It’s been a tricky few weeks for Prince Harry.
First, he quit his beloved African charity Sentebale, which helps children and young people, following a ‘race’ row.
Then, just a few days ago, the prince announced he might set up a new charity to rival Sentebale, claiming he is ‘absolutely committed to continue the work he started’.
All rather humiliating, you might think.
Harry was exonerated by an inquiry into the most serious claims – that, with the charity’s trustees, he had been guilty of bullying, ‘misogynoir’ [a combination of racism and misogyny] and straightforward racism.
Yet the sour smell of failure mixed with arrogance – a privileged Prince saving vulnerable children then appearing to abandon them – still clings to him.
The Sentebale row is, as we now know, a complicated mess of claim and counter claim. Yet, amid the tangle, one question is clear: where was Meghan as the whole imbroglio unfolded?
Where was the support from his beloved wife as Harry stood accused – what an irony! – of committing some of the very sins she heaped on the Royal Family in that explosive Oprah interview in 2021.
The Sentebale row is, as we now know, a complicated mess of claim and counter claim. Yet, amid the tangle, one question is clear: where was Meghan as the whole imbroglio unfolded?
Meghan Markle’s closest friends, including Jamie Kern Lima, pictured with the Duchess, have marked her 44th birthday with a series of gushing tributes shared to social media
Why was Meghan, a woman usually so determined to parade their perfect family life to four million followers on Instagram, not out there in public to defend her beloved ‘H’?
Why, for that matter, was there nothing but a passing reference to her husband when she celebrated – with a solo picture of herself – her 44th birthday last week? The duchess merely thanked ‘my husband’ in passing, without so much as naming him.
I have to agree with my respected colleague Dr Max Pemberton, a leading NHS psychiatrist, when he wrote this week: ‘What’s puzzling is that Meghan has remained silent. No signs of support.’
He continued: ‘While Harry is battling court cases and losing his beloved charity, Meghan seems to be on a high with her As Ever brand and Netflix show.’
My sad conclusion is that Meghan now understands Harry is bad for her brand of love and gorgeousness and homemade jam. And that she will allow nothing, not even her husband’s despair, to get in the way of her plan to rake in millions from it.
Harry has certainly played his part to help the couple earn a crust or five.
His best-selling victim memoir Spare was a genuine hit. He also played a full part in the couple’s hugely popular autobiographical series on Netflix in 2022.
But that sort of confessional – some might say bile-fuelled – income stream seems to have dried up, for the moment at least.
Instead, it is Meghan Sussex, as she now prefers to be called, who has taken up the slack, launching herself as an influencer with her brand, With Love, Meghan.
It seems she has been rather successful. Few doubt that it is her appeal – and vast social media following – that has persuaded Netflix to give the Sussexes a new ‘first look’ multi-year contract to make shows (even if at a rate considerably reduced from their previous deal, which had been estimated at around $100million).
Prince Harry and Sentebale chairwoman Dr Sophie Chandauka in Miami in April last year
Yet, in launching herself as the perfect homemaker in her launch video for With Love, Meghan, there was little room for Harry, who seemed relegated to a walk-on role.
The role in question being to stand in the background and hold a glass of champagne.
Was it Harry’s decision to play such a low-key part? Has the dim-witted Prince finally started to accept that he may be surplus to Meghan’s ambition – or to her money-making plans at least?
Today, after all, he is an estranged member of the royal family and ex-charity chief with no visible means of support but an eye-wateringly expensive way of life to somehow maintain.
Their Montecito mansion cost some $14million. Repayments on their mortgage are said to be in the region of $50,000-$100,000 a month. They spend at least $2million – and possibly much more than that – each year on personal security in the US.
With his star in decline as his wife’s ascends, it seems Harry, so far from being the breadwinner, is powerless. Commercially toxic, even.
Then, just when you’d have thought things could get no worse for Harry, up popped the late Queen’s trusted press secretary of 12 years, Ailsa Anderson with some words of sound advice.
In this week’s Channel 5 documentary Prince Harry: My Terrible Year, Ms Anderson put it frankly: ‘Prince Harry should stop being the victim’.
The duke, she said, should ‘start being the hero of his own piece, start writing his own script… people are just getting a bit tired of how Prince Harry thinks the world is against him and how awful his life is.’
This is a man, remember, Ms Anderson knows from his childhood years.
Harry is a ‘very warm, engaging and kind person’ who has lost his way, she explained.
‘I think trust is paramount in every walk of life, if you can’t trust your family, who can you trust?’
Yet, rootedly ‘impulsive’, he has unwisely made private matters about his family public, including details about the health of his father, King Charles.
So it’s no wonder, she continued, if Charles and brother Prince William fear that, were they to welcome Harry back into the fold, ‘private information would then be leaked’.
All of which is to say that this vital bond of trust is ‘broken’.
Perhaps in the dark hours of the night when Harry contemplates his future he may be haunted by the way his wife appeared to drop her former best friend Jessica Mulroney or dumped her father who, incredibly, Harry has never even met.
Perhaps when he wakes up in the cold light of day, hapless Harry will recall what his brother Prince William tried to warn about of all those years ago: to be wary of a foreign TV actress he hardly even knew.
As Daily Mail psychiatrist Dr Max Pemberton puts it: ‘In successful partnerships, there is always one person to lift you up when you fall down. Without someone like this, life is infinitely harder and less fun’.
Living, as he does, in the shadow of his wife’s ambitions, it is unlikely that Prince Harry’s life will become more fun any time soon.
