This story was one of Herald Lifestyle’s most read in 2022
OPINION:
Australia has provided the backdrop for a number of pivotal royal moments over the decades.
It was in Australia that Prince Charles went to school for two terms in 1966, was famously randomly kissed by a bikini-clad woman in 1979 and was where Lady Diana Spencer was hastily whisked by her mother to have a good long think after Prince Charles asked her to marry him in 1981. (They stayed in a house near the Mollymook golf course and the teenager "would come in and stand at the bain-marie", the owner of the local fish shop revealed years later. "She'd just buy a Popper … She wouldn't make eye contact. There was a fragility about her. A beautiful-looking woman, but not a happy one.")
It was while Down Under that, two years later, Diana first understood the truly awesome power that came with her new title as Princess of Wales, later saying that after that trip and her rapturous Second Coming-worthy reception, "I was a different person. I realised the sense of duty, the level of intensity of interest, and the demanding role I now found myself in."
Now it has been revealed that another newbie royal bride also had a profound experience while touring Australia and New Zealand, one that would set in motion a series of events which contributed to the cataclysmic rupture that was Megxit.
In the new must-read royal page-turner The Palace Papers by Tina Brown, the former Vanity Fair editor has revealed that when Harry and Meghan, Duke and Duchess of Sussex followed in his parents' footsteps and toured Australia and New Zealand in 2018, the duchess had "hated every second of it".
Let that sink in for a minute.
At the time, the reception which Harry, and more to the point, Meghan received in October 2018 when they landed in Sydney was nothing short of rhapsodic. The public and the press were overtaken by Megmania and Australians and Kiwis felt intimately part of Windsor history when the couple announced they were expecting their first child while there.
The whole thing felt like a 21st-century love-in of epic proportions and we responded in kind to what felt like the Sussexes' exuberant embrace.
Remember all those photos from that trip of Meghan beaming as she hugged small children and the moment up with banana bread during a visit to a farm in Dubbo? When it looked like she genuinely reciprocated the outpouring of love and support the nation was sending her?
Turns out, according to Brown, Aussies and Kiwis got it all very wrong.
She writes: "So, Meghan must have been thrilled with it all ... right? No. She apparently hated every second of it."
Brown, who in the 90s counted Diana as a friend and whose upper crust connections are impeccable, says that a former Palace employee revealed to her that Meghan found the itinerary "pointless".
"She didn't understand why things were set up in that way. Instead of being excited when thousands of people showed up at the opera house, it was very much like, 'What's the purpose? I don't understand this'," the Palace staffer told Brown, who adds "the 'this' being the representational role of the British monarchy and its traditional agenda, rather than the focus on causes she wanted to spotlight".
While the Sussexes were in Australia, they were given an untold number of gifts including flowers, stuffed animals, posters and baby presents. Thousands of Sydneysiders crammed the Opera House forecourt and waited to see them on their first day with thousands more turned out in the Melbourne Botanical Gardens to catch even a glimpse of them there. Such was the Beatle-esque mania which followed them, one fan broke down in tears after Harry hugged her.
ROYAL FEVER: A lucky fan has broken down in tears after receiving a hug from Prince Harry. #RoyalTour #9News pic.twitter.com/95giZpClnv
— 9News Melbourne (@9NewsMelb) October 18, 2018
And yet while the Australian nation was giving itself over to this surfeit of goodwill, the new duchess was having a profoundly different reaction to it all than her mother-in-law did. Rather than being awed and inspired and proud of her new position and all that came with it, she instead, per Brown, "hated every second of it."
Brown's claims are similar to a report published by the Times last year which alleged that Meghan commented to her team of the Sydneysiders who had thronged to see the couple at the opera house, "What are they all doing here? It's silly."
A source told the Times that the Sussexes' team explained that "they're here because they admire and support a monarch and an institution that you're representing" however "she didn't get it".
One thing the former Suits star did reportedly take away from their Australian tour was the idea that she and Harry deserved something of a boost in the royal pecking order.
Brown writes: "It was head-turning for Meghan to experience the full-throttle motorcade-purring, outrider-vrooming, crowd-roaring adulation of a popular young royal on a tour planned to the last teacup by the Palace machine.
"Meghan seemed to interpret the success as a call for Brand Sussex to be elevated in the Palace hierarchy."
However, instead of getting the kudos that she reportedly felt they deserved, Meghan instead "felt snubbed that there was no particular display of Palace appreciation".
As a former aide told Brown, there is often a "massive anti-climax when you get back from a royal tour ... You're just back into your normal life. The Queen would send the principals a note after a trip but you don't come back to a ticker-tape welcome."
In hindsight, it was the Sussexes' trip to Australia and South Pacific that marked the very clear turning point between the fawning adoration of the couple that led up to and followed their wedding and then the much more toxic chapter which followed, during which their relationship with his family and the media irretrievably broke down.
Last year, Harry told Oprah Winfrey: "To see how effortless it was for Meghan to come into the family so quickly, in Australia, and across New Zealand, Fiji and Tonga, and just be able to connect with people ... You know, as we talked about, she was very much welcomed into the family, not just by the family, but by the world, certainly by the Commonwealth."
It's a bitter pill to swallow to learn that while the people in this corner of the world were enthusiastically welcoming the prince and his wife, she allegedly "hated" that tour.
I suppose it's a moot point though, these days. Having quit working royal life to talk about creating content and bask in the supposed glow of their new emancipated lives, having to deal with an entire country's slightly hysterical adoration and shaking hands with a governor-general here and there is no longer something they have to submit themselves to.
Shame. With Netflix having this week axed one of the only two shows they have announced in nearly two years and as part of their reported $140 million deal, a spot of public applause might not go astray right now.
Te Ngae Rd's speed limit will rise from 50km/h to 60km/h after a review.