Battle royal: Harry and Meghan’s modern brand of revenge

Remember the Heads Together campaign? It was back in 2017. Prince William, his wife Kate and his brother Prince Harry, who’d recently begun dating a conspicuously woke actress called Meghan Markle, launched a charitable endeavour to raise awareness about mental health. The princes gave interviews in which they ‘opened up’ about their struggles. Such public emoting made fuddy-duddy monarchists nervous, yet a new generation of royal PR operatives and suck-ups saw the future. The royals were appealing to a younger audience, cleverly rebranding the monarchy for a new age in which it is OK to not be OK. Move over, stiff-lipped oldies, the Windsors were moving on.

Then Harry married Meghan, the brothers fell out, and everyone went crazy. Fast forward to spring 2021, the middle of a global pandemic, and Harry and Meghan are in California, gassing to Oprah Winfrey about ‘their journey’. They’re whingeing about how the monarchy has let them down, how they’ve been silenced and victimised.