara. In Harry’s view, this was Kelly being obstructive. According to the book Finding Freedom, Kelly had ignored repeated requests from Kensington Palace to set up a date for a hair trial. And Harry was furious. “Nothing could convince Harry that some of the old guard at the palace simply didn’t like Meghan and would stop at nothing to make her life difficult,” wrote the book’s authors.
But there is another version: that Harry and Meghan were naive at best, entitled at worst, to expect others to jump to their command when they had not even bothered to make an appointment. As a source told The Mail on Sunday: “Meghan demanded access to the tiara. She didn’t make an appointment with Angela but said, ‘We’re at Buckingham Palace. We want the tiara. Can we have it now please?’ Angela essentially said, ‘I’m very sorry, that’s not how it works. There’s protocol in place over these jewels. They’re kept under very tight lock and key. You can’t turn up and demand to have the tiara just because your hairdresser happens to be in town.’ ”

The Queen at Harry and Meghan’s wedding, May 19, 2018
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Harry then began ringing others to put pressure on Kelly to bend the rules and in the course of his less than diplomatic efforts is said to have used some fairly fruity language. Whether Harry swore at his grandmother’s aide, or about her, is not clear. But she wasn’t impressed. She reported all this to the Queen, who summoned Harry to a private meeting. “He was firmly put in his place,” a source said. “He had been downright rude.”
At around the same time, Meghan spoke particularly harshly at a meeting to a young female member of the team in front of her colleagues. After Meghan had pulled to shreds a plan she had drawn up, the woman told Meghan how hard it would be to implement a new one. “Don’t worry,” Meghan told her. “If there was literally anyone else I could ask to do this, I would be asking them instead of you.”
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Later, Prince William, who had heard of some of the treatment that she had been subjected to, came to find the woman. “I hope you’re OK,” he told her. “You’re doing a really good job.” She promptly burst into tears.
On another occasion, when Meghan felt she had been let down over an issue that was worrying her, she rang repeatedly when the staffer was out for dinner on a Friday night. “Every ten minutes, I had to go outside to be screamed at by her and Harry. It was, ‘I can’t believe you’ve done this. You’ve let me down. What were you thinking?’ It went on for a couple of hours.” The calls started again the next morning and continued “for days”, the staffer said. “You could not escape them. There were no lines or boundaries – it was last thing at night, first thing in the morning.”
Relations between the couple and some of their senior staff became so fractious that Miguel Head had to step in to keep the peace.

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Ed Lane Fox never planned to stay much longer than five years working for Harry. A few days after the wedding, Buckingham Palace announced that Samantha Cohen, the Queen’s former assistant private secretary, would be stepping in to help the couple out for six months as their interim private secretary. Cohen, then aged 49, had already handed in her notice at Buckingham Palace, but just as she was preparing to leave, after 17 years, the Queen, who had a high regard for her, asked her to stay on and help Harry and Meghan. Cohen – everyone calls her Sam – was one of the most popular and well-regarded members of the Queen’s household.

The Duchess of Sussex with Samantha Cohen, the Sussexes’ interim private secretary, June 2018
GETTY IMAGES
Harry knew her well already, as did William, and was very fond of her. The feeling was reciprocated. Cohen was determined to make her new job work. “Harry was initially very enthusiastic,” said a source. But Cohen was soon to discover that making Harry and Meghan happy was a bigger challenge than she had anticipated.
In autumn 2018, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex undertook their first official overseas trip to Australia, Fiji, Tonga and New Zealand. Jason Knauf did not join them because he had recently broken his collar bone.
Knauf had been growing increasingly concerned about how staff were being treated by Meghan – and Harry too. The issue had been brought into focus by the departure of Meghan’s PA, Melissa Touabti, just six months after joining the palace. Touabti, who was the second PA to leave after Meghan’s arrival, was a 39-year-old Frenchwoman who had previously worked for Robbie Williams and his wife, Ayda Field.
After she left, a palace source paid tribute to Touabti’s talents in an agreed statement with Touabti. A week later, the Sunday Mirror reported how Meghan had reduced Touabti to tears. A source told the paper: “Her job was highly pressurised and in the end it became too much. She put up with quite a lot. Meghan put a lot of demands on her and it ended up with her in tears… Melissa is a total professional and fantastic at her job, but things came to a head and it was easier for them both to go their separate ways.”
Since then, palace sources have said that the clashes between Meghan and Touabti centred on the free gifts that some companies would send to Meghan. Deliveries were constantly arriving at Kensington Palace. “Clothes, jewellery, candles… It was absolutely nonstop,” said a source. Touabti was apparently punctilious in following the household rule that members of the royal family cannot accept freebies from commercial organisations. Her approach did not go down well with Meghan.
On another occasion, there was confusion over the arrangements for a London engagement by the duchess. Meghan thought that no media would be there, but it was on a press rota. It was the sort of mishap that did not go down well. The member of staff involved knew they would have to talk to Meghan about it and was dreading the prospect. After they missed a call from her, they rang back, but she did not pick up. They said: “She hasn’t called back. I feel terrified.” A short time later, they added: “This is so ridiculous. I can’t stop shaking.”
As one source said: “There were a lot of broken people. Young women were broken by their behaviour.” One member of staff, they said, was “completely destroyed”. Another staffer who had been having a rough time told a colleague they were considering resigning and that the couple were “outrageous bullies”, adding, “I will never trust or like them again, but have made peace with that.” The colleague replied: “That’s so dreadful. And they are bullies.”
The harsh treatment was not confined to junior staff. One source said that Samantha Cohen had been bullied. Another said: “They treated her terribly. Nothing was ever good enough. It was, ‘She doesn’t understand. She’s failing.’ ” In fact, the source said, Cohen was “a saint” and the best organiser of royal tours they had known.
In February 2021 the duchess’s lawyers denied that Cohen had been bullied, saying that the couple were always grateful for her support and dedication. “She remains very close to the duke and duchess.”
On October 26, 2018, just as Harry and Meghan were flying from Tonga to Sydney for the Invictus Games, Knauf wrote an email to his immediate boss, Simon Case, Prince William’s private secretary, saying that he had spoken to the head of HR for the palace about “some very serious problems” concerning Meghan’s behaviour. He wrote: “I am very concerned that the duchess was able to bully two PAs out of the household in the past year… The duchess seems intent on always having someone in her sights. She is bullying X [name withheld by author] and seeking to undermine her confidence. We have had report after report from people who have witnessed unacceptable behaviour towards X despite the universal views from her colleagues that she is a leading talent within the household who is delivering first-rate work.”

With the Prince and Princess of Wales at Windsor Castle following the death of the Queen, September 10, 2022
PA
Knauf, who was in daily contact with staff on the tour, went on to say that the tour was “very challenging” and was “made worse by the behaviour of the duchess”. He also expressed concerns about his own standing and suggested that even Samantha Cohen could be struggling to cope.
“I asked [Sam Carruthers, the head of HR] what would happen if the duchess turned on me next, as seems possible given her behaviour in recent weeks,” he wrote. “I asked what would be done to make sure Sam Cohen feels supported. I raised the very real possibility that she could be struggling with severe stress and could have to walk away from her position.” Knauf concluded by saying that Carruthers “agreed with me on all counts that the situation was very serious”. He added: “I remain concerned that nothing will be done.”
It can be hard to define exactly when a particular behaviour amounts to bullying. As Jenny Afia, the solicitor who later represented the duchess in her action against The Mail on Sunday put it: “What bullying actually means is improperly using power repeatedly and deliberately to hurt someone physically or emotionally. The Duchess of Sussex absolutely denies ever doing that. Knowing her as I do, I can’t believe she would ever do that. It just doesn’t match my experience of her at all.”
There was, however, no doubt that Meghan could be a demanding boss. There were a number of people, allegedly including Harry himself, who suggested that the problems were partly to do with cultural differences in management style. Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand, authors of Finding Freedom, said “Americans can be much more direct, and that often doesn’t sit well in the much more refined institution of the monarchy.” However, Jason Knauf, the person who made the bullying allegation, was also American. Insiders said this was about more than just Meghan’s American straight talking.
Meanwhile, Harry and Meghan were going down a storm on the tour. Massive crowds were turning out to see them and Meghan’s refreshingly informal approach to royal visits was proving a hit with the Australian public. When she turned up at the home of a farming family, she brought some banana bread that she had baked herself. When the couple visited a school to see the work of a programme to improve the educational outcomes of young Aboriginals, she was fêted as an inspirational role model.
Behind the scenes it was a different story. Although she enjoyed the attention, Meghan failed to understand the point of all those walkabouts, shaking hands with countless strangers. According to several members of staff, she was heard to say on at least one occasion, “I can’t believe I’m not getting paid for this.”
One member of the tour party, more sympathetic than most to Meghan, said, “I think Sam was trying to work out what was this office going to look like after Meghan had arrived. Meghan wanted to bring in her people rather than turn to the traditional Buckingham Palace people. My impression was that it was proving very, very difficult to hold this together. And in the middle of all that, not only are they newly married, but you’ve got a very big tour to do and Meghan’s pregnant. So it was certainly clear that there were lots of pressures.”
More than once, staff felt they were treated harshly. On the journey from Tonga to Sydney, Sam Cohen was said to have had a particularly torrid time of it, according to one source.
“Sam had been screamed at before the flight and during.” After that, she warned other staff to stay away from Harry and Meghan for the rest of the day. That evening, her colleagues tried to arrange matters so that she did not have to see Harry and Meghan any more than was strictly necessary. “It was so horrible to see yesterday,” one said the next day. According to one source, David Manning, who was always a reassuring presence on tours, would say, “You are dealing with a very difficult lady.”
The effect of Meghan’s behaviour was perhaps seen in its starkest terms some time after Knauf wrote his email to Simon Case. Harry had heard about the complaint and had tried to persuade Knauf to make it go away (something denied by the Sussexes’ lawyers). One member of staff, who was named by Knauf in the email, was due to work with Meghan the next day and was worried that she would find out about the complaint.
“This is why I feel sick,” they said. “I don’t want to have to get into the car with her tomorrow morning… She will blame me for it, which will make tomorrow absolutely horrific.”

With Clare Waight Keller at the Fashion Awards, 2019
GETTY IMAGES
In the months after the South Pacific tour, the relationship between Jason Knauf and Harry and Meghan was effectively over, even though Knauf was still officially in charge of their media operation. In December, Meghan, wearing a black one-shoulder Givenchy dress, made a surprise appearance at the British Fashion Awards at the Royal Albert Hall, where she presented an award to Clare Waight Keller, who had designed her wedding dress. Knauf had no idea it was happening until Meghan was on stage. She had refused to let Sam Cohen or her assistant private secretary, Amy Pickerill, tell him it was happening.
A month after Knauf sent his bullying allegations to Simon Case, he handed in his notice. He was instead taken on by William and Kate as a special adviser and later became chief executive of the couple’s charitable body, the Royal Foundation.
The bullying allegations, meanwhile, accelerated a major shake-up at Kensington Palace, with Harry and Meghan splitting their household from William and Kate’s.
The hiring of a new communications secretary for the Sussexes in early 2019 was part of this process. First, however, decisions had to be made about what that household would look like and where it would be based.
The palace wanted to set them up with an office within Buckingham Palace. Harry and Meghan wanted their own arrangement, probably at Windsor Castle, near their new home of Frogmore Cottage. If they were stuck in Buckingham Palace, subservient to the whole palace machine, they would be no better than other lesser royals such as the Duke of York or the Earl and Countess of Wessex. But there was no way that the palace would fund the establishment of a separate satellite operation. It was a decision by the Queen and the Prince of Wales, both of whom were keenly aware of the need to avoid unnecessary extravagance.
The Sussexes did, at least, get a big team. It included a private secretary, two assistant private secretaries, a communications secretary and two other communications officers, as well as administrative staff.
Sara Latham – a dual US-British citizen with a bright smile and seemingly boundless energy – was the PR big-hitter who was going to be in charge of communications. Then a managing partner at the Freuds PR agency, she had a wealth of experience, having been a senior adviser on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. “Sara was very experienced and exactly what they needed,” said one source. “She was capable of telling truth to power and being honest with them.”
Meanwhile, Cohen was clearly delighted to be getting out soon. A source once said: “Sam always made clear that it was like working for a couple of teenagers. They were impossible and pushed her to the limit. She was miserable.”
Cohen “was at her wits’ end”, said a friend. She was exhausted, had stayed on with the Sussexes for longer than she originally planned and felt isolated from the rest of the royal hierarchy now that she was no longer in the Queen’s private office. “She was constantly having to battle on Harry and Meghan’s behalf, while taking all this abuse from them.” She also found herself getting far more involved in arranging their personal lives than would normally be appropriate for a private secretary, who, despite the job title, is just there to look after their official lives.
Her replacement was Fiona Mcilwham, who had become one of the youngest British ambassadors in history when she was appointed to Albania in 2009 aged 35.
At first, Latham and Meghan were a golden combination. She told a friend, “I love this job. It’s amazing.” Latham would go round for lunch with the duchess at Frogmore Cottage to talk things over. Latham thought she understood Meghan, who believed that the press hated her and that she was a victim of racism in the media. The way Latham saw it, Meghan as an American was a victim of cultural differences rather than racism. What she needed was someone to hold her hand and help her navigate her way through the minefield.
It did not take long for the shine to wear off. There was a series of battles with the media that spring and summer. First came Meghan’s lavish baby shower in New York. Then, when Archie was due in May, Meghan was determined to avoid the indignity of a royal birth with journalists camped outside the hospital. The palace put out a statement saying that the duchess had gone into labour, only for it to emerge later than she had, in fact, given birth some eight hours before.
In the summer, the couple’s taste for private jet travel brought them further criticism. After Harry gave an address about the need to save the environment at a Google Camp being held on Sicily (and then flying back on a private jet provided by Google with Leonardo DiCaprio), he and Meghan took four flights on private jets in less than a week to visit Ibiza and the south of France. This prompted rows with Sara Latham, who had advised Harry against taking private jets.

With her assistant private secretary, Amy Pickerill
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Relations between the couple and Latham became increasingly tense. Close colleagues began to wonder how long Latham would want to stick around. At the back of their minds was the feeling that anyone leaving the Sussex team would be best advised to think of a good excuse. Meghan did not like it if she thought it was about her. Next to go was Meghan’s assistant private secretary, Amy Pickerill. At the time, sources said the departure – described by Meghan as “very sad” – was amicable. In fact, when Meghan learnt that Pickerill had handed in her notice, she was so angry that she refused to let Pickerill travel with her in the car to an official engagement in London that morning.
By August 2019, things were “awful and tense” within the Sussex household. There were also clues that Harry and Meghan did not see their long-term future as working members of the royal family. Their Africa tour was coming up, but there was nothing in the diary after that. Meanwhile, staff were increasingly aware of the presence in the background of Meghan’s business manager, Andrew Meyer, and her lawyer, Rick Genow, as well as her agent, Nick Collins, and Keleigh Thomas Morgan of Sunshine Sachs. The US team had been very busy, working on deals not only with Netflix but also a deal for Harry’s mental health series for Apple+ with Oprah Winfrey and Meghan’s voiceover for a Disney film about elephants.
While preparing for the Africa tour, the team was trying to persuade the couple that it would be appropriate to do an interview with the British media. Sam Cohen suggested Tom Bradby of ITV, who already had a relationship with Harry. Meghan was reluctant at first. Her attention was focused on the prospect of doing an interview with Oprah Winfrey. After thinking about it, however, Harry said they would agree. There was one proviso: he and Meghan could not do interviews together or be in the same shot. That would go against their deal with Oprah, which at that point was slated for the autumn of that year. (It eventually went ahead more than a year later, in March 2021.)

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The first real intimation the public had that all was not well in Meghan’s world came in October 2019, when ITV released a trailer for its documentary, Harry & Meghan: an African Journey. As Meghan spoke to Tom Bradby in a garden in Johannesburg, she spoke about how she had struggled with life in the spotlight as a newlywed and as a new mother. Almost as if she were trying to hold back tears, she said she had found it hard and added, “And also, thank you for asking, because not many people have asked if I’m OK. But it’s a very real thing to be going through behind the scenes.”

Talking to ITV’s Tom Bradby on the Sussexes’ tour of Africa
ITV
The trailer came out while William and Kate were on a tour of Pakistan. The resulting coverage inevitably overshadowed reporting of the last day of the Cambridges’ tour. The Cambridge team was not happy and saw it as a deliberate attempt to knock the Cambridges out of the headlines. Relations between the two households became quite tense.
When the documentary came out, it also showed how far Harry and William had drifted apart. Asked by Bradby about the rift between him and William, Harry chose not to deny it, but said instead, “We are certainly on different paths at the moment, but I will always be there for him, as I know he will always be there for me.”
William, back home after the Pakistan tour, appears to have been taken aback at such a stark portrayal of his brother and sister-in-law’s unhappiness. He realised they were in crisis. The day after the documentary aired, William whatsapped his brother to ask if he could come and see him. This put Harry and Meghan into a spin. What should they do? Initially, Harry was in favour. Then he spoke to his brother again and asked him who he would tell. William explained that he would have to clear his schedule, which would mean telling his private secretary. At that point, Harry said don’t come. He was so concerned that William’s team would leak the visit to the press that he would rather they did not come than risk it getting into the papers. It highlighted once again the dysfunction at the heart of so many royal relationships and that members of the royal family so rarely pick up the phone and speak to each other directly.
Just five months later, Harry and Meghan would step down as working members of the royal family and move to Canada before finally settling in California.
This is an edited extract from Courtiers: the Hidden Power Behind the Crown by Valentine Low, published on October 6 by Headline Books (£20)




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Turns out she was surrounded by the right people after all Harry.

As a Jewish woman who clearly remembers Sparry in his nazi costume, I can't take him seriously. All this "protecting" and the UK are so bad is draining. I'm currently contemplating whether to put my heating on or to wait for my son to get home from school. And I would love to get lunch delivered but it's 2 weeks until payday. Sadly I can't call my daddy the King to ask for a few million to be sent because I stomped my feet.

I'm sure it's already been mentioned (apologies I haven't read all the threads), but I was impressed that Hazza managed to walk the length of the procession today without his piece having to put a hand on his back to guide him or cling on to his arm. It was really quite remarkable. He actually managed to put one foot in front of the other totally independently and without any of her assistance. Well done Harry!

Someone on another site said that Charles should write a children's book about his bear and how everyone needs comfort. I think it is a bloody brilliant idea and a wonderful support to the children's charities under their patronage. Taking it further, they could team up with Catherine's iniative for the first five years, Princess Anne's Save the Children and Queen Camilla's Barnardos patronage. Maybe even pull in Eugenie's modern slavery charity. They could even pair up with a British toy manufacturer so that every baby gets a teddy bear from the King at birth (much like the Princess Diana Beanie Baby)

To me, the phrase ' casts a long shadow' means the person was so amazing, their influence will affect us for a long time. The person was a force to be reckoned with.
The Queen's power was her quiet dignity. Her dedication to duty. Her diplomacy and her ability to calm troubled waters.
This sketch is meant to represent that.
It also shows that she may have been a frail old lady but she was so much more than that.
She was amazing.

The Sussexbots tried it on with the wrong Twitter account today..

They are the unluckiest people alive, like there some greater being out to scupper them

they get married just after Catherine gave birth- Catherine looked stunning, not what TW was hoping for

they flounce off in a huff ready to take the world by storm make millions - covid hits

they do their first big cry fest - prince Philip Sadly passes away

they come back for the jubilee hoping for some money shots for Netflix -Granny says haha!! Piss off second row no balcony

they do the fake royal tour - sadly our queen passes away

they must of really fucked someone off in a previous life or possibly this one who am I kidding

I just found another great anecdote about Prince Philip on Twatter

Well played Piers!

I should mark this as off topic…but I dont know how. So forgive me for venting here in this ‘safe space.’

My dear friend is going to die today..or sometime very soon. 53 days she has been fighting to stay with us..but there are no more options…so she will come home. The blessing will be that she will…once again..be in her own bed and the faces around the bed will be those she loves best.

On Coronation weekend, she collapsed at an hotel, dressing for a wedding. When she came back to us…she often needed a wheelchair. But she never missed a party, a shopping trip, or a girls-day-out. We’d throw the chair in the back of the car…and have all the fun we always had.

It was a lovely summer. Our group of friends entertains a lot and she insisted on doing her share. Two weeks before she went in for this ‘procedure’…she even had a house-full of her husband’s out-of-town golfing buddies stay for a week.

She never complained. Whatever she feared, whatever she was facing…we saw only her smile, her strength, her joy of life. Only the chair reminded us that something was still wrong.

52 days ago, the day before ‘the procedure’, we had a long conversation. We made plans. Very happy plans. The best time of year was ahead. Thanksgiving, Christmas.

We made a lot of plans. But we are in the ‘closing chapters’ of our lives now…and some storylines are ending abruptly.

But I'm thinking this early morning that there is a lesson in this for me. A lesson from HER…from how she chose to traverse these last months of her life. How she dealt with her pain, real and emotional.

My family begins arriving this week. The house is decorated to the hilt…the stollen is baked…the gifts, well, not wrapped, but stuck in bags. The drinks party invitations are sent so they can see their friends. A few neighbors who would otherwise be alone, will come for Christmas dinner.

My family is coming for CHRISTMAS…coming from their busy hectic lives…for everything that Christmas has meant to them since the day they were born. I am the producer of this ‘show’ and the show must go on. Because the lesson of all the plans K and I made..are that…plans change. Often without our permission. Storylines wrap up. The beloved main characters in our lives…leave.

Christmases cannot be wasted. Not one single one.

So I will remember how strong she was. And how she gifted us with joy just to be around her.

I will cry in the bathtub if needed. I will not waste Christmas.

He's gone too far now.