For Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, it was an incendiary start to 2023. Their Netflix documentaryhad dropped in the final days of 2022, then Prince Harry released his memoir,Spare, in January. It was the equivalent of a lit match thrown over their shoulders, reducing to ashes whatever remained of their relationship with the family and institution they’d left behind.
In the six-part documentary, which broke viewing records on its first day of release, the couple gave their side of the ‘Megxit’drama, making a string of damaging comments about the royal family in the process. They included Harry accusing William of screaming at him during the 2020 ‘Sandringham summit’, which resulted in Harry and Meghan quitting royal life; claiming the Palace leaked stories to the press to make the couple look bad; and revealing there was a ‘huge level of unconscious bias’ within the family.
If anything, Spare, which sold 1.4 million copies in its first day across the US, Britain and Canada, was even more explosive. The prince painted a bleak picture of a life spent in the shadow of his brother, the heir, with whom his relationship was nowhere near as close as we may have imagined – even before the argument detailed in one of the book’s most talked-about passages, in which he claimed William described Meghan as ‘rude’ and ‘abrasive’ before grabbing Harry by the collar, knocking him into a dog bowl and ripping his necklace.
The most intimate details were divulged, not least about his own frostbitten penis. He described an argument between Meghan and his sister-in-law Kate in which Meghan said Kate must have ‘baby brain’ because of her hormones. There was even an account of an awkward moment between the two, when Meghan asked to borrow Kate’s lipgloss, causing Kate to ‘grimace’.
It was a spectacular final severing of ties with The Firm. Yet Omid Scobie, the royal author whose new book, Endgame, was released last month, says Harry still doesn’t feel he has closure. ‘We heard from Harry time and time again in January that he wanted accountability from his family, and it obviously hasn’t happened since,’ he says – despite repeated efforts from Harry to make those conversations happen. ‘I think that shows just how dire the relationships are, how fractured, almost to the point of being beyond any kind of repair.’
The publication of Spare also marked a new phase for Harry and Meghan: having given their version of events, it was time to make good on their new projects and prove they could make an impact beyond royal life. However, says Scobie, who spoke to members of the couple’s team for his book, ‘They haven’t quite figured everything out.’
This year has been a learning curve for the couple, he says. The $20m deal they signed with Spotify back in 2020, to produce ‘uplifting’ audio projects, was axed in July having produced just one show, Meghan’s podcast Archetypes. ‘Some of the deals they signed [when they left the royal fold] looked far better on paper than they were,’ says Scobie. ‘In reality, nothing they pitched to Spotify was considered good enough, or to have the right commercial value to produce. Just because you have the deal doesn’t mean it’s an automatic path to getting something greenlit.’
Instead, there have been signs that Meghan, in particular, is edging towards influencer territory. In August, she was photographed displaying prominently on her wrist a NuCalm ‘biosignal processing disc’ (or anti-stress patch, to the uninitiated), with her coat sleeve rolled up for extra emphasis. It was the clearest sign yet that she’s poised to relaunch The Tig, the lifestyle blog she abandoned in 2017 after getting engaged to Harry, which she trademarked last year. The Instagram handle @meghan is also thought to be hers and has 127,000 followers despite having zero posts.
n 2021, she and Harry vowed to ‘lead a life of service’, but similarly, their Archewell Foundation – tagline: ‘Shared purpose. Global action’ – has taken time to find its purpose. ‘Harry and Meghan had these grand ambitions of becoming global philanthropists, but the actual foundation ended up being a lot of everything and little of huge substance,’ says Scobie. ‘They attached themselves to a lot of great causes and initiatives, but really, what was the foundation doing? I couldn’t figure it out.’
Speaking to sources working within it, he says, ‘I was pleased to hear they’ve decided to pick one area of focus, which is going to have three different areas that come off that, and that will be it for the foundation. So there is a maturity that’s now coming to some of the decisions they’re making.’