Royal reports
Fallout was months in the making, but last 48 hours made it feel more like divorce than new dawn
There was always something paradoxical about Buckingham Palace’s insistence that the “complex” and “complicated” Sussex situation could be resolved in days not weeks. In the end it took 10 days from the moment the Duke and Duchess dropped their bombshell on Jan 8 to the Queen effectively granting their decree absolute from The Firm on Saturday night – a quickie divorce if ever there was one.
In retrospect, the phrase “these are complicated issues that will take time to work through” – rushed out in response to the Duke and Duchess’s sudden demand for a new half-in, half-out royal role – now resembles palace code for: “Ain’t ever going to happen.”
For what we have witnessed over the past week and a half is less a negotiation and more a mediation between the warring Windsors – once again with the Queen, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge on one side and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex on the other.
For had there ever really been a chance of making the couple’s ambitious “Sussex Royal” plan work – as per the couple’s website – the Duchess would have surely been required to dial into last Monday’s summit at Sandringham. That the Sussexes “did not deem it necessary” suggests that what was being ironed out was a full separation of powers rather than the “progressive” collaboration they had craved.
The Queen’s admission that this came not just after recent discussions but “many months of conversations” suggests that the “abdication crisis” can be traced right back to the royal wedding of May 2018, when as ITV News anchor Tom Bradby put it: “A lot of harsh things were said.”
Storm clouds soon began brewing amid reports of a falling-out between the Duchess and her sister-in-law, the Duchess of Cambridge. The Queen allegedly had to have words with her
What we have witnessed over the past week and a half is less a negotiation and more of a mediation between the warring Windsors
grandson after he told palace staff: “What Meghan wants, Meghan gets,” following a supposed row over a tiara.
After six months of “rift” rumours came the announcement in November 2018 that the Kensington Palace household shared by the Cambridges and the Sussexes was to split.
Again the 93-year-old monarch was forced to intervene when the couple demanded their own court in Windsor, only to be told they would be absorbed into the Buckingham Palace operation.
The move was a response to the couple feeling “pushed out”, but in fact it only served to strengthen the Sussexes’ sense of sequestration.
As one royal aide put it: “It became a case of Harry and Meghan against the rest of the world.”
Eyebrows were raised when, the following April, the Duchess travelled to New York for a star-studded baby shower without taking anyone from the palace press office. The two-day celebration suggested that the couple were increasingly operating in a silo.
Coming after five of the Duchess’s friends had given interviews to People magazine in the US suggesting that she was suffering from “emotional trauma”, the Sussexes appeared to be straying from the Queen’s mantra: “Never complain, never explain.”
Then came their unprecedented decision not only to shroud aspects of their son Archie’s birth in secrecy last May, but also to keep his christening private and details of his godparents under wraps. The Queen tried to broker peace, inviting the family of three to spend a weekend at Balmoral last summer, but they declined.
When the couple then gave an interview to Bradby during last October’s tour of Africa and released a statement attacking the press without first informing the Queen (although she knew about the legal action against The Mail on Sunday over the Duchess’s letter to Thomas Markle Snr, her father), it seemed communications had broken down completely.
The Duchess’s declaration that: “Not many people have asked if I’m okay,” appeared a swipe at her royal relatives, while the Duke’s confirmation that he
Storm clouds soon began brewing amid reports of a fallingout between the Duchess and her sister-in-law
and his brother were “certainly on different paths at the moment”, only served to fan the flames.
In November, the Queen was forced to personally telephone the Duke to find out if he and the Duchess would be joining the rest of the Royal family at Sandringham for Christmas – only to be told they would be embarking on a six-week sabbatical instead. Having been told by his father to commit his plans to paper, the Duke returned on Jan 6 and demanded a meeting with the Queen, fearing his blueprint might be leaked to the press.
When that meeting was blocked by the Prince’s office, aides furiously tried to find a resolution with the Queen, warning the couple not to go public.
But when The Sun broke the news they were planning a move to Canada two days later, the Duke and Duchess felt their hand had been forced. While it is true that the Queen was only given minutes notice of the “personal message” being released at 6.30pm, the fallout was indeed months in the making. Almost as soon as the couple released their game plan on their Sussex Royal website, palace sources were swiftly briefing that these were “ideas” rather than statements of fact.
Fully supported by the Prince and Duke of Cambridge, the stalwart sovereign convened a working group to explore all the options – before summoning a family summit last Monday to thrash out a deal.
Many of the preliminary discussions concerned the Duke and Duchess’s tax affairs – most notably the financial implications of splitting their time between the UK and North America.
With the Duke already having offered to dispense with Sovereign Grant funding and pay back the £2.4 million spent renovating Frogmore Cottage, the main sticking points were said to be the couple’s HRH status, security arrangements and future Duchy of Cornwall funding – which perhaps explains why all three remain partially unresolved. As with Brexit, it seems this so-called hard Megxit comes with a transition period.