by EMILY ANDREWS

WHY is it that a couple so keen on wanting a new life seem so obsessed with the past? For that is the very strong impression that Harry and Meghan are giving the world. Just six months ago, the couple announced they yearned for a new beginning. Ripping up the royal rule book, they stood down as members of the British royal family, dropped their HRH titles, moved thousands of miles away and embarked on their own way of doing things. A new start. Finally, as they saw it: freedom. But instead of looking to the future, they seem consumed with what they left behind.

Trapped in their vast Los Angeles mansion by the coronavirus, their new lives on pause, the couple issue regular reminders to anyone who cares of their charitable concerns, such as saying how ‘humbled’ they are by the work of an organisation that has been delivering food to people during the lockdown. Or Harry apologising for not doing enough to combat racism, that is ‘endemic’ in society.

Last week, we saw Meghan’s explosive accusations over the way she feels she was treated by courtiers and staff who serve the family into which she married.

The former actress claims she was left ‘unprotected’ while pregnant with Archie, that her mental health suffered and she was ‘prohibited from defending herself’.

With remarkable chutzpah, too, she claims their wedding was a

£1billion money-spinner for the

UK and that public money spent on her was ‘relatively nominal’.

Perhaps the £2.4million of taxpayers’ cash blown on renovating

Frogmore Cottage had slipped her mind, although they have promised to repay that – eventually.

Far from escaping what the couple saw as the conspiracy against them, and starting anew, this latest salvo, revealed in court documents, has just rubbed salt into old wounds.

For it puts on the record for the first time the very differing approaches towards public duty as perceived by Buckingham Palace and by Meghan. Most significantly, she makes clear that she will not abide by the Queen’s lifelong adage of ‘never complain, never explain’.

But if she is ‘relieved that the true extent of what she believes she has suffered’ is now in the public domain, as her slick new

LA-based spokesperson says, it has come at a price: attacking the palace aides who reportedly had tried so hard to protect her.

Certainly, courtiers have been amazed at the suggestion that staff were able to overrule Meghan over what she wanted to do or say, when, in fact, it was clear she was in control of every aspect of her life. The sad truth is that her former palace team, originally hand-picked by her and Harry, found it hard to deny reports of her deteriorating relationship with her staff because they were largely true.

‘The stories were a drop in the ocean compared to what was going on,’ said one who knows the Duchess well. ‘They [the Sussexes] come across as needy, entitled and professional victims. It is always someone else’s fault, never theirs.’

Meanwhile, as they sit in their $18m, rented Beverly Hills villa with 12 bathrooms and a swimming pool, what of their lofty aims to ‘effect change’ by ‘pursuing their own charitable interests’ as their website Sussex Royal so grandly claimed?

So far, progress has stalled.

They have postponed the launch of their charity Archewell – named after son Archie – until next year. Trademark applications were rejected by the US courts last month as they were not completed properly, forcing the couple to submit them again, this time including applications for TV shows.

Originally, they had planned to launch a ‘not for profit’ organisation which would ‘advance the solutions the world needs most’, in April. The Mail on Sunday understands that this was to include a Tig Mk 2 – an updated version of 38-year-old Meghan’s lifestyle blog where she mused on travel and cooking, which ended when she married Harry.

Their focus was to be on wellness, which would include mental health, the environment and female empowerment.

Harry had also planned to advance his plans for sustainable tourism through Travalyst, an organisation established with partners such as Visa, Tripadvisor and Booking.com to encourage holiday-makers to travel in a more environmentally friendly way.

Of course, these initiatives have been hampered by the Covid-19 pandemic.

Forced to hide themselves away in American comedian Tyler Perry’s luxurious mansion, in a gated community with staff and security, Harry and Meghan realised that this was not the ideal time to launch themselves on the world as Brand Sussex.

Instead, the couple were photographed delivering food to vulnerable residents in their neighbourhood and they released video of themselves talking via webcam to a community kitchen project back in the UK.

But as members of the royal family back in Britain went into overdrive at a time of national crisis, taking to the digital airwaves, meeting charity staff, clapping for carers, thanking the NHS and jollying the population, the Sussexes were starting to look, frankly, irrelevant. Time, therefore, to up the ante. Letters sent to their UK charities such as Street Games, thanking them for work during the pandemic, contained the phrase: ‘We have been touched to witness from afar the coming together of the organisations we champion and so deeply care about.’

And the protests supporting Black Lives Matter that swept the US offered the perfect cause at the perfect time. Cue Meghan’s speech, recorded for the virtual graduation ceremony at her old LA high school, Immaculate Heart, and Harry’s recent video, recorded for the Diana Award ceremony, apologising for the ‘institutional racism still

They come across as needy, entitled and professional victims