Poor Meghan. After meticulously planning what surely must have lasted months, if not years, the Duchess of Sussex last week relaunched herself as the perfect, wholesome royal stay-at-home mom of two via her new lifestyle blog American Riviera Orchard.
Her timing couldn’t have been better, of course, because that other royal mom, Kate, was invisible.
But just days after Meg’s vision for her new umbrella company, Mama Knows Best, was revealed to the world via a clever video, showing her dressed in white in a sparkling fairytale princess kitchen, the real The royal mother has made her return.
Yes, in the midst of Meghan’s reinvention, at a time when she must have confidently imagined she would make headlines, this video emerged of Kate and William at their local farm shop in Windsor.
Kate looked smiling, happy – bouncy even. Despite all the speculation about her health, she was clearly in great shape.
The video went viral, making headlines around the world and debunking social media skeptics and conspiracy theorists and their increasingly outrageous and distasteful messages.
Meg’s vision for her new umbrella company, Mama Knows Best, was revealed to the world via a stylish video, showing her dressed in white in a sparkling fairytale princess kitchen.
The Duchess of Sussex (pictured with Prince Harry) has relaunched herself as a perfect, wholesome stay-at-home royal mother of two via her new lifestyle blog American Riviera Orchard
Kate looked slimmer – who wouldn’t after abdominal surgery? — but she looked like a picture of contentment in a sports top and leggings: an ordinary mother out shopping on the weekend with her husband.
There was also no dispute about the origins of the video. It was snapped up by another shopper, Nelson Silva, who spotted Kate and William in the bread section of Windsor Farm Shop on Saturday. He filmed them on his iPhone as they left the store just a mile from their home, Adelaide Cottage, on the grounds of Windsor Castle. To prove its authenticity, the video contained exact details of the date, time and location where it was recorded.
And who was the world most obsessed with? Not Meghan and her marmalades and jams, nor her chic knives and forks, nor her mugs and tablecloths, but Kate and her well-being.
The world’s headlines weren’t about Meghan’s carefully chosen trinkets, but about Kate’s inexpensive smile.
Perhaps smart, calculating Meghan thought her new mom’s blog would overshadow the royal psychodrama – with the king ill, the queen struggling, the Prince of Wales’ general dejected look and his wife recovering from a surgery while she was the focus of Mother’s Day. The Photoshop “scandal” – allowing it to shine in the very convenient void that was left.
Perhaps she thought the news of her new Martha Stewart-style business – which is expected to earn her millions – announced just minutes before Prince William spoke movingly at the Diana Legacy Awards in London a week ago, would leave his appearance in the shadows.
Did she really not know how opportunistic this could seem?
William and Kate’s public trust factor is up ten and nine points respectively to 49 percent each, ahead of even the King and Queen.
Then, in a second act that some might consider a distraction, Harry and Meghan announced the winner of their $100,000 Archewell Foundation Digital Civil Rights Prize, while William was again on stage at the Diana Awards.
Any cynic might think that these so-called humanitarians were in fact money cutters.
Or, as their former boss at Spotify described them after their multi-million pound deal fell through due to their “disappointing” content, a few “scammers” (a term roughly translated from American to English as ” scammers”).
Make no secret of it, it’s been a bad week for the Sussexes. But as events have proven, they are quickly losing what remained of the British public’s love and respect.
It was also the week that Harry and Meghan were demoted on the official Buckingham Palace website, their hagiographies reduced from several thousand words to a few hundred, and relegated to the very bottom of the page and sharing a bill alongside the prince Disgraced Andrew – now a mere footnote in the royal hierarchy.
Meghan’s entry describes her as a former actress who ran a website and includes details of her charitable commitments during her brief time as a working royal.
Harry’s contains a few words about his birth and upbringing, his time in the armed forces, and the Invictus Games for injured and wounded military personnel that he founded (no doubt a worthwhile endeavor).
But worse was to come when a Mail poll revealed that just 17 per cent of Brits actually trust a single word that comes out of Meghan’s mouth and only 22 per cent of us believe or do trust in Prince Harry, while William and Kate’s trust factor is up ten and nine points respectively at 49 percent each, ahead of even the King and Queen.
This isn’t the ideal backdrop for Meghan’s launch as a new mom entrepreneur.
Maybe Kate, the sister-in-law she and Harry so denigrated in her book Spare and in the Oprah interview – when she was accused of making a fragile Meghan cry over a flower girl dress of honor – is in fact the one who had the last word.
Without saying a single word.