OPINION:
Of all the iconic photo backdrops in the royal pantheon – the Buckingham Palace balcony, Kensington Palace's Sunken Garden, St Mary Magdalene Church on the Sandringham estate – none has played so central a role in what has become the royal soap opera in recent years than the unassuming stretch of road leading to St George's Chapel in Windsor.
It was there, in 2018, that the world watched as a slew of Hollywood's A and B-list made their way into the church to watch one of their own – a former cable TV actress – metamorphose into a real-deal princess.
Then in 2021, that entire world's eyes were on that exact same stretch of bland road as Prince Harry, the royal runaway, briefly returned to the fold only weeks after going on worldwide TV screens to denounce his family's treatment of him and his wife.
On pretty much the same spot where, just three years before Oprah Winfrey had waved to the crowds, millions of people watched with bated breath as Kate, Duchess of Cambridge became the first Windsor to publicly speak to the HRH-turned-permanent black sheep.
And now? Well, that very same bit of road has just provided the setting for a new palace defeat that has gone largely unnoticed.
Yesterday, the younger generations of the Queen's family fronted up to St George's Chapel for the usual Easter Sunday service with William and Kate, Duke and Duchess of Cambridge arriving in colour-coordinated unison with their two oldest children, Prince George and Princess Charlotte.
If ever there was an image of sublime royal perfection, this was it. Sunshine! Happy families! Photogenic kidlets!
It's the sort of photograph that should have picture editors the length and breadth of Fleet Street excitedly barking into phones to yell about front pages and the sort of photograph that should have the Queen's most senior courtiers breathing a long sigh of relief into their afternoon Horlicks.
The reality?
There was only one royal show anyone was interested in this weekend and it was taking place only a ferry ride away in the Netherlands, starring none other than our aforementioned small screen star, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.
Last week she and husband Prince Harry returned a deux to the UK, the first time the duo had been in Blighty together since the histrionics of 2020. The Sussexes, in the words of their spokesperson, "stopped by the UK" to see "the Duke's grandmother", where they also met with his father Prince Charles in a statement shockingly bereft of anything resembling regal politesse.
And then it was off to The Hague in the Netherlands for the Invictus Games, the sporting championship for wounded, injured and sick servicepeople, both serving and veterans, which Harry founded in 2014.
Every news channel, website, blog and two-bit community newspaper from London to Luanda has now spent the last 48 hours breathlessly covering the couple's full-throttle return to the limelight which has featured more outfit changes than a Coachella main stage performance.
If there is any sort of alarm bell inside Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle, maybe some sort of handpainted porcelain number they nicked from their Hanoverian relatives and which is usually reserved for summoning a footman, then today is the day to start ringing it with urgency.
Because what we have just witnessed is the shape of things to come and the news for the house of Windsor is all bad.
The royal family, like the world, has been in a holding pattern since March 2020. The pandemic has put all plans, hopes and dreams in aspic as we hoarded loo paper and threw out our failed sourdough starter. It also meant that whatever grand plans for post-palace world domination that Harry and Meghan might have harboured have largely been put on ice.
No longer.
What has just played out in The Hague this weekend has been our first real taste of what life post-Megxit is really going to look like and the picture is a dire one for the Queen, staunch monarchists and the Kensington Palace communications staff.
Thanks to these clashing events, the Easter Sunday service and the Invictus Games, for the very first time we have truly seen the couples against one another by circumstance – and William and Kate have been totally and utterly blown out of the water by the made-for-TV Sussex show.
For proof, look no further than the hardcore pro-palace Sun newspaper's cover today. Kate, a certifiable stunner in her Emilia Wickstead number, has been relegated to what looks like a slim, cursory nod (with William, George and Charlotte entirely lopped out of frame) while the Sussex soap opera hogs the vast majority of the precious front page real estate.
Monday's front page of @TheSun pic.twitter.com/4QCQYFExkw
— Matt Wilkinson (@MattSunRoyal) April 17, 2022
Instead of the UK's newspapers enthusiastically rhapsodising about the Cambridges today, or the fact that the Windsor cousins put on an impressive show of unity, all anyone wants to talk about or read about are Harry and Meghan's megawatt, limelight-hogging performance at the Invictus Games.
The Duchess' every outfit, blink and word has been covered with the same sort of microscopic, obsessive detail as the second coming, only with a much better blow dry. (Jesus never really did much with those luscious locks of his, did he?)
(It is entirely appropriate that the grand Sussex resurrection took place right at the same time that Christians celebrate Nazareth's most famous carpenter rising from the dead.)
What we have just seen are the palace's worst fears about Harry and Meghan come to fruition in high-definition close-up: That the Sussexes would completely and utterly monopolise the world's attention and interest and nothing short of Kate rocking up to St George's Chapel in an on-trend see-through dress baring One's Knickers could come close to toppling the Sussexes' dominance.
Let's get one thing straight here: We are not talking about some cheap popularity contest that the pinstriped palace staff can stiffly dismiss as beneath them.
Public attention is the commodity which powers the monarchy. Buckingham Palace needs Brits and those of us scattered about the Commonwealth to pay attention to what the HRHs are up to so as to maintain support for the institution. To ensure survival, the palace has to be seen as relevant and a force for good in contemporary society, a message they can only get out there if we, the public, are paying attention.
Because if a climate change project is announced in the woods and no one is watching, does it really make a sound?
William and Kate are on increasingly shaky ground here and I'm not sure they entirely know how to play this game. Right now, the Windsors look like they are at sea about how to compete in this new royal arms race.
What seems increasingly clear is that the Cambridges' programme of (genuinely interesting and innovative) good works cannot compete when Harry and Meghan put on the razzle dazzle and dial it all up to 11. Two innately charismatic people, freed of any palace strictures and with the budgetary oomph of Netflix behind them, are always going to prove far more compulsively watchable than two well-meaning, hardworking sorts competently getting on with things.
And this is all before we can quite literally watch the Sussexes at work. There is a 30-strong TV crew in the Netherlands right now, shooting the couple and the Invictus Games for an upcoming documentary for their streaming lords and masters, Netflix. I don't think there is much doubt that when we finally get to see this offering, we will end up watching the on-screen canonisation of Harry and Meghan.
What William and Kate need to do, and sharpish like, is to work out how to wrest back control of at least some of the spotlight.
Harry and Meghan have been unleashed and right now, they are the only show anyone is interested in bingeing.
• Daniela Elser is a royal expert and a writer with more than 15 years experience working with a number of Australia's leading media titles.
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