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Prince Harry warns of Invictus Games attack

The Daily Telegraph
02 Jul 2026

“Terrorists could create a “mass casualty event” if Prince Harry is targeted at the Invictus Games, the Duke’s private security company has warned the Government. A 40-page risk assessment found that Prince Harry faced an “elevated risk” in the UK, where five of the six known home-grown terror plots against him originated. At least four individuals responsible for those threats are thought to be out of prison, their whereabouts unknown.

The report says the biggest threat facing the Duke is from “lone actors” or “grassroots” terrorists, who often target public figures who receive high levels of negative publicity.

The narrative that he is a “traitor” and poses a threat to the Royal Family, only serves to incite British nationalist anger, it states.

The report outlines a plethora of outstanding dangers facing the Duke, who despite his change in status, remains the King’s son and “a symbol of the crown”. It says: “A violent attack on the Duke in a public venue has the potential to become a mass casualty event.

“The Invictus Games are scheduled to return to the United Kingdom for the first time since the inaugural games in London in 2014. Birmingham is set to host the event in July 2027, meaning that threats to the Invictus Games will fall under UK authority.”

Prince Harry has waged a six-year battle with the Government for the right to guaranteed tax-payer funded police protection, which has repeatedly been denied.

He lost a High Court challenge against the Home Office last year as Appeal judges said that although it was plain the Duke felt “badly treated by the system”, a “sense of grievance” did not translate to a legal argument.

In December, after making a personal appeal to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, he was told that the Royal and VIP Executive Committee (Ravec) – the Home Office committee responsible for such decisions – had changed tack and had instructed its Risk Management Board (RMB) to reassess the threat level against him for the first time in nearly six years.

As part of the process, his private security firm was asked to submit a detailed security assessment, to be considered by the Risk Management Board (RMB) alongside other reports from bodies including MI5 and MI6.

The analysis was due to be carried out in March but the Duke was informed last week it had never happened and all RMB assessments had been “paused”.

At around the same time, he was told that his request for police protection during a planned visit to the UK next week with his family had been denied.

He is still debating whether to bring his wife, Meghan, and children Prince Archie, seven, and Princess Lilibet, five, with him when he returns to London to conduct various charity engagements between July 7-11.

Both the Duke and Duchess were due to attend events to mark the one year countdown to the Invictus Games 2027 in Birmingham. On Tuesday, the High Court will hand down its ruling in the privacy claim brought against the publisher of the Daily Mail by the Duke, Sir Elton John and others.

The security assessment submitted to the RMB concluded that “the only way to mitigate residual risks to the Duke is to provide him with statebacked security”.

It revealed that as of December, 262 suspicious people, organisations and vehicles that had demonstrated a threat to the Duke’s family were being tracked.

Of those, 10 per cent were found to have targeted the family with “dangerous stalking behaviour”.

In May 2023, the Duke’s security team in Montecito confronted a man armed with a hammer and duct tape who intended to break into the family home, it said.

The man was arrested on stalking charges.

The report also claimed that since 2022, there had been at least 56 suspicious incidents involving correspondence, resulting in 12 fixated individuals who have repeatedly harassed Prince Harry in that way being monitored.

The Telegraph revealed in February one known stalker followed him around the UK during his most recent visit, sitting just a few feet from him when he gave evidence against Associated Newspapers Limited at the High Court. The Duke has also been the target of specific jihadist threats since serving in Afghanistan in 2007 and 2008. As recently as 2023, the FBI received intelligence that al Qaeda had called for the death of the Duke, stating that “his assassination would please the Muslim community.”

The Duke currently returns to the UK around twice a year for charity engagements. Many local police forces have opted to deploy additional resources during those visits, to ensure adequate protection to the public and pick up the bill. The Home Office has been contacted for comment.”

Just in case we’re all still interested. From the i newspaper today. The author thinks Charles is rich enough to cough up for Harry’s security.

Paying for Harry’s security is Charles’s fatherly duty
Stefano Hatfield

The I paper
29 Jun 2026

“With Prince Harry due to arrive in Britain next month, the row over his security entitlements has resurfaced. It is believed that he is reconsidering bringing his wife Meghan and two children after his request for police protection was rejected.

Supporters argue he remains uniquely vulnerable. Critics point out that he chose to stop being a working royal and cannot expect the same privileges. However, this time, there is a significant new piece of detail that changes the equation – and answers the question of who should pay for it.

Buckingham Palace has, for the first time, disclosed the King’s personal tax payments: more than £30m since he succeeded his mother. The King’s financial position has never been clearer. So why is he not paying privately to protect his son, his daughter-in-law and grandchildren?

This is no longer really an argument about whether taxpayers should foot the bill. Nor is it about whether Harry has enough money and should fund it himself. Thanks to Netflix, Spotify, Penguin Random House, inheritance and other ventures, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex (inset) are themselves thought to be worth many tens of millions of pounds. The point is that neither of those facts addresses the central issue.

Harry’s security risk exists because he was born into the Royal Family; it is not dependent on whether he undertakes engagements on its behalf. He stopped being a working royal, but he did not stop being the King’s son. Anyone intent on harming a member of the Royal Family is unlikely to concern themselves with the distinction between “working” and “non-working” royal before choosing a target.

That’s why this increasingly feels much less like a constitutional issue and more like a family one. Palace officials may argue that funding Harry’s security privately would blur constitutional boundaries or create awkward precedents – both valid concerns. But, surely, they are ultimately outweighed by something simpler. A father who possesses extraordinary private wealth can materially reduce the risk faced by his son. Most fathers would not hesitate.

Charles has worked hard to project an image of a more compassionate institution than previous generations. This decision sits uneasily with that ambition.

You do not have to admire every decision Harry has made to reach that conclusion. The reality is that his security profile is unique. Nor does it absolve a father of responsibility because his son no longer works in the family business.

The King’s newly disclosed finances have unexpectedly stripped away the argument about affordability. What’s left is a question of will. And that is a much harder one for Buckingham Palace to answer.”

From the Daily Fail today. Alison Boshoff again. She admits it’s all come from Montecito. It’s hilarious. If the deal is “no leaks” then Harry has just broken the agreement by leaking all this stuff to Boshoff. He is sooo desperate to have this visit positioned the way he wants it.

HARRY’S NEW MEGXIT DEAL
By Alison Boshoff

Daily Mail
27 Jun 2026

“As is often the way with any long-running family drama, outright exasperation has passed, leaving behind an air of wary anticipation. Reaction to the news last week that Prince Harry, Meghan and their children Archie and Lilibet are planning to visit Britain next month – their first trip here in four years – was, in certain royal circles, less than wholly positive.

As was revealed in these pages, many thought the visit, which is to include a meeting with the King, felt like ‘emotional blackmail’ of a father by his son.

Sources also pointedly added that the issues over security that kept Harry out of the country for years remain unresolved.

But for all the talk, what no one seemed to be able to pinpoint last week was what Harry and Meghan would be doing here beyond launching the run-up to next year’s Invictus Games: where they might stay, who they might see, and whether they would bring a photographer or camera crew along with them.

In short, what is the Sussexes’ broader strategic aim? What do they want to achieve?

Those questions can now largely be answered. And they reveal the seeds of a post-Megxit future, which, if it comes to fruition, could be of historic personal and institutional significance for the Royal Family.

For, as a source close to Harry revealed to me, this visit is nothing less than step one in Operation Reconciliation, a carefully thought-through plan to heal the wounds between Harry and his family.

The prince is seemingly determined to ensure he and his wife delicately tiptoe through their visit here. He is, frankly, desperate not to ignite the embers of the bonfire of bad feeling that has roiled between him and the royals.

He’s even hoping, I’m told, to have Meghan and Archie, seven, and Lilibet, five, meet brother William, plus Kate and their children.

FIRST and foremost, though, Harry is aiming for a complete reset of his relationship with his father – with friends saying it is likely a stay is being planned for the Sussexes at Sandringham. The visit will be strictly private. No cameras, no subsequent Instagram posts, no revelations in interviews afterwards.

A source close to Harry told me: ‘Charles has let him know that he is really looking forward to seeing his grandchildren. Harry is looking forward to the visit, and to building bridges. That is what everyone wants. It was decided months ago that he would be coming with the children and with Meghan as well.’

A friend of Harry said: ‘The conversations started in January. Harry said that he wanted to come over with Meghan and the kids for Invictus and proposed that the Palace could support them.

‘The view was that he would have to ensure that all of the family part of the visit remained private. He agreed to that in a heartbeat. The way he has conducted himself since then has led to confidence in this new version of Harry. He has changed a lot [since Megxit]. He has grown up.’

This trip, it seems, has been made possible because there has been some apparent movement in the terms of the so-called 2020 Sandringham Agreement, in which the late Queen was adamant that the Sussexes could not be ‘half in and half out’. It meant that if they wanted to earn money from commercial interests they could not be working royals. This enraged the couple, who left the country seething and protesting that they still intended to live a life of ‘service’.

A source close to Harry said: ‘He and Meghan were hurt by how the family reacted. They felt that the reaction when they came to them with a proposal for a new way of working was, “Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”’

Waves of damaging scandal followed, as they repeatedly told – and sold – their story to raise funds. First to Oprah Winfrey, then in the Netflix series Harry & Meghan and following that, in Harry’s memoir Spare.

Now, according to friends of Harry, a new idea has taken hold, which will see he and Meghan free to flog jam and make speeches for cash when they are in America, but treated as cherished members of the Royal Family when in the UK.

The price for that is an assurance that there won’t be any commercial activity when over here. At least, that’s the new ‘deal’ as Harry sees it, and he is keen to keep to the terms when he arrives on July 6. A source close to the prince said: ‘Harry is determined to play this one with a straight bat, by which I mean that there will be no commercial activity around this visit – that goes for him and Meghan.’ The source adds that Harry believes the Royal Family’s stance on commercial activity ‘has shifted considerably – not over everything, but there is recognition in senior circles of the court that activities in the UK and the US are different.

‘There is some acceptance that in the UK he can act as a semi-working royal as long as there is nothing commercial going on here. In the US, he is a gun for hire and can take the money. In the UK, he will not.’ Apparently Harry doesn’t think that it completely undoes the terms of Megxit, but he is optimistic that it might allow him and his family to move beyond the outcome of the Sandringham summit, which has sown only toxicity. His supporters argue there is precedent for the UK-US divide and that royals have always been allowed to make money in the US. This more nuanced position seems to have been made possible via gentle diplomacy by some of the King’s advisers. Harry’s supporters point out that former diplomat Theo Rycroft, deputy to the King’s private secretary, Sir Clive Alderton, is more amenable to making peace than Alderton and other advisers.

Harry’s friend reveals: ‘There is much closer cohesion between their teams. This is a well-planned visit which is a result of that improved working relationship.’

With this in mind, then, what can we look forward to from this ‘low-key, private family visit’?

Harry last saw the King, who is still receiving treatment for cancer, in a meeting last September, which lasted under an hour. The encounter before that was 19 months previously.

It’s thought that Lilibet, born in California, has only met the King once, on the Sussexes’ trip to the UK around the Platinum Jubilee in 2022. On that occasion, Harry and Meghan released a picture of their daughter enjoying her first birthday at Frogmore Cottage. It caused outrage.

The source said: ‘It was so far from where the Royal Family wanted to be, seeing family moments seemingly commercialised and thinking they might turn up on Netflix.’

Early July will see Harry and Meghan launch the countdown to the 2027 Invictus Games in Birmingham ‘as a couple’. I am told: ‘The public part of this trip will be about Invictus. The kids will not be a part of that. The children are coming to see their grandfather. It is a low-key family visit with the launch as the one exception.’

AS for Meghan, she remains a deeply divisive figure both in the family and the country. The source said: ‘There is some nervousness from Meghan about how she might be received. They understand the British people feel as if she has turned Harry away from them and there was natural disappointment in how things have played out, but there are hopes of breaking the ice here.’

As on all his trips to the UK, Harry has been offered accommodation in a royal residence. On this occasion, I am told he intends to take the offer up, even though the question of security remains unclear. Harry and Meghan lost their automatic right to taxpayer-funded security after they moved overseas. He took legal action against the Home Office, which he lost in May last year.

Some news which will have some of Charles’s court spluttering is that there will be cameras in tow as the Invictus activities are being recorded by a film crew.

As for Prince William, described by Harry as his ‘archnemesis’, he is widely reported to be entirely unwilling to forgive his brother.

The Daily Mail’s diary editor Richard Eden, who broke the story of ‘Project Thaw’ – the existence of a group of senior establishment figures aiming to ‘warm up’ the family and the public for some kind of return by Harry – was categorical this week that the relationship between the brothers is still in the deep freeze.

‘[William] made clear some time ago that he didn’t want anything to do with his brother,’ a friend of William and Catherine told him.

Harry’s friend, however, says that there is a Whatsapp group via which Prince Harry shares family news and pictures with the wider Royal Family. This friend also makes the extraordinary claim that Harry has hopes of meeting with William and his family. ‘The feeling among his friends is that Harry is likely to stay in Sandringham and that there will be a number of informal meetings with the wider family and yes, that will include William.

‘They do not hate each other as has been reported. Are they tired of each other’s attitudes to this situation? Yes. Are they wary of how the other will react? Again, yes. But there is a lot of hope that there might be a civil meeting in a few weeks. Many years have passed and everyone is older.’

He adds: ‘Their wives may have to grit their teeth.’”

Not sure what I think about this but thought I’d post it to see what everyone else makes of it!

The I paper
25 Jun 2026

By Jennie Bond (BBC’s royal correspondent for 14 years)

“The vitriol that’s constantly spat out when Harry and Meghan are mentioned appals me. And now, with their visit to the UK just around the corner, it has been suggested that they are looking for the so-called “money shot”: a picture of their children with their grandfather, the King.

Yes, of course that photo would be gold dust. It would probably break the internet. But in my view it’s unlikely to happen without a cast-iron assurance that it would remain private. If it were released by the Sussexes, it wouldn’t be just the internet that was broken. Any progress made towards reconciliation between the King and his younger son would be smashed to bits once and for all.

Trust between the King and Harry and Meghan is still on very shaky ground. The Oprah interview, the Netflix tell-all series and Harry’s scathing memoir blew a hole in the Palace ramparts.

During decades of royal reporting, I’ve found that one truth remains unshakeable. Those in the inner circle who know what’s going on do not talk. Those who do talk are not really in that inner circle.

But suddenly, shockingly, the family found it had two of its own spilling the beans. Feelings were hurt but, more importantly, trust was kiboshed.

Now, three years later, the Prince has said he wants his children to understand their heritage – and it’s a pretty amazing heritage for a seven-year-old and five-year-old to comprehend. It would therefore be perfectly reasonable to ask the King to be pictured with them.

Any family would do the same. But this is not any family.

I hope that, behind the scenes, there has been enough communication between father and son for Charles to feel comfortable about seeing Archie and Lilibet and confident enough to pose for a family photo. But I’m not convinced.

And that’s a terrible shame. Because, at the heart of this bitter rift are two small children. I have

grandchildren of almost exactly the same age and they take in more than we might realise.

They can pick up on family tensions, and surely Archie and Lilibet must sometimes wonder why their friends have grandfathers and they apparently do not.

Which brings us to Thomas Markle. Just like Harry and Meghan, he too has caused hurt and sown mistrust. He admitted lying about staged paparazzi pictures of him preparing for his daughter’s wedding, and he repeatedly gave media interviews about the breakdown of their relationship.

But he is now elderly and not in the best of health, having had his leg amputated last year. How about a family photo with him?

As Harry said in an interview last year, life is precious and there’s no point in continuing to fight. The children surely deserve to know both of their grandfathers.

If, as rumoured, Harry takes up an offer to stay in a royal residence – possibly Buckingham Palace – the children would get a ringside view of what it means to have a Duke as your daddy. Their Montecito mansion may be big, but staying in a palace would be off the scale.

Of course it could be that Charles has offered them the use of Frogmore Cottage, on the Windsor estate, which might hold a special place in their hearts as it was Archie’s first home.

Last time the family were here, for the late Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, we saw virtually nothing of the children, beyond a picture taken on Lilibet’s first birthday. Since then Meghan has posted multiple pictures of them, but always with their faces obscured or looking away from the camera.

Perhaps next month, even if we don’t see a picture of the children with their grandfather, we might at least see them at some of the events – such as the countdown to the Invictus Games – which their parents are attending.

If these two little people are to understand their heritage, they will also have to understand there is still considerable curiosity about them and that in later life, particularly if they choose to use their titles of Prince and Princess, public and media interest will not diminish.

In the meantime, let’s let them be kids and let’s lay off the vicious sniping about their parents. It’s too hot to be horrid.”

From the Daily Mail today. Interesting background on Harry’s finances and the way he positions himself as a philanthropist. If it’s accurate, why on earth would he not tell the truth and say the donation was from a charitable foundation set up by his mother?

Revealed: True source of Harry’s £1.1m charity donation said to be ‘out of his own pocket’
By Richard Eden

Daily Mail
19 Jun 2026

‘When the Duke of Sussex returned to Britain for four days of public engagements last September, he seemed to be on a public relations offensive after a string of negative stories about him and his wife.

Prince Harry made a point of going to Nottingham, where he had taken Meghan in December 2017 – just days after they announced their engagement.

This time around, he visited the Community Recording Studio in the city’s St Ann’s area to meet social action groups and local charities.

The trip captured headlines when it was announced that Harry had made what was described as a ‘personal donation’ of £1.1million to BBC Children in Need. The money would, it was said, be used to support projects that tackle violence affecting young people.

Sources told the corporation that the donation was ‘from his own money rather than his Archewell organisation’. It would, Harry said, help ‘changemakers in the city continue their mission to create safe spaces... and offer hope and belonging to young people who need it most’.

At the time, People magazine – a favoured outlet of the Sussexes – gushingly reported: ‘Prince Harry is giving back, out of his own pocket.’ But the size of the donation did cause some surprise on both sides of the Atlantic.

After all, it had been widely reported two months earlier that Netflix would not renew its $100million (£75million), fiveyear deal with the pair (they later signed a much less lucrative ‘first-look’ deal with the US streaming giant).

And the California-based couple had lost their $20million (£15.6million) deal with audio giant Spotify amid much acrimony two years previously.

How on earth, some wondered, could the Sussexes afford to hand over £1.1million of taxed income to just one cause?

I have now discovered the answer. The money didn’t come from Harry’s own pocket, but from another charity. It did not come from money Harry made through the couple’s corporate deals or royalties from his tawdry memoir, Spare.

All £1.1million came from charitable funds originally created by his mother, Princess Diana.

So the donation was made not by Harry but the Glen Beg Foundation. This is a charity that was established in 1999, two years after Diana’s death.

It was set up using funds from the Princess of Wales Charities Trust. This was established by Diana in 1981, the year she and the then Prince Charles were married at St Paul’s Cathedral. It was financed by generous donations from companies and organisations she visited or represented.

When she died, the money in the trust was split equally between Harry and his brother, Prince William.

The boys’ charities were named after hills on the monarch’s private Balmoral estate in Scotland. William’s was called The Broad Cairn Foundation, Harry’s the Glen Beg Foundation.

Documents filed at the Charity Commission confirm £1.1million was transferred from the Glen Beg Foundation to Children in Need on October 10 last year, a month after Harry announced the donation. It’s not clear how much, if any, money remains in the Glen Beg Foundation.

When it was established, the trustees were Hugh van Cutsem, a long-term friend of Charles who died in 2013, and Harry’s late godfather, old Etonian farmer Gerald Ward. Charles’ solicitor, Baroness Shackleton, was the only trustee to sit on the boards of both Harry and William’s charities.

A spokesman for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex failed to respond to a request for comment last night.‘

Just thought I’d share this for the deliciousness of the first two sentences. Let’s not forget if Harry Kane (England striker) scores a few goals in the World Cup then the boy from Buckingham Palace will fall even further down the pecking order. Can’t wait. Teeth will be gnashing in Montecito.

Golden boy Styles delivers a euphoric, vital experience
ROISIN O'CONNOR

The Independent
14 Jun 2026

“Good evening, my name is Harry.” Wembley roars as the world’s most famous man by that name pauses from one of his laps around the stadium. It’s the grandest of homecomings for Harry Styles, taking up residency here for a record-breaking 12 nights in support of his fourth album, the divisively titled Kiss All the Time. Disco, Occasionally.

There’s nothing divisive about this show, though. The 32-yearold’s latest music was heavily inspired by the community he found on dancefloors around the world, having decided he wanted to stop saying “no” and start saying “yes”. There’s certainly a relaxed air about the whole evening – what little choreography there is from Styles and his two dancers is simple, playful. For the most part, he jives from one of three linked catwalks to the other, loose-limbed but on the beat.

He’s the consummate entertainer, a charisma factory who lights the place up better than any pyrotechnics. Opening with “Are You Listening Yet?” feels tongue-in-cheek, given his fans’ laserbeam focus on his every eyebrow twitch, but it also sets the tone for a heady, sweaty dance session.

The reception to “Golden”, from his 2019 album Fine Line, is tremendous; the earth quakes underfoot as 80,000 pairs of feet leap up and down. Styles doesn’t shy away from his pop hits, whether the summer thirst-quencher “Watermelon Sugar” or

the exuberant “Music for a Sushi Restaurant” from his Grammywinning third album, Harry’s House.

But the emphasis remains heavily on his newest music, its understated tone on record shifting into something more euphoric and vital in the live sphere. “Dance No More” is terrific, all squelchy synths and blasts of brass that precede Styles’s now-iconic yelp: “Respect your mother!” His mum is here tonight – Styles pays tribute to the woman who signed him up to the X Factor without him knowing, and to his sister (also present), who drove him to his audition a stone’s throw from this very stadium.

Styles also doesn’t baulk from references to his boyband past, but there’s a firm unspoken agreement between him and his fans to let him evolve. A string section tastefully covers One Direction favourites “Night Changes” and “History”, but that’s it. Then it’s on to a soaring rendition of “American Girls” and a frenzied, buzzing “Ready, Steady, Go”. He grins to himself during “Pop”, a double entendre of a track that could be about the pressure he feels to satisfy his fans… or something else (“First time tasting it/ It’s nice to mix two flavours”).

There are lulls. Going from the Bridgerton-esque strings interlude into a segment where he fiddles around on a synth deck from the main stage feels a tad indulgent. It’s better when he and his band relocate to the round, and a live airing of 2019’s “Treat People with Kindness” gets a remix acknowledging its lineage from Talking Heads and Paul Simon. Buzzy dance track “Aperture” is euphoric, the whole stadium joined in his chant of “we belong together”. It’s no mean feat to turn a cold concrete stadium into a warm, communal space, but Styles does it. That’s just how good he is.

So this is the extract from Mayer’s book that was published in the Mail on 6th June. IMHO her historical perspective is off. Elizabeth I isn’t predominantly defined by her oppositional relationship with Mary Queen of Scots as far as I’m aware? Nor are Henry VIII’s wives viewed purely as opponents. They have legitimate stories in their own right I would have thought? That’s before we get to what she says about Catherine. Anyway, interested to know what others think!

“Kate: The Royal Enigma

Daily Mail
06 Jun 2026

REVEALING NEW BOOK

She’s one of the most talked about women in the world but we know remarkably little about her. From her surprisingly well-connected ancestors to how she really ended up at St Andrews with William, a new book reveals what lies behind the picture-perfect image

SEVEN months after her wedding in 2011, I met the then Duchess of Cambridge at a Buckingham Palace reception. As London Bureau Chief for TIME magazine, I regularly covered the royals.

The encounter helped me understand something about the princessas-girl-next door imagery loved by the media ever since Kate and William were photographed together for the first time on the slopes of Klosters.

In the flesh, Kate is not so much relatable as an ideal of relatability, like those spotless interiors created by advertisers to shift furniture or kitchen appliances.

I am tall. Kate, though reportedly a fraction shorter, gazed down on me, graceful in high heels.

If I am scrawny, she is willowy. Before age coarsened my hair, it earned a backhanded compliment: ‘just like a wig’. Alongside hers, it looked like the joke-shop variety, nylon not silk.

During our brief conversation, I found myself wondering about the effort entailed in maintaining those gleaming surfaces, and the knock-on effects on women and girls who mistake her look for an attainable goal.

Kate’s extraordinary-ordinary beauty has helped her queen it over the front pages and cement her in public imagination as a role model for royal womanhood, a loving wife and mother, and by contrast to her supposedly difficult, disloyal sister-in-law, Meghan, a pillar of the monarchy who always seems to get things right.

On a visit to a community project on the Isle of Mull last year, Kate used a nail gun to fix a few tiles on to a wooden frame.

‘What can’t she do!’ exclaimed an onlooker. Prince William gave a theatrical sigh, The Sun reported, ‘and admitted proudly: “That always happens.”’

But really, what can’t Kate do? Among the dwindling numbers of working royals, she is the one whose appearances generate the most excitement, and never more so than since her return to royal duties after cancer treatment.

Recently, her motorcade nearly ran me down on a London street because I was listening to an audiobook – by coincidence a biography of her. Even as I jumped out of the way, the voice in my ear described her as ‘a beautiful symbol of the Crown’, whose ‘unwavering presence and radiant spirit serve as a beacon of hope and stability in uncertain times’.

What a heavy burden for one set of slender shoulders to carry.

ONLY a few years ago that burden looked set to be shared. Both Kate and Meghan – along with their husbands dubbed the ‘Fab Four’ – were hailed as young superstars capable of revitalising the Windsor brand.

Then, with astonishing speed, things fell apart.

Today, the royal ranks are fractured and depleted. Amid controversies and with the former prince Andrew enmeshed in scandal, support for the monarchy is dwindling in the UK, especially among younger people, while overseas realms are heading for the exit.

After years of reporting on the royals, my new book, Divide & Rule, takes a long view of how the monarchy has reached this point.

And as a feminist (I was co-founder of the former Women’s Equality Party) I also examine the decisive roles women have played in its history and how distorted views of them in turn affect attitudes to women. Royal women are critical to the institution’s survival. That might seem counterintuitive, given that after the king the next two Windsors in the line of succession are also male. Women, moreover, are typically assumed to create royal crises rather than resolve them.

In the last century, Wallis Simpson, Princess Margaret, Diana, Camilla and Meghan have all stood accused of endangering the Crown for reasons connected to being female: their messy emotions and their ability to turn sober male heads with sexual wiles. A trick patriarchy pulls is to set women against each other, placing them at opposite ends of a see-saw, where, for one to rise, the other must fall, as has happened with Kate and Meghan (I shall look at Meghan’s story in tomorrow’s The Mail on Sunday). To my mind, what I call the ‘patrimonarchy’ is especially skilled at this game. The six wives of Henry VIII are even now defined in opposition to one another, while Elizabeth I remains locked in combat with Mary, Queen of Scots, and Diana still tangles with Camilla.

Irreproachable Kate is held up in contrast to flawed Meghan, an outcome damaging for both women, even if Kate herself has played an astute role in creating her public image.

For behind the girl-next-door image is a woman of considerable power and control, who has played the royal game more adroitly than most.

Google Kate’s names (any of them) and results come back studded with the same trio of adjectives: ‘beautiful’, ‘radiant’, ‘perfect’. To her biographer, Robert Jobson, she exemplifies ‘the quintessential image of a picture-perfect princess’.

How did it happen, this transformation? From sporty public schoolgirl to glamorous wraith; from fodder for spiteful columnists to immaculate Press darling; from tame Kate to remote, unknowable Catherine?

Strategy and self-preservation play a key role. The Art History graduate has turned curator, controlling her own image with the dedication of Elizabeth I and the caution of Elizabeth II.

Her constructed persona appears not of our times but outside of them. Gone are the shorter hemlines of her early years in the public eye.

Apply a retro filter and you might easily imagine her in the same frame as Wallis Simpson if at a careful distance, or departing the Grand Hotel like Greta Garbo.

In public, she is unfailingly cheerful, managing to give the impression, even at the most mundane royal engagement, that there is nowhere she would rather be. But in private, she is reportedly capable of a coolness that sometimes chills.

Meghan said Kate had made her cry during a disagreement over bridesmaids’ dresses and not, as widely reported, the other way round. Harry’s memoir, Spare, painted his sister-in-law as painfully brittle, impervious to Meghan’s charm and ‘on edge’ over being ‘compared to, and forced [by the media], to compete with’ the newcomer.

He describes Kate gripping her seat so tightly that her fingers turn white as she demands an apology from Meghan for ascribing a moment of forgetfulness to ‘baby brain’. ‘We’re not close

enough for you to talk about my hormones,’ she admonishes.

If Kate is tempted to put up fences, it is easy to understand why. She entered the royal stage on April Fool’s Day, 2004, when a tabloid broke an agreement between Palace and Press to leave Diana’s boys in peace during their studies by publishing a ‘world exclusive’: a paparazzi shot snatched on a snowy mountainside in Klosters, William to Kate’s left, five words to her right, ‘FINALLY . . . Wills gets a girl’.

In that instant, the old Kate Middleton, a private individual, ceased to exist, leaving the new Kate Middleton to smile and endure the lenses.

She did so silently. Her friends, if they spoke at all, said nothing of note. Real friends don’t blab (unless asked to do so), and she inspires loyalty.

Visuals became both her curse and her currency. Eager for a Cinderella-style rags-to-riches story, the newspapers overlooked her family’s wealth and lofty antecedents – her paternal grandmother came from a line of landed gentry stretching back to a man who served as provost of Eton College and chaplain to kings Henry VII and Henry VIII – in favour of the revelation that her maternal great-grandfather had toiled down the mines.

She is, in fact, by most standards more posh than proletariat, but headlines positioned her as ‘Kate, the coal miner’s girl’.

The Middleton women – and only the women – consequently came under attack for their imagined social aspirations, Kate’s sister Pippa, objectified; her mother, Carole, accused of vaunting ambition.

As I noted in TIME magazine: ‘As Prince William whispered sweet nothings to his girlfriend, the Press muttered nasty somethings about her supposed ambition to wed above her station.

‘They dubbed her Waity Katie and bracketed her with Pippa as “the wisteria sisters”, determined to climb.’

From then onwards there has been a tough answer to the question: What can’t Kate do?

What Kate cannot do – and will never again be able to do – is go about her days anonymously. The harder her late mother-in-law Diana kicked against the restraints of royal culture, the greater the interest in her, and the more limited the protections she enjoyed. Kate’s best and only defence – and an uncommon skill, at which she has excelled – is to hide in plain sight.

KATE is one of the most photographed and talked-about women in the world, yet we know remarkably little about her.

Her media management looks majestic given the headwinds she has faced down since ‘Hurricane Meghan’ blew in. Both women swiftly found themselves defined against each other, polarised and polarising, with Kate accused of racism by Meghan’s fans.

But who knows where Kate might stand in public affection had there been no such squalls?

Because the truth is, Kate’s life in the public eye has never been plain sailing. She has been criticised as boring, drab and workshy. A running complaint that dogged the Cambridges in the early years of their marriage was their perceived failure to do their bit for the family firm.

In December 2016, the annual totting-up of royal engagements revealed that they and Harry had collectively clocked up fewer official gigs than Princess Anne, earning headlines such as ‘Your royal LAZINESS: How royals TWICE their age are putting Wills, Kate and Harry to SHAME’.

In fact, Harry was transitioning from the military, and his brother and sister-in-law were enjoying a spell of normal life (or what passes for normality in royal circles) which they had agreed with the older Windsors.

They lived on the Welsh island of Anglesey while William served as a search-and-rescue pilot for the Royal Air Force, then relocated to the ten-bedroom Anmer Hall in Norfolk so he could take up a post at the East Anglian Air Ambulance service.

Guided by Kate’s happy childhood, they were attempting

to give their children something closer to Middletonian nurturing than the haphazard upbringing that has scarred generations of royals.

I remember Kate chatting to me at a small party for Press with baby George on her hip. Though typically guarded, she seemed comfortable talking about him. It made a marked contrast to our first encounter.

During our first conversation, the paintings, hung in tiers around the room, seemed to offer an obvious ice-breaker – Kate has a degree in Art History – but when I asked her which most appealed to her, she refused to be drawn. She had not yet familiarised herself with the royal collection, she said.

What kinds of art interested her most? Her answer – she had ‘varied tastes’ – discouraged further inquiries. This apparent detachment jarred with palace briefings that identified the visual arts as the pinnacle of her passions after William and her family.

Even Queen Elizabeth, who defined restraint, became animated when conversation turned to horses. Might the speculation about Kate’s choices in higher education have some basis in fact after all?

Until this moment, I had dismissed gossip about how she came to enrol on the same course as William at the University of St Andrews in Scotland.

Kate took A-levels in Art and Mathematics, netting top marks in both. Her grades guaranteed her place to read Art History at the University of Edinburgh, her first choice. Then, inexplicably, she decided to take a gap year, spending part of it in Chile with Raleigh International, missing Prince William by weeks.

He had revealed his plans in a television interview.

A revision to her universities application form then pitched her into unprecedented competition to study Art History at St Andrews. Widely considered less prestigious than the Edinburgh course, this programme was now suddenly and wildly oversubscribed, with applications spiking by 44 per cent on the news that William would be among its next intake.

‘The Middletons must have discussed and supported the gamble their daughter was taking in full knowledge of the Prince William dimension,’ observed royal author Robert Lacey. ‘What other rationale could there have been for this last-minute swerve?’

I provide some answers to that question in my book.

HER long courtship with William – they duly met at St Andrews in 2001 and got engaged in 2010 – was, said the Prince, ‘to give her a chance to see in and to back out if she needed to before it all got too much.’

Unlike most other royal fiancees, including Meghan, Kate understood a good deal about the life she was agreeing to lead. That is not the same thing as being protected from its downsides however.

In Kate, William had found a partner as wary as he, private by instinct. Courtiers credit her with what has proved to be a wise strategy of providing the media with photographs of her family on a regular basis. Kate takes many of the stills herself, choosing photographers and videographers for other shoots. The resulting output mimics authenticity. Subjects, artfully positioned to look spontaneous, appear not so much humanised as super-humanised, their eyes preternaturally bright.

The group formations, full of movement, ditch the formality of royal portraiture that has prevailed since Victorian times, yet the texture of the images, colour-saturated, grainy or soft-focused, harks back to bygone days of Polaroids and Super 8 home movies – content brilliantly judged for the Instagram era.

In a parallel universe, she might have turned her talent into a professional vocation.

There is no doubt she understands art and imagery as a tool of communication, so much so that when she released a video last year to reveal she had been diagnosed with cancer it was the first time many people had heard her speak.

In the film, she is sitting alone on a bench, looking pale, delivering a short, but simple message.

A second video, of her walking through woodland alone and frolicking on the beach with the family, marking the end of her chemotherapy, is everything her first film is not, self-conscious in its counterfeit authenticity.

At times, the picture is grainy, edges sputtering as if we are watching a misalignment of celluloid. The rest of the camerawork is retro in a different way; soft focus, an Athena poster come to life. That she wishes to convey two core messages simultaneously is clear from the tenth second, which unlike the rest of the action is set neither in woodland or meadow nor on a beach, but with Kate on her own, in the driving seat.

As she changes gear, we see her wedding ring and, lest we miss it, there are further shots of it as the film nears its conclusion.

By then, we have already witnessed her husband kissing her, sharing a blanket with her, putting his arm around her.

‘Who knew that something so short could pack such a punch?’ asked The Times.

‘The Princess of Wales’s update on her health...is probably the most consequential change to royal comms since the invention of the printing press.’

Kate, the Art History graduate, has watched the analogue shots fired by Palace Press teams glancing off the incoming barrage of digital deepfakes like arrows hitting a tank.

So she has brought updated weapons to the fray, fighting deception not with dry facts but hyper-emotive content.

What can’t Kate do? Stop the onslaught or regain full control over her life and body.

The effects of cancer rarely end with the treatment. ‘You have to find your new normal and that takes time,’ she said, talking to fellow survivors during an official visit to a wellbeing garden last summer. ‘It’s a rollercoaster.’

Or, as she might have said, a see-saw.”

ADAPTED from Divide & Rule by Catherine Mayer

From the Mail on Sunday today, an extract from Catherine Mayer’s Divide and Rule. This is the piece about Meghan. Yesterday’s extract was about Catherine. Apparently the book also looks at Diana, Camilla, Elizabeth I and II, Victoria and Anne Boleyn. Not convinced by all the arguments, but it’s interesting, especially the bits about culture conflict between Californian and Brit upper class values and norms. What do we think?

“Meghan… the warning signs that everyone missed

The Mail on Sunday
07 Jun 2026

IN yesterday’s Daily Mail, the feminist historian CATHERINE MAYER sought to decode the enigma of the Princess of Wales. Today, Meghan is under her microscope...

IT LOOKS like a fairy tale – and, in many ways, it is, for this turns out to be a story full of jeopardy. Deceptively traditional in silk and tulle, Meghan pauses on the steps at St George’s Chapel and waves to the cheering crowds. Inside, royalty lines the pews.

The Tudor Henrys are buried here, so too Jane Seymour, Edward VII, and, in an annex, George VI and Princess Margaret.

Over bones and dust Meghan glides toward her groom: does she take Harry for richer, for poorer? The new Duke of Sussex turns pink with happiness.

A hereditary monarchy is an unlikely engine of change, but the family’s first biracial member, first declared feminist and, in a sign of institutional shift, the first divorcee permitted to marry a Windsor in the Church of England, seems to hint at progress. Maybe Meghan will be able to use her new position for good.

I click on the screen, scroll back, study the footage again. To revisit these scenes is to peer down the wrong end of a telescope, the optimism of that day as distant as the moon, or at least California, where the Sussexes have lived in exile since 2020.

How did the dream crumble? Even those of us who warned, ‘Don’t do it, Di’ back in the 1980s somehow dared to imagine a better outcome for Meghan Markle when she married into the Royal Family in 2018.

She is different, we told ourselves. We weren’t wrong – but that difference would count against her. How on earth did so many people who saw what happened to Princess Diana fall for the princess myth yet again?

I remember the day Diana died in 1997. After a colleague woke me with news of a car crash in Paris, I headed to Buckingham Palace. A hotel worker pointed to the building and told me: ‘They killed her.’

Over the following days, that accusation gained currency, but few meant it literally. Anger centred on perceptions that the Royal Family had hung Diana out to dry.

Back then, and throughout my years as a writer and editor at America’s Time magazine, frequently covering royal matters, I agreed that the Windsors had contributed to Diana’s vulnerability.

But it was only recently, researching my new book – which looks at the lives and roles played by eight royal women, from Anne Boleyn to Kate, the current Princess of Wales – that I finally grasped the nature of the most significant forces that placed Diana in the back of a speeding limousine.

These forces were not the scenarios imagined by conspiracy theorists; rather, they were the reflexes of patriarchal systems – including the ‘patrimonarchy’ – to defend their power structures and hierarchies.

In 1997, I remained dry-eyed. Now I weep for Diana and the damage such forces continue to inflict. Prince Harry has spoken of parallels between Meghan and Diana. He is determined to protect his wife – in a way he could not protect his mother – from what he sees as the twin threats from within the palace and the media.

To be a royal woman in any age is to be endlessly scrutinised and judged. Some smile silently and bear the attention.

It is when women attempt to define themselves that things get interesting. As Princess Diana declared in her controversial BBC Panorama interview, she ‘won’t go quietly, that’s the problem’. Meghan’s exit has been at least as noisy, and you don’t have to look far to find echoes in history.

Consider the following description: ‘A commoner raised to royalty, she is a heroine to some, a hate figure to others.

‘Her adherents trumpeted her potential to refresh the monarchy. Her enemies disparaged her as an interloper... Still the wedding went ahead – accounts differ on the number of ceremonies – but soon she was gone, her exit brutal.

‘Fans maintain that prejudice and plotting did for her. Critics

hold her solely responsible for her own downfall.’

If you assume this to be a description of Meghan, you’re right – but here’s the thing: the same details apply, word for word, to Anne Boleyn.

A series of patterns marks royal women’s lives. Great queens such as Elizabeth I break or reshape moulds but the safer path to popularity, currently personified by the Princess of Wales, is to perfect the conventional role. Meghan never could have done that even if she wished to do so.

Now she languishes in British opinion polls, the least popular royal except for Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor.

But if your feelings for her go beyond disinterest to active dislike, even hatred, ask yourself why. Might it be that, like royal predecessors, she has been damned as a strumpet, and pitted against other royal women by insidious palace briefing and a culture hostile to women with opinions?

I have no intention of championing Meghan over Kate, but I am fascinated by how and why their public images came to be so at odds.

Like Meghan and Harry’s, every moment of Kate and William’s wedding in 2011, which I liveblogged for Time, was choreographed to showcase the future of the monarchy while emphasising its continuity with the past.

The marriage was a marketing triumph for the Windsors and, as a popular US blogger noted, for the princess myth. ‘Little girls dream of being princesses,’ she wrote. ‘Grown women seem to retain this childhood fantasy. Just look at the pomp and circumstance surrounding the royal wedding and endless conversation about Princess Kate.’

The blogger confessed that she identified with a princess too, but one with agency, ‘She-Ra, Princess of Power’, the heroine of a 1985 animated series spin-off from He-Man And The Masters Of The Universe.

That blogger was Meghan writing on The Tig, a website she named after her favourite Tuscan wine, Tignanello. She used her platform to opine on everything from fine food and fashion to gentle activism.

Two years later, she shuttered the site and prepared to put her career on ice, filming her seventh and final series of the legal drama Suits. Shortly afterwards, she and Harry announced their engagement. Would She-Ra really surrender her voice and liberty?

‘I don’t see it as giving anything up. I just see it as a change. It’s a new chapter, right?’ Meghan told the BBC’s Mishal Hussain. She was proud of her professional achievements, but now it was time to work with Harry as a team to promote ‘causes that are really important to me’.

Everybody looked set to win – the Windsors finally edging towards the diversity of the populations they are meant to represent; a contented Harry saved from a downwards spiral; and Meghan, Princess of Power, handed not a sword but a global platform for those causes.

In those early days, many of her media portraits were enthusiastic, but it was also clear that there was little understanding of Meghan’s background.

Meghan did not live, as reported, in a gang-scarred area but in middle-class comfort. Her white father Thomas Markle, a TV lighting director, met her African-American mother Doria Ragland when she was working as a make-up artist on the long-running US soap General Hospital.

A mixed marriage like the Markles was not unusual in LA. Nor was racism. In her first Netflix series, Meghan recalled as a child seeing her mother subjected to racial abuse and mistaken for her nanny. Doria, in turn, revealed that she had warned her daughter that fascination with her dating Harry was ‘about race’.

Race was a factor. So, too, was a misunderstanding of Planet Windsor. Meghan’s claim that she had not Googled Harry before their first date attracted scepticism, but no matter how many hours, days, weeks or years an outsider spent trawling the internet, it could not convey the weirdness and complexity of palace culture.

‘How do you explain that you bow to your grandmother?’ Harry mused in the same Netflix show.

Now picture Meghan plunged into this alien life, servants and aides around all the time, zero privacy. Should she regard staff as potential friends? Would they serve her or spy on her – or, as in Tudor times so often the case, both?

Harry has described the royal existence as ‘this surreal state, this unending Truman Show’.

It is tempting to think that if Meghan had shut up, closed down, worn nude tights and deferred as if her life depended on it, she might have made a go of things.

But look more closely at California, the place that shaped her, and you realise that was never going to happen. Just as Americans are apt to conflate the histories and cultures of, say, England and Scotland, so the British talk about the States – with the exception of locations familiar from films and TV shows – as an amorphous blob.

To understand Meghan, we need to look to the Golden State.

Californians pride themselves on doing things differently. Hardnosed entrepreneurialism coexists with multiple strands of spiritualism. Positivity is considered, well, a positive. So are career choices and behaviours the British disdainfully label ‘attention-seeking’.

The entertainment industry is one of the main employers in the state; contracts include clauses requiring performers to publicise their work, and a significant social media footprint is not an option but a necessity for those who hope to rise.

Meghan’s creation of The Tig fits into that pattern, as does her brand ambassadorship for the designer Ralph Lauren and her cultivation of Press contacts in the pre-Harry period, all now routinely cited as proof of her insatiable ambition.

Emotions and feelings – topics to rattle the teacups in the drawing rooms of those British people posh enough to have drawing rooms – are not merely up for discussion among Californians, but central to conversation.

There is a perception that Californians hug more than other Americans and Meghan once described William and Kate recoiling from her embrace. ‘They came over for dinner, I remember I was in ripped jeans and I was barefoot,’ she says. ‘I was a hugger. I’ve always been a hugger. I didn’t realise that is really jarring for a lot of Brits.’

Another sign that Meghan might not mesh smoothly with the buttoned-up Windsors could be detected during the Sussexes’ official visit to South Africa.

When ITV’s Tom Bradby asked how she was coping with the pressures of royal life, she replied: ‘Thank you for asking, because not many people have asked if I’m OK.’ Back home, such an oversight would be unthinkable.

She went on to muse that ‘it’s not enough to just survive something, right? Like, that’s not the point of life. You’ve got to thrive, you’ve got to feel happy.’

This simple, seemingly uncontroversial idea would shake the monarchy, dislodge Harry and send both of the Sussexes to the place that nurtured it.

In common with other public figures, royals tend to envy the upper echelons of popularity, failing to realise that the comfortable middle of the table is the place to be.

Harry and Meghan’s marriage raised the groom to an all-time peak, fleetingly above Elizabeth II; the bride charted as high as sixth place. Soon enough, she learned the difference between manageable celebrity and her new level of fame: one opens doors, the other imprisons you.

Princess Diana found herself in a similar position. And she, too, felt suffocated.

There is no need to sympathise or connect with Meghan, nor watch her shows or consume news about her. However, like Diana or indeed Kate, to dismiss her as unimportant is to miss the problem she embodies.

Meghan matters, quite simply, because she is one of the most prominent women in the world. Her name recognition charts at 100 per cent in recent

multi-country polls, an astonishing level of fame. That she is a woman of colour and, rightly or wrongly, associated in the public imagination with particular value sets, adds to her significance.

To those who clamour for Meghan to be expunged from public life like a latter-day Anne Boleyn, I’d ask one question: what exactly has she done to earn such hostility?

The Sussex Squad suspects her critics of misogyny, racism or a mixture of the two – ‘misogynoir’. Detractors say Meghan has earned their contempt by inflicting reputational damage on the monarchy.

Meghan has also been accused by staff of bullying. My book examines these allegations within the context of palace culture, which can be simultaneously hierarchical and dysfunctional. Over the decades, complaints from staff have ranged from racism to rape, all denied and unproven.

It is not my intention to minimise the seriousness of the bullying allegations against Meghan, but rather to ask critics whether, in light of the wider context of Windsor failings including Andrew’s behaviour, what we know – or think we know – about her explains the strength of the animosity towards her.

Might other factors be at play too? Does her voice grate? Is she simply too Californian, too politically correct, too new-agey for British tastes? Perhaps resentment towards Meghan stems from her snagging a prince and then forgetting to be grateful.

There is also an idea that she is ‘too political’. A well-informed source tells me that Meghan does not think of herself as rebellious. In 2018, she cheered the #MeToo movement not to wage politics, but on the reasonable assumption that ending sexual harassment was a mainstream goal – and therefore uncontentious.

A theory spread by Meghan’s (antagonistic) biographer Tom Bower and others, including the Sun’s veteran royal photographer Arthur Edwards, promotes the idea Meghan duped Harry into believing she would settle for the royal role, while always intending to tear him from the bosom of his family.

My own research, which has included conversations with deeply informed sources, produced a different picture: two people, naively optimistic that they could develop their own interpretations of the royal job, thrown off balance as they hit resistance and swiftly developing a siege mentality.

Where some couples moderate each other’s responses, the one more inclined to conciliation, the other to confrontation, Harry and Meghan share similar reflexes.

Amid rising tensions, and with Harry ever more fearful for her safety, Meghan and Harry did not surrender the idea of royal service but began to reimagine it. Perhaps they could base themselves on another continent ‘still doing work for the Queen, but beyond the reach of the Press’.

Meghan had proved a natural at royalling. Her in-laws might recoil from her hugs, but strangers on the street leaned into them.

It severely hampered their search for solutions that they batted away good advice with the bad, reading interventions as the product of dusty palace thinking or inter-household rivalries.

Confronted with an innovative proposal, often the first reflex of officials is to squash or temper it. In his 20s, Charles tangled with courtiers who tried to block his first substantial initiative, the Prince’s Trust. It would be too political, they argued.

Princess Anne offers an object lesson too, combining her sporting career and equestrian businesses with service as a working royal. A hybrid model can succeed, and not all ideas that bend or break with tradition destabilise the monarchy.

‘Yes,’ said an insider when I pointed this out, ‘but that depends on the royal in question.’ Anne is staunch and sensible, Harry his mother’s son. Meghan would not have respected boundaries. Left to their own devices, they risked becoming more Andrew-and-Sarah than Anne-and-Timothy.

That analysis, widely shared by family and officials, meant the institution spent less energy on helping the Sussexes expand their role, and more on containing them. Harry and Meghan, in turn, continued to misread their situation, assuming that courtiers were misrepresenting them to the top decision-makers – the Queen, Charles, even William – who would surely see the merit of their case if given the chance. After all, the Sussexes connected with younger and diverse populations across the realms, demographics left cold by other Windsors. The monarchy needed them.

There were, however, other issues at play. The prospect of change loomed large, with Elizabeth soon to pass the crown to Charles, already in his 70s and expected to reign for, at most, a couple of decades.

The paramount concern of these principals and their officials was to smooth the way for the next two kings and their consorts. In this context, the volatile, limelight-stealing Harry and Meghan appeared not jewels in the crown, but risks.

‘Megxit’, a phrase rejected by Harry as sexist, therefore became inevitable.

Palace briefing began to suggest that Meghan was ‘an acquired taste’ and ‘quite opinionated’. There were news items about staff departures and a contemptuous nickname applied to Meghan, ‘Duchess Difficult’. Who does that remind you of?

These days, Diana is regarded in some quarters as a secular saint. To her younger son, she is an inspiration and a warning.

Meghan has studiously avoided such direct parallels, at least in public. But that has not protected her from allegations she angles to position herself as a new Diana, nor from belittling comparisons with her.

An Instagram post in which Meghan wears a Northwestern University sweatshirt provoked howls of rage because Diana had been photographed in the same sweatshirt. ‘That may be [Meghan’s] most pathetic attempt yet at cosplaying Harry’s mother,’ snarled one commenter. ‘She is completely psychotic now,’ fumed another.

Thousands of similar posts ignored the fact that Meghan, unlike Diana, was a Northwestern alumna, with a degree in international relations and theatre studies.

‘Meghan is no Diana,’ a palace insider muttered to me recently. If this sentiment chimes with you, think about the venom directed at Diana, such as the Sunday Mirror column written about her the day before her death, which hit newsstands the next morning.

‘It’s a pity Gucci don’t make designer face zips,’ wrote Carole Malone. ‘Then when Diana was on the verge of opening her ill-informed mouth and causing an international incident (an increasingly frequent occurrence these days), she could just keep her trap shut.’

Diana was no Diana either – until she could no longer speak for herself. In this sense, Meghan has indeed come to resemble Diana, the iteration of 1997: the crown jewel-turned-pariah, the benchmark against whom other royal women are measured and found, by comparison, to pass muster.

© Catherine Mayer, 2026

ADAPTED from Divide & Rule, by Catherine Mayer, to be published by HQ on June 18”

Article by Jennie Bond (former BBC royal correspondent) in the British press today.

What do we all think?

Andrew’s quite unspeakable greed shames monarchy
Jennie Bond

The I paper
05 Jun 2026

“So now we have it. Not only was the former prince Andrew paying a peppercorn rent for his 30-room mansion in Windsor, but for more than two decades he was also pocketing any surplus income from subletting three properties on the estate. Even more astonishing is that he wasn’t breaking any rules.

It was allowed under the terms of his lease. No wonder he had to be almost dragged kicking and screaming out of his cushy accommodation at Royal Lodge.

The National Audit Office (NAO) report into the rental arrangements of properties owned by the Crown Estate or managed by the Royal Household is revealing – and alarming. What an unholy mess it all is.

Some aspects seem unfathomable. Having accepted the need for independent assessment of the market value of the properties, the household decided that the royal occupants should pay only around 60 per cent of that rent because of the security restraints of the location. But surely most who want to live there are people of notable wealth, who could afford the market rent?

Granted, some tenants – including the disgraced former duke, and the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh at Bagshot Park – had paid an upfront premium for their homes. But what a handsome return they got: a virtually rentfree life with the bonus of income from subletting parts of these vast estates. It’s understood that the properties at Royal Lodge were sublet to active or retired staff at a rate to cover their running costs and maintenance. The details, however, remain sketchy.

The report doesn’t reveal how much Andrew MountbattenWindsor earned through subletting. But for some reason, as yet unexplained, any profits he acquired did not have to be returned to the Crown Estate – which is meant to be an independent commercial operation, with its profits being given directly to the Treasury. In other words, it is taxpayers’ money. The arrangements were privately made between Andrew and his tenants.

The fact is that taxpayers already foot a substantial bill to fund the monarchy. The annual Sovereign Grant currently sits at almost £138m, enough surely to pay the small band of working royals quite handsomely for their time and cover their official expenses. Trousering rents from surplus accommodation smacks of greed.

The NAO report also confirms that the King pays the rent for his nieces, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, who have the use of accommodation at Kensington Palace and St James’s Palace. For this he uses his private Duchy of Lancaster funds. But Andrew’s daughters are not working royals: they have no official duties. And you have to wonder why they feel the need to sponge off their uncle when they are both married to successful businessmen and have their own careers. Whether this arrangement will continue is up for debate.

The King also pays the rent for the Kensington Palace apartment of two other non-working royals: Prince and Princess Michael of Kent. In doing so, he is honouring a commitment made by his late mother. The Prince runs his own consultancy business, amongst other commercial activities. So why can’t he fund his own life?

It also reignites the whole question of whether the Duchy of Lancaster, and indeed Prince William’s Duchy of Cornwall, should in this day and age be used to generate millions of pounds each year for the private use of the monarch and Prince of Wales.

The royals must have been dreading this review of their properties and rental arrangements, and it seems they were right to do so. It has opened a can of worms.

The whole system needs a drastic overhaul. It’s clear to me that the Royal Family simply have far too many properties. They don’t seem to know what to do with half of them and this excess of housing reflects badly on them, especially when Prince William is actively campaigning to end homelessness.

They need to streamline their property portfolio, sort out the finances and publish the results. This row isn’t going away. The NAO report is just the first step. It will now form the basis of the Public Accounts Committee’s inquiry into royal properties – and that’s bound to raise a whole lot more questions, and spawn a new wave of potentially damaging headlines.”