Vanities /Conscious Uncoupling
THEY SAID IT wouldn’t last. “Are Prince
Harry and Meghan doomed?” Ne w Yo r k
wondered in the run-up to the couple’s
royal wedding in 2018. “I think she
will bolt,” feminist writer Germaine
Greer predicted on an Australian
morning show of the then 36-year-old
actor/activist bride. Not two years
later, there is indeed a split under
way, just not the one skeptics foretold.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are
still together—“she’s the same woman
I fell in love with,” he said in January—
but they’ve effectively broken up with
the 1,047-year-old monarchy.
Queen Elizabeth II and company
traffic in the presumption of magic
and majesty—an assurance that,
divinely and by birth, they are superior.
Commoners are supposed to clamor
at their gates, not marry in and then make
a U-turn for Canada.
The monarchy already feels
drearier without Harry and Meghan,
who infused the whole operation
with big celebrity energy. The Sussexes
had an estimated 1.9 billion viewers
in their thrall at their royal wedding:
Harry bit his bearded lower lip
and appeared to whisper, “You look
amazing” in what became a much-
memed moment. Meghan, the first
biracial duchess in modern history,
blinked back, glowing. The royal family
was, but for a fleeting moment, both
inclusive and...sexy? This historically
white and musty institution needed the
couple to appear modern and relevant
to survive into the 21stcentury. And
January’s shocking news, dropped via
Instagram, struck a House of Windsor
already in crisis.
Last November, someone else
had quit the Firm, when Prince Andrew
relinquished royal duties “for the
foreseeable future” amid allegations
he was an abuser in Jeffrey Epstein’s
sex trafficking ring. (The prince
denies these allegations.) In a disastrous
BBC interview, the Duke of York
minimized the late Epstein’s alleged child
sexual abuse as merely “unbecoming.”
And before even that unpleasant PR
nightmare/disaster, there were the
tabloid rumors swirling around Prince
William, Kate, and their “Turnip Toffs”
clique. It was only a year ago when
98-year-old Prince Philip tumped over in
his Land Rover and that seemed like
the worst kind of news coming out of BP.
The queen conceded in her annual
Christmas address that 2019 felt “quite
bumpy.” Not since her self-described
“annus horribilis” of 1992—when a fire
broke out in Windsor Castle and three
of her four children (Princes Charles
and Andrew and Princess Anne) split
from their spouses in high toe-sucking
fashion—has the state of the royal union
seemed so shaky. Eagle eyes noticed
that a photo of the Sussex family was
absent from her desk. Two weeks later,
Harry and Meghan announced they
were stepping down, and it’s been nothing
but tumult since.
“The monarchy, ideally, presents a
cohesive front to the public,” said
royal historian Carolyn Harris, author
of Raising Royalty: 1000 Years of Royal
Parenting. To her loyal subjects, the queen
is the pearl-decked personification
of the state, and the crown is “seen as a
unifying force, a level of government
that’s above party politics.” Disharmony
in the gilded, British taxpayer-
funded palaces defeats the purpose.
But more than bad optics, some
now worry that the loss of Harry and
Meghan as working royals could leave
the royal family short-staffed (especially
after Prince Philip’s retirement from
public life in 2017) and diminish the
monarchy’s international reach.
“The queen isn’t just queen of the
United Kingdom,” Harris notes.
The sparkliest royals are turning away from the
Firm, literally and emotionally.
Burning Down
THE HOUSE
Does S-U-S-S-E-X spell
disaster for a royal family
in crisis? By Michelle Ruiz
T
78 VANITY FAIR MARCH 2020
KARWAI TANG/GETTY IMAGES
