Last week the doors slammed shut, with Buckingham Palace making the shock announcement that they’ll no longer answer for the Sussexes. It’s all so familiar to those who recall the abdication of King Edward VIII, and his lifetime spent longing to return. Then, as now, the royal machine knows how to freeze out a wayward prince. In the darkest days of 1936 the King, relegated to royal Duke, set off from these shores sure that the love of his people would allow him to return once the dust had settled. How wrong he was.
As far as the public was concerned, plans were open-ended about the Duke’s return – he’d fled to France, got married, found a temporary home. Tomorrow could take care of itself.
But his brother King George VI, and especially Elizabeth, his wife, were determined that Edward should stay away. King George held the purse strings, just as Prince Charles holds them today, and as the Duke of Windsor discovered – and the Duke of Sussex will soon discover – cash is everything to a runaway royal.
Windsor spent the rest of his life worrying about money. It led to colossal errors that led to a gradual loss of respect.
Like Harry he wanted the very best for his wife, including the costliest gems from Cartier, Harry Winston and Van Cleef & Arpels.
But after a time he stopped paying the bills, kept his hands in his lap when the dinner bill came around, and jumped at every freebie he could get.
The people he now socialised with were not worthy of his company.
He fell into the arms of Jessie Donahue, uncouth daughter of five-and-dime mogul FW Woolworth, and for five years allowed her to buy holidays and jewels for himself and his wife.
When Jessie’s son Jimmy took advantage and began an affair with the Duchess, he had to look the other way.
The Duke, petrified he would run out of cash, sold his story in book form and to magazines.
Will Harry do the same? Last week the first of the Stateside bulletins from the House of Sussex was delivered – Harry and Meghan are looking for work but will do nothing to harm the Queen.
If that sounded like a vote of loyalty, in reality it was a safeguard against the money tap being turned off completely.
It appears that Harry and Meghan are cut loose from Britain without a proper plan, and with no clear idea how they were to finance their future life.
Security – estimated at £4million a year – would be down to him.
There’s been much talk of buying a house in uber-smart Malibu. Properties start with a £20million price tag, and Harry doesn’t have that kind of money.
The Windsors faced similar difficulties.
Though once King and Emperor, the Duke owned little. He had a life interest in Sandringham and Balmoral, which he gave up for cash, but his home – his pride and joy, Fort Belvedere in Windsor Great Park – was on a Crown lease. Like Frogmore Cottage, the Fort was shuttered when he fled. He was never to return.
In the years that followed, he never had a job.
He talked about charitable work but it never happened.
It would come as no surprise to find that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex Foundation, which shut up shop last week, won’t be rekindled in the US.
Running a charity costs money and there’s no evidence Harry will ever work again to fund it.
Meghan is a big name in Los Angeles, but unless she gets bigger jobs than the voiceover she’s just done for a Disney documentary, her prospects are bleak.
She’s a competent actress but her attraction came from being royal.
And the Sussexes are no longer royal.
And so the jokes begin. This week our one-time hero was being labelled ‘Harry Markle’ while The Times said of the Duchess’s first Hollywood effort: “Meghan lays the cheese on thick in shallow documentary.”
Just before Edward VIII abdicated, he was the nation’s pin-up.
Weeks later the joke was: “He used to be Admiral of the Fleet, now he’s the third mate on an American tramp.”
Ridicule follows hard on your heels when you run away. Let’s hope Harry and Meghan can escape the void their predecessors fell into.
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April 05, 2020 at 04:35PM
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Harry will find royals know how to freeze out a wayward prince, writes CHRISTOPHER WILSON - Express
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