Harry and Meghan’s Netflix series wraps up – but what is the effect on the royals?

By Michael Holden

LONDON, Dec 15 (Reuters) – Beyond the drama of feuding
brothers and Machiavellian royal aides working with a hostile
press, the key issue which arises from Prince Harry and his wife
Meghan’s Netflix documentary is whether it does lasting damage
to King Charles and the British monarchy.

Over six hours of television, Harry and Meghan delivered a
swathe of accusations against what they portrayed as a tone-deaf
institution which was unconcerned about their emotional
well-being and prepared for them to suffer if it meant better
media coverage for other more senior royals.

“It’s like living through a soap opera where everybody else
views you as entertainment,” Harry said in one of the final
episodes released on Thursday.

When the couple married in a glittering ceremony in 2018,
their union was hailed as a breath of fresh air, the epitome of
a modern monarchy: the then-hugely popular prince and the
glamorous, biracial, American actress.

But as they recounted in graphic detail in their documentary
series, that fairytale soon turned sour amid a slew of negative
press coverage, some of which Harry blamed on those working for
Prince William, his elder brother and now heir to the throne.

“It looked cold, but it also felt cold,” Harry said of his
family’s feelings towards him at their last official engagement.
In 2020, the couple decided to step back from their royal roles,
moving to California and becoming financially independent.

The exit of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex was bad news for
the institution, said Catherine Mayer, author of recent
biography “Charles: Heart of a King”.

“The departure of Meghan and Harry from royal ranks has been
far more damaging to the monarchy than the coverage that
vilifies them understands or accepts,” she told Reuters.

“Her arrival was this source of enormous hope for people of
colour, and also just younger people. Her departure is seen as a
failure and a betrayal, and that’s immensely damaging to the
monarchy because the monarchy needs consensus to survive. It
needs support to survive, and it’s losing it.”

But opinion polls suggest that may not be the case.
According to a YouGov poll last week, Harry, who once topped
such ratings, and Meghan are now the most unpopular royals in
Britain apart from his uncle Prince Andrew, who settled a U.S.
sex abuse lawsuit in February. William and his wife Kate were
the most popular, although surveys show younger people are much
more ambivalent than older Britons about the monarchy in
general.

The royals have been in a similar position before. In the
early 1990s, the disintegration of Charles’s marriage to his
first wife, Harry’s mother the late Princess Diana, was played
out in the full glare of the media.

Following Diana’s public accusations against the royal
household and her death in 1997, the future of the
1,000-year-old institution seemed at times uncertain. But it
bounced back to become more popular than ever, with Harry and
his brother William to the fore.

According to Harry, the subsequent popularity of Meghan was
seen as a problem, stealing the limelight from those “born to do
this”, a less than subtle dig at his brother and father.

If Harry’s assessment that negative stories were being
planted against him and Meghan is true – an accusation rejected
by newspapers and aides who have spoken publicly – then the
campaign could perhaps be seen as successful.

A Savanta survey found 59% of respondents in Britain said it
was a bad idea for Harry and Meghan to air their documentary,
with a half saying they did not trust that the show would be an
accurate account of the couple’s experience.

“Personally, I don’t think that it will do lasting damage to
the monarchy,” royal biographer Claudia Joseph said of the
Netflix documentary.

“I think that people that are royalists will still be
royalists and will see this as Meghan and Harry again throwing
their toys out of the pram, and the people that are republicans
will remain republicans and blame the royal family for the way
they’ve treated Harry and Meghan.”

Or, as 45-year-old London local Tarek Hilal said on
Thursday: “In the long run, it just won’t make a difference.
Storm in a teacup.”
(Additional reporting by Hanna Rantala and Marie-Louise
Gumuchian, Editing by Rosalba O’Brien)