Ok, I take it all back. After the King’s cancer diagnosis last week, he had naively hoped that such a serious health crisis might make Prince Harry come to his senses, or at least begin to do so.
I thought I could make him understand the importance of family; perhaps see the pressures the King has been under in recent years; perhaps he feels a pang of sympathy for the old man.
But after the Duke and Duchess’s latest move (renaming their website Archewell to Sussex.com, complete with coat of arms), I’m giving up. I fear they are beyond redemption.
No wonder Prince William is believed to have refused to see his brother on his flying visit to the UK last week; no wonder he only had half an hour with King Charles.
SARAH VINE: After the Duke and Duchess’s latest move (renaming their website Archewell to Sussex.com), I’m giving up. I fear they are beyond redemption.
They should have known this was in the works. They should have known that this was Harry’s next step in his quest to have his cake and eat it.
Because it seems to me that this is not only blatant name-grabbing and an attempt to commercialize the title conferred on them by the late Queen after Meghan married into the Royal Family, but it also goes against her explicit wishes .
When the Duke and Duchess made the sad decision to turn their backs on royal life in 2020, they agreed that they would not use their titles for financial or personal gain.
In fact, they had to suspend their website, sussexroyal.com, for that very reason.
And yet here they are, very obviously signaling their association with the institution of the monarchy to promote themselves and their organization on the global stage. An institution, let us not forget, that both have destroyed, slandered and dragged through the mud; an institution they seem to despise (witnessed by their rubbing shoulders with prominent Republicans in Jamaica last month), an institution they claim to want nothing to do with, and yet they can’t seem to exploit it sufficiently.
I mean, Harry has always been an entitled brat, but this really takes the cake.
Once again, he was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt when he rushed to the UK to see his poor dad. But now I can’t help but agree with those who said it seemed to be just a publicity stunt, a useful way of reminding the world ahead of this new rebranding that he is a member of the British Royal Family.
Honestly, can the guy sink any lower?
The home page of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s website uses their coat of arms and title.
SARAH VINE: Sussex is emphatically not your family name. That’s Mountbatten-Windsor, as evidenced by Archie’s birth certificate.
His “people,” naturally, have responded. A source close to the couple says: “Prince Harry and Meghan are the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. That’s a fact. It’s their last and last name. Which, like everything that comes out of their camp, is palpable nonsense. .
Sussex is emphatically not his family name. This is Mountbatten-Windsor, as evidenced by Archie’s birth certificate. And in any case, Sussex is not a name: it is a royal title, conferred by the late Queen. (Among other things, Archie himself has a courtesy title, Dumbarton, which his parents have apparently decided not to use in case he is called “dumb” at school.)
I mean, Harry has always been an entitled brat, but this really takes the cake.
If they really wanted their miserable lives as royals taken away from them, if they really wanted to put all the so-called “traumas” behind them and start over, they would just call each other “Mr. and Mrs. Windsor-Mountbatten” and that’s it. with that. But of course they won’t because that would affect their currency as royals. Hence the name of the new website.
The only way this source could be correct in stating that Sussex is their surname is if they had decided to change their surname by public deed from Windsor-Mountbatten to Sussex. Which, I suppose, would be theoretically possible. But also incredibly, astonishingly, almost incredibly rude, even by his standards.
It could also get them into trouble: there is an argument that the abuse of Sussex, as a royal title, could potentially breach the Companies Act.
It’s also interesting that the coat of arms the couple have chosen for the website is not Harry’s, but Meghan’s, which was granted to her by the late Queen.
Given that she was part of the Royal Family for about five minutes and claims to have been so miserable, one can’t help but wonder why she would want to hold on to such an obvious reminder of her hardships.
In any case, it is dated: it still shows the crown of the sovereign’s grandson, rather than his son, since Charles is now king.
But I don’t think any questions of heraldic authenticity matter much to Harry and Meghan. They don’t seem to care that the British Royal Family is a much-loved institution, a key part of our national culture; For them it is just a source of income.
And the truth is that they need that brand for the simple reason that they have nothing else. Sure, Prince Harry’s book Spare may have been, as the website claims, a bestseller, but that was only because it got the royals dirty.
Anything the couple try to do regardless of their royal status falls flat, as evidenced by the lukewarm reception to the Duchess’ podcasts, her boring children’s book and the fact that Spotify cut them from their £18m deal.
What did a Spotify executive call them? ‘Scammers’. Those corporate types usually don’t hide like that unless things are really bad.
The terrible truth now facing the Duke and Duchess is that their main currency – their glittering royal status – is an ever-declining asset. And they have recklessly squandered it through their persistent and vicious attacks on the very institution that gives them any kind of prestige.
Without him, let’s be honest, Prince Harry is just a bald, not-very-bright ex-soldier with daddy issues; Meghan is just a moderately pretty, clearly mediocre former actress who also has problems with her dad.
No wonder they are so desperate to maintain that partnership.
After all, it’s not like they caused the biggest stir across the pond, despite all those celebrities at their wedding and that interview with Queen Oprah early on.
His contacts in Hollywood seem to have melted like ice cream under the California sun. They didn’t even make it to Sunday night’s Super Bowl, where every power player in the world was on display.
The reality is that this last measure smacks of absolute desperation. Harry and Meghan had every opportunity to build a genuine identity outside of the royal sphere. But that would have required hard work, dedication, and earning, rather than demanding, the respect of others.
Instead, they chose the easy path, not caring who they hurt or what damage they caused along the way.
In doing so, they made the final years of the Queen’s life a misery and have since inflicted untold psychological suffering on all other members of her family. At the same time, of course, they claim to be staunch and compassionate advocates for mental well-being.
I’m sure that if the late Queen Elizabeth II had realized they were going to pull a stunt like this, she would have stripped them of their Sussex titles, as well as stripping them of the right to call themselves HRH. As much as it had hurt her, she never had any qualms about doing the right thing. And if there was one thing she took very seriously, it was the reputation of the institution that she dedicated her entire life to safeguarding.
This is the last thing the King needs as he faces cancer treatment. But stripping Harry and Meghan of their titles is the only way to put an end to their nonsense.
And in any case, what do you have to lose?
A toxic son who seems to care so little about him that he seemed to express minor public objections to being called a racist? Come on, no one needs that in his life.
