Low's new book paints both Harry and Meghan in a bad light. Photo / AP
OPINION:
To talk about the history of the British royal family is to tell a story about winners and losers. Who managed to lose Brittany to the French? Who vanquished whom during the Jacobite Rising? Which monarch managed to get their hands on a big chunk of the new world and who then somehow misplaced it several centuries later? Not to sound too undergraduate here but, it's a very binary way of seeing the world: Everyone is either a victor or a dud.
Ironically, the story of Megxit, of two people who exiled themselves from royal life, fits perfectly within this framework if you are to believe the millions of words spilled by UK commentators and a global sea of social media users.
So one way of looking at this mess is that cheery Prince Harry, hugger of small children and charmer of the public, was happily ticking along, trailing behind his brother and sister-in-law William and Kate, now the Prince and Princess of Wales, until Meghan Markle, Suits star and middling blogger, came along and somehow poisoned everything. (I am not for a second agreeing with this way of thinking, mind you.)
This was, supposedly, a tragic story with a clear villain and a clear victim. Their exit, after all, is called Megxit, not Sussexit or Hexit or some other portmanteau.
And that is precisely what makes the first glimpses we have seen of a new book about royal life called Courtiers: The Hidden Power Behind the Crown by Valentine Low so damn sensational.
To me, the most glaring, important takeaway is not that former staffers called themselves the "Sussex Survivors Club" or that insiders thought the duchess was a "narcissistic sociopath" but that time and again, it was allegedly not just Meghan who treated staff badly.
Based on Low's telling, Harry was just as complicit as his girlfriend-then-wife.
(When Low broke the news in March last year that the duchess had been the subject of a bullying complaint made by a Kensington Palace advisor, a spokesperson for Meghan strenuously denied the allegations and said the claims were part of a "calculated smear campaign".)
What is so significant about Courtiers' revelations so far is that it wholly pushes back against the narrative of Meghan as the difficult, baddie HRH, instead establishing a scenario where she was only one half of an allegedly highly problematic duo.
The claims about both Harry and Meghan's behaviour come thick and fast in the three extracts which ran in The Times over the weekend.
One source is quoted as saying: "There were a lot of broken people. Young women were broken by their behaviour" while another called the duo "outrageous bullies" and that "I will never trust or like them again".
Low writes of one incident when "Meghan felt she had been let down over an issue that was worrying her" so she "repeatedly" rang a staffer on a Friday night. The staffer said "Every 10 minutes, I had to go outside to be screamed at by her and Harry.
"It was, 'I can't believe you've done this. You've let me down. What were you thinking?' It went on for a couple of hours."
The bombardment then went on "for days".
"You could not escape them. There were no lines or boundaries – it was last thing at night, first thing in the morning," the staffer told Low.
Reflecting on The Firm's inability to work out how to deal with the malcontent couple, a source said: "They were run over by her, and then run over by Harry."
Elsewhere, Low, who has been a royal reporter since 2008, talks about the experience of Samantha Cohen, an Australian who worked for Buckingham Palace for 17 years and who ended up as the Queen's assistant private secretary.
By the time 2018 had rolled around, Cohen had reportedly resigned but she was persuaded to stay on for an extra six months to act as the newlywed Sussexes' private secretary.
So how did the highly experienced and "one of the most well-regarded members of the Queen's household" fare working with Harry and Meghan?
According to Low, a source told him that working for the Sussexes left Cohen "miserable" and that the palace veteran "always made clear that it was like working for a couple of teenagers". "They were impossible and pushed her to the limit," Low wrote.
He also quotes a source as saying of the HRHs and Cohen, "They treated her terribly. Nothing was ever good enough."
And that is the key word to keep in mind here – "they".
What is so noteworthy about Courtiers as opposed to previous post-mortems from experienced journalists and biographers who have dissected the Great Sussex Debacle is that in Low's account, it is not just Meghan who allegedly behaved badly, but Harry allegedly did too.
For example, after a flare up over Meghan's wedding tiara being made available for a hair trial run in 2018, Low recounts that "the Queen summoned Harry to a private meeting. 'He was firmly put in his place,' a source said. 'He had been downright rude'."
Then there is the widely reported incident that took place on the plane ferrying the Sussexes and the accredited media travelling with them during their highly successful 2018 tour of the South Pacific. When the duke finally went to briefly speak to the press contingent, a "sulky" Harry said, "Thanks for coming even though you weren't invited."
The incident was "spectacularly rude – and incorrect", Low, a highly experienced royal reporter who was on the plane that day, writes.
What these latest revelations bring into focus is the extent to which Megxit has and continues to be framed as the tale of a bad woman who has somehow manipulated a sweet man into committing some sort of royal disembowelment.
The deeply entrenched sexism in this goes without saying. (Harry himself called out the "misogyny" of the term Megxit late last year.)
Instead, in Low's account, it is both the Duke and Duchess of Sussex who were allegedly horrible bosses.
Low's reporting also adds much needed nuance to the prevailing "Sussex versus Palace" storyline, that is that one side here is wholly responsible for this mess. However, in Courtiers' telling, based on what has so far come out, fingers can be pointed in all directions.
Take the situation that unfolded when the Sussexes flew back to London after their six-week Canadian sabbatical in early January, 2020.
As Low recounts, they wanted to discuss their idea of a half-in, half-out model for themselves going forward and thought that they would be able to speak to the Queen nearly immediately only to find out they would have to wait until January 29 for the meeting.
Within 48 hours of arriving back, the Megxit fuse had been lit.
But, as Low points out, after their explosive announcement, suddenly royal diaries become much more open and the Queen, Prince Charles and Prince William were all able to convene five days later for the Sandringham Summit. Huh.
"The palace also showed the sort of initial inflexibility that was always guaranteed to infuriate them," he writes and that "the institution failed to appreciate" that.
"Harry and Meghan felt cornered, misunderstood and deeply unhappy."
Why, nearly three years after the Sussex dream combusted is there still such a strong urge from so many people to completely apportion blame wholly on one side or the other?
Perhaps that comes down to the fact that to accept Meghan wasn't the key agitator who must shoulder the full responsibility for Megxit then we have to admit that the Harry we loved for all those years, the eternally cheeky chappie, was in truth a deeply unhappy man.
Maybe I'm getting far too philosophical for a Monday but does that make us also complicit in his suffering back then? Or do we feel slightly duped that the Prince we thought we knew was only really a front?
Over the decades we have accepted a series of largely one-dimensional versions of Harry: Harry the lost boy, Harry the party boy, Harry the committed military man and Harry the lovestruck newlywed.
But, since the events of January 8, 2020 what the world has been forced to face is the reality of a much more complicated and turbulent Harry and that is a much harder and more problematic story to tell.
- Daniela Elser is a writer and a royal expert with more than 15 years' experience working with a number of Australia's leading media titles.
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