Selling your good name always comes at a price

SO THERE we have it: Harry and Meghan have left the Royal fold to spend more time with their commercial enterprise and now it turns out vast numbers of the extended family have been at it too. Much has been made of the fact that Princess Anne was remarkably sensible in depriving her children of titles. Now it emerges, however, that having flogged his wedding to a glossy magazine for £500,000 Peter Phillips has been busy advertising milk in Shanghai. Questions have been raised by MPs.

Not to be outdone, his relation by marriage Lady Kitty Spencer, Diana’s niece, is plugging a different Chinese dairy brand, thus proving that factionalism in the extended Royal Family doesn’t need to be confined to these shores, but can go global, too. Anyway, this just continues in a fine tradition of famous people sneaking abroad to flog their image while hoping no one notices back home. Sir Laurence Olivier once promoted Polaroid on the grounds the ad was never shown in England.

In the States, Arnold Schwarzenegger made ads in Japan, with a “secrecy clause” in his contract precluding his employers from disclosing his Oriental sponsorship deals (good luck with that in the age of the internet!), while Orson Welles, Francis Ford Coppola and Audrey Hepburn all took the Japanese yen to promote products while eschewing the good ol’ American buck. But they actually were pre-internet. How on earth did Peter and Kitty not realise their actions would come to light?

And meanwhile, warning bells continue to peal at volume in the background about our own brave @ Sussex-Royal twosome, neither of whom (well, Harry, anyway) seem to understand the mire they are heading towards.

Harry and Meghan want to make their own documentaries for Netflix? Does Harry not remember that his Uncle Edward once tried something similar, forming a TV company which made endless documentaries about the Royal Family in the face of public and monarchical displeasure alike?

It was an endeavour that ended in ignominious failure when it turned out Uncle Eddie’s TV cameras were the only ones who were essentially stalking his nephew (and Harry’s older brother) William back when he was at StAndrews University. For that he was branded a “stupid little idiot” by an aide to none other than Prince Charles. What are Charles’s aides going to end up calling his younger son? It was also Edward who was responsible for It’s A Royal Knockout. That alone should send a chill down every Windsor spine.

As for Harry not using his HRH, that makes no difference at all. In America and everywhere else he is and always will be the grandson, son, brother and uncle of a reigning monarch. Not that Americans understand titles anyway (that is not a criticism), bringing to mind a chat I had with a US friend.

“What’s all this about Prince Harry not using his HRH?” she asks. “I thought all royal families were Royal Highnesses?”

“Not all. Some are Serene Highnesses. Like the Grimaldis in Monaco.” “You what?”

“It ranks below Royal Highness, which in turn ranks below Imperial Highness. That’s for Emperors.”

“So Prince Albert of Monaco is a

Serene Highness?”

“That’s right.”

“His sister Princess Caroline is too?” “No, she’s a Royal Highness, because she’s married to Prince Ernst of Hanover, who’s in the line of succession to the British throne.”

“A German! In line to your throne!” “Er, yes. In fact you might say they all are. In fact if we had a system of agnatic seniority primogeniture…”

“You what?”

“When only men can inherit a throne, Prince Ernst would be king and we would never have had Queen Elizabeth. Either of ’em.And since his great grandfather was the last German Emperor, Ernst might even have been Imperial.”

“Ernst of Hanover, the one who’s been known to relieve himself in public, an Imperial Highness? Andy and Co aren’t looking so bad after all…”