by Omid Scobie
With the state room almost empty except for a few familiar faces, the tears the duchess had been holding back were free to flow. She embraced some of the dedicated team members whose tireless efforts—to promote the couple’s work, launch landmark projects, and deal with the near-daily crises brought on by the tabloids—had come to an abrupt end. “I can’t believe this is it,” she said, hugging one of the young female aides she had become close with. Though Team Sussex was a much smaller operation than the more sophisticated offices at Clarence House and Kensington Palace, in the short space of a year since setting up, they had become like family.
At the end of the engagement, Harry joined Meghan and gave her a hug before she quickly changed into her clothes for the Commonwealth Service. “The last hat for a while, guys!” Meghan said with a smile, her tears now wiped away.
The short car ride to Westminster Abbey brought Harry and Meghan to their final engagement together as senior working royals. But if they ever needed confirmation that stepping away from the institution was the right move, the machinations that had preceded the Commonwealth Service served as a useful reminder. Although they had been part of the procession of senior royals who entered the church alongside the Queen in previous years, this year they discovered they had been removed from the lineup. The decision had been made without their consultation, and they were informed long after the two thousand orders of service had been printed for guests, with their names notably absent. This year it would just be the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, the Prince of Wales, and the Duchess of Cornwall walking through the Abbey with the monarch. It felt intentional. “Harry was more than disappointed,” a friend said. “He spoke up, but the damage had already been done.”
In an effort to smooth things over, a the Cambridges agreed to take their seats at the same time as the Sussexes, Prince Edward and Sophie, Countess of Wessex. But if looks were anything to go by, the Cambridges appeared unhappy with the decision. While Harry and Meghan both greeted William and Kate with smiles, the Cambridges showed little response. It was the first time the two couples had seen each other since January. “Harry,” William nodded, ignoring Meghan. For the minutes that followed before the Queen’s arrival, William and Kate continued to sit with their backs to the couple, only turning around to chat with Edward and Sophie, who sat behind them, next to the Sussexes. Although Meghan tried to make eye contact with Kate, the duchess barely acknowledged her.
While the couples had been in a slightly better place after Archie’s birth, relations fell apart again in January as the family negotiated Meghan and Harry’s new roles. William, a Kensington Palace source explained, remained upset that private family matters were made public by the couple. “It’s not anger,” the source explained. “It’s hurt.”
“It should have been the one public moment where the royal family put their arms around the couple for a show of support,” a source close to Harry and Meghan said. “They purposefully chose not to put them in the procession and not to be welcoming. It was most unpleasant.” A Buckingham Palace spokesperson shrugged off the Queen’s procession change, saying there was “no set format” for the event.
After the service, Meghan flew back to Canada—she had booked the first flight after the engagement to return to Archie. “Meg just wanted to get home,” said a friend, noting that the duchess was emotionally bruised and exhausted. “At that point she couldn’t imagine wanting to set a foot back into anything royal again.”
Harry stayed in the UK for three more days, in order to attend final meetings about their departure from royal duties and discussions with his new team, which included James and Heather. But he had no further contact with his brother or sister-in-law. “To repair that relationship will take time,” a friend of Harry’s said. “They see things differently. They feel that the experience that they’ve gone through over the last couple of years, they come at it from different points of view. William will need to get over his brother leaving the institution. They’ve both been frustrated with each other, but as Harry said himself, at the end of the day the bond of a brotherhood is much bigger than anything else.”
Back in Vancouver Island, the couple felt they could finally take a breath. Initially they had put pressure on themselves to prepare announcements for the day after they officially stepped back as senior royals on March 31, “but they realized that slowing down was what they needed,” a friend said. “They gave themselves space and instantly felt happier and more relaxed.” At that moment, spending time with Archie was more important than rushing to carve out a new life for themselves. Though Harry admitted to friends that the weight of the past few months was not off his shoulders quite yet, being back in Canada, away from the noise back home, felt good.
As they re-immersed themselves into the lush surroundings of Mille Fleurs—the fresh spring air being the perfect respite after the frenetic pace of their final days in London—Harry and Meghan both came to the realization that they needed to take each day one at a time. But as much as they wanted to continue their time at their idyllic rental, pressure from the coronavirus epidemic that had now gripped the world with talk of closing the borders for up to several months, was forcing them to consider accelerating their summer plans to move to California. The couple had been talking about a US move since they began planning their lives away from the UK, which was why they used the careful wording of “North America” in their statements about the future, giving them the option to move when the time was right.
With the borders soon to close, Harry and Meghan made the decision to bring forward their move to California. If they were to be unable to travel for the foreseeable future, being in their eventual base—and close to Doria—was what felt right to them.
With so much to plan, the couple ran a tight ship at home. After spending the mornings together and with Archie, the couple started their days checking in with staff back in the UK, including James and Heather. Morning briefings at 10:00 a.m. over video calls (they liked to see who they were talking to) were de rigueur. People were often delighted when a curious Archie occasionally made a cameo on the calls, popping his head into the frame of the webcam. The newest member of the team was Catherine St-Laurent, their chief of staff and the executive director of their nonprofit. The Montreal native, who had worked in Brussels and London, led the communications for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for several years before laying groundwork for Melinda’s own investment and incubation company, Pivotal Ventures. “I am delighted and honored to be able to play a role in realizing their vision as they embark on this journey of learning, listening, and inspiring all of us to act,” she said.
Another firm fixture in their new working world was Meghan’s close friend and Sunshine Sachs partner Keleigh Thomas Morgan, who represented the former actress for two years until she married into the Royal Family. Highly regarded in the PR world, the publicist was better known for the work she did launching the Times Up movement in 2018 and her representation of Jennifer Lopez, but she had also quietly helped with promotional work for Meghan’s issue of British Vogue and Harry’s eco-travel initiative Travalyst.
British tabloids had attempted to discredit the PR agency, claiming it had previously represented Michael Jackson and Harvey Weinstein, but the accusations weren’t true. Instead, the New York–based firm is mostly comprised of publicists with political and advocacy backgrounds. “It’s what attracted the couple to them,” a source close to the Sussexes said.
As the coronavirus pandemic continued to escalate globally, Harry and Meghan, who had sent most of their belongings ahead of them, traveled privately to Los Angeles on March 14. They set up home in a large Mediterranean-style villa in a gated community popular with a number of high-profile entertainers and industry people. It wasn’t permanent (both loved the idea of finding somewhere smaller, perhaps closer to the sea), but that was perfect for now. Settling into their new life, including Archie getting familiar with the house’s pool, the couple had time to reflect on where they
had been and where they might go.
As exciting as this new chapter was, Harry and Meghan were under no illusions that challenges lay ahead—both personal and global. The two realms merged on the afternoon of March 24 when they received a call from the palace: Charles had tested positive for coronavirus and was headed into isolation. It was news Harry had been dreading. His father, who was 71 years old at the time and so more at risk for complications from the virus, had been out at public engagements until a couple of weeks earlier. Though doctors described the Prince of Wales as in “good spirits” and his symptoms as mild, it was still enough to fill Harry with worry. He immediately called Charles at Birkhall, his Scottish home where he was now quarantined. Harry regularly checked in on his father until he was out of quarantine and recovered—as well as Camilla, who had isolated herself as a precaution. Before the Queen made her televised address regarding the virus, Harry rang her up, too, in order to wish his grandmother good luck.
Despite a pandemic raging throughout the globe, the tabloids didn’t give up their pursuit of Harry and Meghan. They were still dealing with their ongoing court cases against three British tabloids—a process that continues to reveal dramatic developments—when The Sun revealed on March 10 that Harry was the victim to Russian phone hoaxers posing as Greta Thunberg and her father. Two calls taped in December and January featured Harry speaking openly about the tensions between him and his family. “We are completely separate from the majority of my family,” he said. When asked about Prince Andrew’s friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, he replied, “I have very little to say on that.” (The couple have always avoided talking about the matter, preferring to keep their thoughts to themselves.) However, he didn’t hold back when it came to airing his views on President Donald Trump. “The mere fact that [he] is pushing the coal industry is so big in America [sic], he has blood on his hands.” Although the contents of the call were nothing he wouldn’t openly share given half the chance, being made the center of a joke was humiliating for the prince, who was furious when he discovered that the tabloid had paid handsomely for exclusive access to the tapes.
Perhaps the leaked call was why Trump, who was famously thin-skinned, did little to hold back his feelings toward the couple when he waded into the debate about their security costs as non-working royals. The subject had been at the center of numerous newspaper opinion pieces in the UK, with much of the British public angered at the notion that the couple might continue being funded by taxpayers, even to protect their personal safety. “I am a great friend and admirer of the Queen,” Trump tweeted on March 29. “Now they have left Canada for the US however, the US will not pay for their security protection. They must pay!”
Meghan’s response to the president’s tweet was to roll her eyes. The Sussexes had never asked the US government for support and had always planned to cover their own security costs after March 30. They quickly fired back through a statement of their own. “Privately funded security arrangements have been made,” a spokesperson said. The freedom to shut down inaccurate reports was liberating, and a feeling both were excited to exercise.
Freedom. That was a word that could be applied to so much about the couple’s new life, both personally and professionally. As a couple who hoped to change the world, they planned to engage in projects that brought together their strengths to solve problems. For as long as they had spoken about setting up a charitable organization, they knew that America would be at the center of it. It was an even bigger charitable landscape and also meant they wouldn’t be accused of competing with members of the royal family in the UK. Initially it was the couple’s idea to set up the Sussex Royal Foundation, a near–carbon copy of the Royal Foundation, after they split from Kensington Palace in April 2019. “They felt pressure to immediately set up their own,” a source familiar with the plans said. “But over the months that followed, the more people they spoke to, including aides from the Obama and Gates foundations, the more they realized what motivated them—and the more they realized they didn’t want to be spending all their time raising money for grants when there are already other organizations doing it so successfully.” By late November 2019, they started to wind up their work on the foundation, and by the beginning of the year they were already starting afresh with a nonprofit organization that would drive them for years to come.
The name for their nonprofit was one that had been in their minds since they got married—Archewell. “Before SussexRoyal, came the idea of ‘Arhche’—the Greek word meaning ‘source of action,’ ” the couple explained. “We connected this concept for the charitable organization we hoped to build one day.” It also served as inspiration for something else—their son’s name.
Although they might not be working royals anymore, Harry and Meghan will never give up on their original principles and ideals. Harry will always be interested in preserving the environment and supporting those with HIV, mental health issues, and veterans. For Meghan, her focus remains on empowering women and girls all over the globe. “They want their legacy to be modern and relevant to a new generation,” the source said. “Work that doesn’t repeat what other people are already doing and stands the test of time.” And they are willing to wait for it. Though they both admit to being impulsive sometimes, the couple are entering a listening period, only launching Archewell “when the time is right.”
Curious and open to new ideas, Harry and Meghan want to explore technological innovation. It’s the reason they paid a private visit to Palo Alto in January, quietly stepping into a brainstorming session with professors from the Graduate School of Business and Center for Social Innovation at Stanford University. They have been advised by leaders in all arenas, including the Obamas, who have helped their team network and recommended new people for them to collaborate with. Above all, the couple want to continue with what they have always set out to do: empowering others. “To accentuate, celebrate, and get people to recognize their place in both the world and in the communities around them,” a source close to Meghan said.
On March 30, Buckingham Palace shared with the press the final details of the couple’s future beyond their household transition. It was the last task for Sara Latham, who had helped shut down the Sussex office and took a new job advising the Queen’s private office on special projects, as well as a chance to send new media contact details. From April 1, Harry and Meghan would officially be independent.
Moments later, Harry and Meghan had the final word, posting on their @SussexRoyal account for the last time. Though they had wanted to continue using the account, courtiers made it clear to them that it served as royal record and they should start afresh. Conscious of the current global crisis, the couple said, “As we all find the part we are to play in this global shift and changing of habits, we are focusing this new chapter to understand how we can best contribute. While you may not see us here, the work continues. Thank you to this community—for the support, the inspiration, and the shared commitment to the good in the world. We look forward to reconnecting with you soon. You’ve been great!”
Authors’ Note
This book takes place between 2016 and 2020 and is based on more than two years of reporting. The events described in these pages draw on hundreds of hours of conversations and interviews with more than one hundred sources, as well as our own time accompanying, observing, and interacting with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex on all of their formal and informal royal engagements. We have joined them on a wide variety of domestic trips and foreign travels. The reporting process has taken us around the world, including trips to Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Tonga, several countries in Africa, France, Canada, New York, and Los Angeles. We have spoken with close friends of Harry and Meghan, royal aides and palace staff (past and present), the charities and organizations they have built long-lasting relationships with and, when appropriate, the couple themselves.
In many instances, we have granted sources anonymity to allow freedom to candidly provide direct quotes without their names b
eing attributed (either due to the sensitivity of roles or to protect careers). Many individuals have also spoken to us on what is known as “on-background,” meaning the information from conversations can be used as guidance but no quotes repeated. In a few cases, conversations have been strictly off-the-record.
Some of the scenes in this book have been witnessed personally while for others we have relied on the consistency of accounts provided by sources we have been given access to and come to trust. Conversational dialogue in scenes featured in the book has been drawn directly from accounts shared by multiple sources, who have corroborated the same information. These are versions of events both of us believe to be true.
As two fact-driven, objective journalists working in an era of fast news and clickbait reporting, we have continued to follow a strict standard of fact-checking and all information featured in this book has at least two sources. In cases where sources from opposing parties have disagreed on versions of events, we have put forward both.
The aim of this book was to portray the real Harry and Meghan, a couple who have often been innacurately portrayed and victims of those with personal agendas. Our mission has been motivated by the desire to present the truth of misreported stories that have become gospel simply because of the amount of times they have been repeated. It is thanks to the cooperation of the sources featured in this book that we have been able to share what we feel is the definitive story of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. To everyone that has helped bring this book, and their story, to life, we are eternally grateful.
