Harry: I am my mother’s son... and I’ll unleash power of compassion
Tribute to Diana on Archewell site (but no mention of Charles)
THEY’RE no strangers to a ‘woke’ turn of phrase, so it seems hardly a surprise that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have made a plea to begin 2021 with ‘courage, healing and connection’.
Harry and Meghan published their ‘Letter for 2021’ yesterday – urging their supporters to help them ‘work to build a better world’.
The couple’s 14-line epistle repeatedly stressed the need for compassion, using terms and phrases typical of California, where they now live in a mansion.
It was published on their website Archewell.com, the replacement for their now-defunct ‘Sussex Royal’ brand. They had to drop the latter after announcing they were stepping back from roles as senior royals.
Their new website pointedly made no mention of the Royal Family, or of Harry’s status as sixth-in-line to the throne.
It featured a picture of the young prince sat on the shoulders of his mother Diana, taken at Highgrove in Gloucestershire in July 1986, and the couple’s letter introduced him as ‘my mother’s son’. It also
‘Together we can choose courage’
said both Harry and Meghan had experienced compassion and kindness ‘from our mothers and strangers alike’. But it made no reference to Harry’s father Prince Charles, or to his brother William.
A second shot showed a young Meghan next to her mother Doria Ragland. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the website made no reference to Meghan’s father Thomas Markle, from whom she is estranged.
The Duke and Duchess appeared to put their own strained relationships with their families aside as they wrote: ‘Together, we can choose courage, healing and connection. Together, we can choose to put compassion in action.
‘We invite you to join us. As we work to build a better world, one act of compassion at a time.’
The new website set out the couple’s manifesto for their life outside the Royal Family, following the acrimony of ‘Megxit’. They said they had chosen the name Archewell as Arche meant ‘source of action’ in Ancient Greek and well meant ‘a plentiful source or supply; a place we go to dig deep’. ‘At Archewell, we unleash the power of compassion to drive systemic cultural change,’ they wrote. ‘Archewell, through its non-profit work as well as creative activations, drives systemic cultural change across communities.’
Harry, 36, and Meghan, 39, named five causes they would help via the Archewell Foundation. They include the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University. The Sussexes announced partnerships with other tech research groups, and gave their support to The Loveland Foundation, which provides mental health help for black women and girls.
Harry and Meghan also vowed to fund four community relief centres run by the World Central Kitchen in crisis-hit areas. The couple have signed lucrative commercial deals with Netflix and Spotify to fund their foundation. Under the terms of ‘Megxit’, Buckingham Palace said they would no longer receive public funds for royal duties, although Prince Charles was thought to have continued to give cash to his youngest son.
Harry and Meghan’s deal with Netflix was said to be worth £75million and the link-up with Spotify has made them around £18million. The pair will make podcasts as Archewell Audio and released their first earlier this week, featuring a cameo appearance from their 19month-old son Archie.
Marketing executives have predicted Archewell will become a ‘billion- dollar brand’. But Harry and Meghan lost no opportunity to stress that ‘compassion’ was key to their new lives. The word appears three times in their letter.