Meghan suffering a miscarriage because of the Mail on Sunday’s reporting. Doria talking about her daughter having suicidal thoughts. William “shouting and screaming” at his brother, and in front of the Queen as well. And the claims kept coming, a tsunami of princely grievances publicly thrown at the Palace with the sort of acrid bitterness rarely glimpsed from the House of Windsor.
Whatever Netflix paid for their story, the Sussexes were good value. I wonder what the couple will do for an encore?
I have to admit that I was expecting – or fearing – a “race bomb” as a follow up to the many incendiary “truth bombs” they’d detonated during the six hours of the documentary series. They stunned the world in their Oprah interview when they revealed that one member of the royal family had raised inappropriate questions about baby Archie’s skin colour –there were “concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he’s born and how ‘dark’ he would be”, Meghan said.
Last year, Lady Colin Campbell claimed that it was Princess Anne: “She [Anne] had concerns about the disastrous effects of allowing somebody of that ilk, character wise, into the family, would not only cause trouble for all of them but also for any child born of the union…Harry ran to Meghan with the objections, Meghan weaponised them on the grounds of colour. We are looking at people who are very eager to spot a slight where doubtless none exist’. Make of that what you will.
There is also the claim made in the recent book about the Sussexes by Tom Bower that Camilla told Prince Harry that it would be “funny” if his unborn son had a “ginger Afro”. Palace sources say that’s nonsense. What Harry and Meghan have to say about these rumours and the wider issue of racism in the royal family and/or the royal household is still to be heard. But apart from a few oblique references about Meghan, there was nothing.
The Sussexes seem to have already “mined” much of their story; and they are unlikely to have much fresh material to reveal in the coming years because the British monarchy won’t be sharing any more confidences with them. There will come a point, in other words, when they may feel it appropriate and timely to explode the biggest bins of them all – and reveal the identities of those that they claim displayed signs of racism, conscious or otherwise.
You only have to reflect for a moment on the Lady Susan Hussey/Ngozi Fulani episode to have an understanding of the cataclysmic impact such revelations would have on the institution. The Queen managed to use her authority and reputation to defuse the post-Oprah row, and the Palace used the masterful palliative phrase “recollections may vary”; but next time the damage might be irreparable, and the divisions in the country beyond healing.
The royal family and their advisers should be shrewd enough to understand that what Harry and Meghan chose not to say in the Netflix films is far more momentous than whatever they have disclosed so far. Issues of race are a sort of nuclear deterrent in the hands of the Sussexes, and it is why we may expect the Palace to be relatively restrained in its reactions to Harry and Meghan’s allegations.
Meanwhile, we wait for the next instalment of the Sussexes story – Harry’s book Spare, out on 10 January, trailed as a “personal and emotional” memoir. Safe to say that Harry and Megs are probably off the royal Christmas card mailing list.
