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From the point of view of New York City, where I live, everything is going Meghan and Harry’s way. News items about their folly vs the worthy Waleses are a standard trope of the US home page of the Daily Mail, but they are the wrong side of America’s zeitgeist. True, no one could have expected a weaponized lady-in-waiting to sink the strenuous efforts to update the House of Windsor brand, but it is also true that to anyone with a modicum of PR smarts, the where-are-you-really-from flap involving Lady Susan Hussey — a Cretaceous-era courtier often glimpsed beneath a flower-pot hat riding beside the late Queen in the car to church — was a debacle waiting to happen. Exhibit A was the roll-out of the news that the Queen Consort is replacing the moldy concept of ladies-in-waiting with something new — unpaid “companions” doing pretty much the same thing. It was glaring to American eyes that this bold new line-up from the “modernizing” monarchy featured six posh white women of a certain age. And three more, just as old and white (including Lady Hussey, who was retained), dubbed “ladies of the household,” to assist the King. The question must be asked: in these sensitive times, why did no one suggest adding some able and seasoned women of color to the new roster to welcome a modern mix of guests to the Palace? Would this moment not have been an elegant opportunity for eighty-three-year-old Lady Hussey to retire? And at the very least, couldn’t Camilla’s new equerry, Major Ollie Plunkett of the Rifles, have been swapped out for some esteemed officer who was less snow-white?
All of which has been a public relations gift to the House of Sussex. However the Palace tries to spin it, a racist miasma from the Hussey incident settled over William and Kate’s US trip and dimmed the luster of their arrival in a city that was ill-chosen in the first place. If lowering the temperature is your goal, then the words “Boston” and “climate change” will do it for you perfectly. Beantown should have been a curtain raiser to a more shiny high-wattage charm offensive in Manhattan. Clearly the Palace spinmeisters thought that linkage between the Earthshot prize and JFK’s Moonshot initiative would bring a Camelot glow to the entire Wales enterprise. But Brand Camelot itself, thanks to the lackluster second and third generations, hasn’t been glamorous or relevant since circa 1998. The Sussexes touching down in the capital of buzz, Manhattan, five days later to receive the Robert F. Kennedy Ripple of Hope Award for taking a “heroic stand” against “structural racism within the institution [of the monarchy]” turned into another well-timed touché to the Waleses. (Were the Kennedys also playing out the dynamics of a house divided? There are many here who think that Kerry Kennedy bestowing the award on vaccine-equity touters Harry and Meghan was a big up-yours to Robert Jr., her crazed vaccine-denier brother.)
As Harry and Meghan vowed on stage to keep up a war against oppression, on the other side of the Atlantic the Prince and Princess of Wales, looking regal and relaxed, were back with the King and Queen hosting a glittering reception for diplomats and public servants. Shamalot may have an extended New York run, but at Buckingham Palace, the band plays on.
Now comes the Sussexes’ sulfurous Netflix doc, followed by Spare, Harry’s revenge memoir with its ominous ginger mugshot on the cover. Part two of the Netflix grudgernaut will drop on the same day that the Princess of Wales demurely plays the piano in Westminster Abbey for her annual carol service. Will some fresh Molotov cocktail be hurled from the organ loft? It’s such a pile-on that the Palace can only hope that the Sussex stink bombs will cancel each other out. I suspect the next two months — to use a psychological term — are the Sussexes’ “extinction burst.”
That’s not just my prediction, it’s also my fervent wish. My book about the British royal family was published in April. After crashing the deadline to keep abreast of Megxit, the death of Prince Philip and the still reverberating Oprah wrecking ball, I thought I could surf the Platinum Jubilee in June and the orgy of lit fests and, with God’s grace, our beloved Queen would hang on until the book’s paperback publication in February. But no. I’d barely got my own life back when the death of Her Maj consumed most of September, and the endless Sussex news stories have generated a stampede of demands to join the latest outrage panel. I half expect to open the fridge door and have Piers Morgan’s booker jump out.
Tina Brown’s The Palace Papers is out now. This article was originally published in The Spectator’s UK magazine. Subscribe to the World edition here.
