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On Thursday, the website that Prince Harry and his wife Meghan created as a platform for their new business ventures in California went dark. Links to Meghan’s new podcast have disappeared, as have references to the couple’s philanthropic efforts and their production deal. Instead, the home page featured a tribute to Queen Elizabeth II.
Shrouding a website in digital mourning was a decision in keeping with royal protocols but also with public sentiment, even in the Southern California seaside towns where the Duke and Duchess of Sussex live after stepping back from their official roles in Windsor family hierarchy.
At Ye Old King’s Head, an English pub and gift shop near the beach in Santa Monica, news of the Queen’s death Thursday turned the store into a meeting place for both British expats and sentimental Americans, said Dusty Kerr, 65. -an old man from Leeds who has worked at the shop for 23 years. “I missed him a lot,” she said.
As people bought commemorative teapots and tea towels and drank toasts to the queen in the pub, there were many questions about what kind of king Charles would be, Kerr said, but she didn’t hear much about California’s most famous expat Brit.
“No one has done anything negative today,” she said. “I haven’t heard much about it—it’s all about Elizabeth.”
It’s unclear whether Elizabeth’s death at the age of 96 will do much to change the path Harry and Meghan have begun charting for themselves in California. In his first address to the nation, King Charles III endorsed their choice, saying: “I also want to express my love for Harry and Meghan as they continue to build their lives abroad.”
The couple live in the celebrity enclave of Montecito, in a mansion reportedly purchased for $14.65 million, and have started Archewell, a mix of for-profit and for-profit ventures that aim to “unleash the power of compassion to drive systemic cultural change’.
In a move that reflects Barack and Michelle Obama’s post-White House ambitions, the couple signed a multi-year, $100 million deal with Netflix to produce TV shows, movies and children’s programming. Meghan launched the Spotify podcast Archetypes, featuring interviews with American royalty such as Serena Williams, Mariah Carey and Mindy Kaling.
The duo are involved in several charities, including Harry’s Invictus Games, and often speak on public issues. In November 2021, the New York Times announced that the couple was “doing finance” and trying to make “sustainable investing mainstream”; Meghan called Republican senators on their personal mobile phones to advocate for paid family leave and was criticized for presenting herself as the “Duchess of Sussex” while Harry, who served alongside actual academic experts on the Commission on The Aspen Institute’s data breach director, said he emailed then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey on Jan. 5, 2021, and “warned” him “that his platform enables a coup.” The Archewell couple’s website encourages readers to share their own personal stories and warns them to “be mindful of screen time” and not spend too much time online, a reference to their commitment to the Center’s Silicon Valley Time Well Spent movement for Humane Technology.
All the while, the Sussex family’s mission was facilitated by California A-list friends like Oprah, Tyler Perry and Serena Williams. The president of the NAACP, a major American civil rights group, sent them special condolences after Elizabeth’s death, calling them “dear friends and allies in our struggle for a more just future.”
Our thoughts and prayers are with the people of England and members of the Queen’s family, especially Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, who have become dear friends and allies in our fight for a fairer future. We offer our deepest condolences.
— Derrick Johnson (@DerrickNAACP) September 8, 2022
A closer look at the Windsor family dynamic and the role these two royal dissidents could play in the reign of Harry’s 73-year-old father, Charles III, is likely, especially given the expected release of Harry’s memoirs, which are expected to delve into the aftermath of Princess Diana’s death and Harry and Meghan’s lives in the UK before they leave for California.
If recent days are any indication, reception of the Sussexes’ ventures may vary widely in the UK and their new homeland, where Paris Hilton mourned the Queen’s death with a tweet calling her “the original boss girl” accompanied by a broken heart emoji.
In recent weeks, The Cut has published a profile of Megan in the magazine to coincide with the launch of her podcast, taking readers inside the family’s life in Montecito.
Meghan’s chart-topping interview and podcast sparked bitter criticism in the British press and plenty of eye-rolling in the US, but didn’t stop Meghan from receiving a “huge ovation” at a subsequent speaking event in England.
Jasmine Guillory, a New York Times bestselling author who has followed Meghan and Harry’s relationship, said that despite the criticism it generated, she enjoyed The Cut’s profile and was excited to see what Meghan does next.
“I love that she’s creating her own story,” Guillory said. “A lot of people want her to step back and keep quiet and stay out of the limelight, and that’s not what she wants, and that’s not what Harry wants either.”
Much of the recent criticism of Harry and Meghan has centered around the couple’s efforts to make money, “instead of the money they’ve inherited just coming to them,” Guillory said. “Megan has always worked. She always had a job.
Catherine Fugate, the Los Angeles-based screenwriter of “The Prince and I,” a 2004 romantic comedy starring Julia Stiles about an American woman who falls in love with a cheating European prince, said the media coverage since the Queen’s death was too revealing. .. a familiar double standard where Meghan was criticized for making the exact same decisions Kate made without comment.
Like many people around the world, she continues to find the couple “very inspiring”, in part because Prince Harry has become the real-life equivalent of “the prince in my story – he chose to follow love and somehow ignore rules written a thousand years ago “.
“They choose love and they know what they’re getting themselves into and they chose it anyway,” Fugate said. “I see them as brave, and there are always people who are afraid of bravery.”
Guillory, whose 2019 novel “Royal Vacation” was inspired by the couple’s story, said she couldn’t help but hope for some sort of Windsor reconciliation for Harry and Meghan, perhaps taking place far outside the eyes of the public.
“I’m a person who likes to write happy endings,” she said. “I hope so [Harry’s] his relationship with his family is getting better.”
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