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The global outpouring of
goodwill for the Princess of Wales as she fights cancer may leave Meghan Markle
in a very difficult position.
Are you in need of a new dog lead or
meditation cushion or wine carrier or drawer organisers or marmalade or a bird
feeder? How are you doing for pet shampoo, lanterns and tisanes?
If you are then, boy, do I have some good
news for you. Meghan the Duchess of Sussex has heard your cries and
soon you could be able to buy all this and much, much more from her new
American Riviera Orchard (ARO) lifestyle brand.
Those industrious sorts over at the Daily
Mail have somehow gotten their hands on ARO’s trademark application which
for the first time reveals the scope and ambition of the duchess’ first major
solo commercial project and golly gosh it’s a big ‘un.
To which I say, amen. Build it and they will
hopefully come and spend money. Dream big and then embroider it on a pillow you
can sell at a massive mark-up. I am all in on the return of Business Meghan seven years after she shuttered her blog The
Tig, even if that was blandly derivative.
Meghan Markle’s new lifestyle
brand American Riviera Orchard will have quite the array of goods.
However, in the ten days since ARO’s Instagram
debut, the world tilted on its axis with Kate the Princess of Wales’ announcement that she has cancer.
How could the incredible global deluge of
support and sudden lovey-dovey messages of goodwill for the princess affect the
public reception of ARO?
Basically, will discerning shoppers fork over
large wodges of hard-earned cash for artisanal lavender dog soap to a woman who
is not on speaking with Kate? And who has spent the last few years chipping
away at Kate’s image?
No launch date has yet been revealed for ARO
but it mustn’t be far off.
For the better part of the last year reports
have circulated that Meghan was beavering away at some entrepreneurial online
turn with the only oblique hints being that it would be authentic and whatnot.
Meghan Markle's new lifestyle
brand, seen in a promotional video posted to Instagram. Picture: American
No matter what best laid plans might have
been drawn up, just over a week later, on March 22, Kate released her video – the internet reeled and the
Church of England sat down to write a special prayer (truly) to wish the
princess a speedy recovery.
The worldwide reaction to the video has been
truly incredible to witness.
It has been viewed 197.5 million times on the
Then came the hand-wringing and the
self-flagellating with millions worrying about the consequence of their gleeful
reposting of bonkers Kate theories and speculation.
The end result of all this sympathy and
suddenly caring bleating is that Kate has basically been deified in only a few
days.
The Princess of Wales
revealing she is undergoing treatment for cancer. Picture:
So where does this leave Meghan and ARO? Could this dramatic volte face of
feeling towards Kate have an impact on her business’ debut?
Join me as we really get into the weeds here.
The
Whatever is happening back in Blighty has
nothing to do with whatever the duke and duchess are doing.
Kate, William, Harry and
Meghan reunited briefly after the Queen died in September 2022 but relations
have remained strained since. Picture: Chris Jackson/Getty Images
However, the other argument goes, get real.
That’s a wilfully naive interpretation.
For years, the
While Crown Inc. and Harry’s relatives were
unconsciously biased, frigidly cold in the face of personal suffering and
emotionally constipated, the
Harry and Meghan with their Oprah interview,
Netflix series and the duke’s memoir Spare, offered a deeply
unflattering portrayal of William and Kate claiming that they had encouraged
Harry to dress up as a Nazi, William had attacked Harry, Kate had made Meghan
cry and in one shocking incident currently under investigation by the European
Commission, Kate was reluctant to share her lip gloss with Meghan. (
In November last year, the Dutch version of
highly sympathetic Sussex biographer Omid Scobie’s Endgame named King
Charles and Kate as having commented about the Sussexes’ son Prince Archie’s
skin colour. The duke and duchess did not comment on the claim push back in any
way.
The
Given this history, this story, the image
that Meghan has cultivated post-Megxit is the yin to Kate’s yang, what could
this mean for ARO’s launch?
In this climate, will Meghan pitching herself
as a cosy domestic goddess with perfect taste land with shoppers and see the
orders stream in? Or could there be some sort of shopping protest vote, so to
speak, with people staying away from ARO out of sympathy for the Princess of
Wales?
Will support for Kate see the credit-card toting
masses boycott or avoid ARO? Or is Meghan’s
(I have said it before and I will say it
again for anyone who needs to hear it – the Duchess of Sussex has sublime
style.)
It’s interesting to note that to date, ARO
has attracted 570,000 Instagram followers, despite no content aside from that
first video. That’s a truly impressive figure until you realise that in 2019
when Harry and Meghan launched @SussexRoyal, they set a Guinness world record
for reaching one million followers in five hours and 45 minutes, then the
shortest time ever. (Jennifer Aniston later broke that record.)
And William and Kate? They have gained just
shy of one million new followers this year alone.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a
royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of
Veteran
The couple had
issued another of their press statements, this time about child safety on the
internet.
Such announcements
have become a regular part of the
Their statement, not for the
first time, was peppered with American emotionalism, tear-stained platitude
mixed with a certain self-serving preachiness. Florid, banal, breathy, reeking
of opportunism, it is an art form the exiled royals are fast making their own.
Commenting on a US
Senate hearing into dreadful instances of internet child abuse, the duo
applauded the ‘bravery and determination’ (one noun alone will never do) of
parents whose children had suffered.
This was ‘an issue
that transcends division and party lines’. They also disclosed that one father
had told them ‘if love could have saved them, all of our children would still
be here’.
Journalistic
scepticism may seem harsh given the sensitivity of the issue at hand; yet when
an issue is this delicate, would it not be seemly for minor royals to keep
their self-promotional psycho-babble to themselves?
This is not the
first time that Prince Harry and his actress wife have contributed their
unremarkable thoughts on a raw area of public debate.
If they did so
spontaneously after, for example, having a microphone thrust into their faces
at some public event, it might feel all right.
‘Days are long but
years are short,’ added his consort at the same event.
Eh? It’s the sort of
inscrutable gibberish guru Master Po used to say to Grasshopper in the 1970s TV
show Kung Fu.
Or take this corker.
‘I’m confident,’ said Meghan, again on mental health, ‘that with more ears and
awareness and visibility of what is really happening, we can make some
significant change together.’ More ears? Are two not enough for anyone?
As part of her payback to Netflix, from which she and her husband received millions of dollars, the Duchess disclosed that in her wedding speech she spoke of ‘the everlasting knowing that, above all, love wins’.
Guy Pelly must have
almost done the nose trick.
Along with the
unfortunate, droopy-tailed Harry, the duchess is a devotee of
Look at me, these say, I’m sensitive, I’m not a viciously ambitious, multi-millionaire, West Coast actress cynically adopting positions for career purposes. I’m a genuinely humble, vulnerable, touchy-feely soul. And if you suggest otherwise my attorneys will bust your ass.
You may say ‘but
Harry and Meghan are not politicians’.
I am afraid I would
disagree with you. They are behaving in an intensely political manner, beating
their breasts for public consumption. Note, too, the repeated calls for
‘change’. These smack of political campaigning.
The
Merely as literary
ventures, they are cloyingly mawkish, viscous in their sentimentality.
Whoever writes them
has the prose style of a schoolgirl diarist. It is sad that the prince has lost
sight of the British virtue of understatement. When it comes to expressions of sympathy,
less is always more.
Instead, we are
subjected to this mush and gush. On Planet
Writing in Elle
magazine, Meghan said that women should ‘focus less on glass slippers and more
on pushing through glass ceilings’. And then there was ‘a ripple of hope can
turn into a wave of change’ – a phrase the couple pinched off the late Robert
Kennedy and used at some humanitarian awards in 2022.
There is much
‘focusing on wellbeing’ and ‘relating to shared experiences and challenges’ and
‘discovering of opportunities for growth’.
‘Mentoring’ is a
must-have, both for mentors and, dreadful word, ‘mentees’. And ‘hearts’ are
invariably ‘heavy’.
Other people’s disaster and grief are ridden like trams.
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Harry’s Christmas Carol
On the twelve days of Christmas, my Megsie took from me:TWELVE family memoriesELEVEN peaceful momentsTEN days with WilliamNINE hopes of freedomEIGHT games of poloSEVEN worthy causesSIX royal medalsFIVE . . costly. . .blings!FOUR who were FabTHREE best friendsTWO family jewelsAnd my place in the royal family!
BUT WAIT. THERE'S MORE. . .
’Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house
A certain mad duchess chased after her spouse.
All the bathrooms were festooned
and tinselled with care
In hopes that their pal Omid Scobie’d be there.
Then Harry did whimper, “Oh wifey, have mercy!
I’ve forgiven the way that you grin and you curtsey!
Please let me come sleep in my bed in the house!
That chicken coop’s cold! Please have mercy, my spouse!”
Then Scobie himself down the chimney he fell
Just hoping he’d get himself out of this hell.
Poor Omid did moan in dismay and distress
‘Bout being lambasted by those in the press
Who were telling Their Truth about Scobie’s new book:
They were saying he’s lying! They said he’s a crook!
But Omid was only concerned with his safety.
His fear made him look so
dead pale and so pasty
That Megsie, disgusted, said, “Are you a man?”
While he wondered, she ran to dig out a spray can
Which she liberally applied to
his face with a grin
And Scoobie changed color, right down to his chin!
“Take that!” Megsie screamed in her mad duchess way:
“Now you’re just as dark as the lies that they say
In the press about us! Now please leave our house!
You’re a traitor! A turncoat! A scoundrel! A louse!”
So Scobie did slink out of warm Montecito
And knocked on the door of Meg’s Mummy, Dorito
Who took one quick look, then slammed shut her front door.
“You’re just a wax figure! And worse – you’re a bore!”
Then Scobie ran off, while his bronzed face did droop
And bunked down with Harry in the Royal Chicken Coop.
Daniela Elser
Can all be well down in the fragrant dell of Montecito? I wonder. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have made their first public appearance together in months, no doubt hoping to silence increasing speculation about the state of their marriage, their future together and their mutual career as saviours of the world — or whatever it is that they do out there in their fantasyland of compassion and creative activations.
The couple were filmed sitting together on a love seat in the sun-dappled garden of their Californian home as they made congratulatory phone calls to the winners of a grant for young entrepreneurs developing 'responsibly technology'. If this show of togetherness was supposed to quash rumours, it had the opposite effect on me.
Was it wrong to sense an underlying tension and a lack of interaction between the duke and duchess? It was certainly noticeable that the couple didn’t look at each other at all. Well, Harry gazed at Meghan, but she kept her eyes down and never looked at him, not once. At no point did their eyes meet, and no affectionate gazes were exchanged.
Some might think this is a loaded observation about what is only a brief promotional clip, but this is Harry and Meghan we are talking about. Since day one, their every public appearance has been characterised by a glutinous show of overt affection. They hold hands, they constantly pat, touch, clutch and comfort–rub each other like two high-net-worth meerkats enjoying a grooming session.
They delight in showing the world their delight in each other, even if that delight is not always entirely reciprocated in a wholly delightful way.
And whether on Oprah or on a palace balcony, their eye contact is invariably intense and locked on, like radar gunsights. Indeed, Meghan often makes a point of gazing at Harry with the kind of molten adoration you’d expect from a renaissance nun who has just seen a vision of God in a stained-glass window.
But not this time, baby. In their tonal summer neutrals and fixed grins, there was a faint undertow of awkwardness and distance that we haven’t seen before.
I want to be honest. I’m rather grateful for any new briskness in their public relationship. There have been too many moments in the past when Harry and Meghan’s adolescent pawings and moony spoony behaviour has made even an old romantic like me feel the urge to purge into the nearest sick bag. Even if one can appreciate how these relentless, open displays of tenderness had a purpose and were powerful in establishing the Sussex identity on a global stage.
After all, Harry and Meghan built their brand on love; on being the heroic, loved–up couple who fled from the oppression of wealth, privilege and monarchy to build a brave new world built on the very same wealth, privilege and monarchy they had crossed an ocean to escape. And if the course of their true love does not run smooth, where does that leave them?
Tomorrow is Meghan’s 42nd birthday, and I wonder what she will be reflecting upon as she blows out her candles in California. Perhaps she will exult in her triumphant exit from a cruel and wicked British institution which forced her to wear beige, denied her first choice of tiara and wasn’t keen on hugs, the utter b****rds.
Perhaps her mind will turn once more to that momentous New York night in May, when the infamous ‘near-catastrophic car chase’ resulted in an utterly catastrophic negative shift in public perception of the Sussexes.
Overnight they went from being seen as compassion crusaders to deluded fools, mockingly exposed as a couple overinvested in their own importance and whirling around inside a tornado of unjustifiable paranoia. It was a seminal moment which resulted in more bad publicity, including cancelled broadcasting projects and being called ‘grifters’ by a Spotify executive.
Strong marriages can survive worse, but it is becoming clear that the pressure is on for the Sussexes, who have squandered much of their initial commercial goodwill in Hollywood and somehow managed to diminish their own prestige to boot.
The popular narrative about their relationship has always depicted Harry as the poor husband, forced to obey the demands of his ambitious wife — but being married to a privacy–obsessed monomaniac like him is surely no picnic, either. On that fateful night in New York, stuck in the back of a taxi in her pretty gold dress, Meghan’s duchess life didn’t look like much fun at all.
Of course, maybe all this speculation is wrong-headed and unfair. Maybe too much is being made of a short film clip that is supposed to be a celebration of good works. Yet after seven years of behaving like two handsy old hams overacting in a royal romcom set in a petting farm, Harry and Meghan can’t blame puzzled viewers for fearing the worst when the carousel of caressing suddenly stops.
