‘Surprised’ Harry and Meghan blasted for all the surprises they’ve launched since Megxit

It’s possible that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were trying to drum up some sympathy Tuesday by having their spokesperson suggest it wasn’t very courteous or kind-hearted of his father, King Charles III, to authorize the public release of a letter that restates what was stated when they left the United Kingdom six years ago.

The letter affirmed an agreement made with the late Queen Elizabeth II in 2020 — that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex became nonworking members of the royal family as soon as they gave up royal duties and moved to the United States. Then and now, it means they should be treated as private citizens and they do not represent the king or the British government when they appear in public.

But on Tuesday, the couple complained that no one consulted with them about the letter before it went out, the BBC reported. Their spokesperson said they “were a little surprised not to have been told about this in advance.” The Sun also reported that the couple apparently took issue with the letter calling them “private citizens” instead of referring to them as “public figures.”

It turns out that the Sussexes in fact received some notice — about an hour’s notice– before the letter was released to the media, shortly after 3 p.m. Monday, The Telegraph and the Daily Mail reported. The purpose of the letter was to clarify their status to various senior government and military officials, now that they have moved back to the U.K. after six years in California.

Prominent royal commentators and people online were amused, annoyed or more by the couple’s belief that they should have been consulted before the letter went out.

Among other things, Tom Sykes, who writes for the Daily Beast editor and The Royalist Substack, said on his YouTube channel that it was “such and arrogant and self-centered” thing to make an issue of, given that the letter affirmed the status quo. He also said Harry’s spat with his father and Buckingham Palace over the release of the letter threatened to overshadow the fourth anniversary of Queen Elizabeth’s death and the milestone news Tuesday that Prince George reported to his first day of school at Eton College.

Sykes also was among those who accused Harry and Meghan of hypocrisy, noting that they didn’t tell the royal family “in advance” that their 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey would feature their allegations of racism against certain unnamed members family members. Sykes said the allegation, which Harry later tried to walk back on, “hung over the royal family for months,” including when Prince Philip, the queen’s husband and Harry’s grandfather, was dying.

Sykes also said the Sussexes also didn’t consult with Harry’s relatives before they depicted them as a “cold imperial, ruthless machine” in their six-part Netlix documentary or before Harry published his 2023 memoir “Spare,” in which he alleged his brother, Prince William, physically attacked him and made various unflattering claims about the king, his sister-in-law, Kate Middleton, and stepmother, Queen Camilla.

“The level of self absorption and arrogance” would be funny, Sykes said, if Harry and Meghan’s complaint about not being consulted about the letter wasn’t “so tiresome” and if their return didn’t present the monarchy with a potential “constitutional crisis.”

The Daily Mail’s senior editor-at-lager Richard Kay explained that the letter was issued in response to “the high level of confusion and uncertainty” created by Harry and Meghan’s sudden return to the U.K. — after reportedly giving the king fewer than two weeks notice. “Yesterday’s intervention will be seen as an essential move by the king to preserve the cohesion of an institution which was undermined in the first place by the Sussexes flouncing off to California,” Kay wrote.

Since their return to the U.K., the couple appear to have been stoking much of confusion by having their friends leak details of their plans to certain media outlets, including their plans to step up their charity work, Kay said. Even more concerning, according to Kay, people close to the king also have been irritated by talk about the Sussexes establishing “some kind of rival court.”

Around social media, some people thought it could have been nice for the sake of family for the Sussexes to have received a heads-up about the letter. Then again, the Sussexes became estranged from the royal family after they dropped many surprises and “bombshells” in their interviews and other statements since 2020, so family unity should perhaps not be at the forefront of the king’s concerns, others asked.

Otherwise, people similarly wondered why “their input would even be necessary” in official communication sent by the king’s household to senior members of the government, as one person asked in response to an X post by The Telegraph.

“Since WHEN does the King need to collaborate with private citizens??” asked another.

“The King isn’t required to check with them before releasing any statements,” said an American woman with the @Britishroyaltea handle. “And it’s nothing new. He’s just reaffirming the Sandringham summit. For once, I wish Harry & Meghan would keep quiet. They don’t need to clap back at everything.”

The so-called Sandringham summit refers to an agreement that Harry and Meghan signed on to when they gave up royal duties in 2020 and left the U.K. to seek their fortune and a different kind of fame in the United States. The agreement, overseen by the late queen, ruled out any “half-in and half-out” status — the idea that Harry and Meghan could still carry out royal duties while pursuing outside, commercial activities.

Someone else on X declared, “Karma is a (expletive),” while sharing a 2020 account of how Harry and Meghan gave the queen “virtually no advance notice” before launching a website in January of that year that laid out their “manifesto” — or their “wish list” — for leaving royal duties.

“The queen and other royals were completely blindsided,” reports in January 2020 said. Although it was reported that Harry had sent general ideas to his family about stepping back from royal duties, the queen explicitly asked him “to not make any public statements until a formal family discussion could take place.” According to accounts, the couple ignored this request and launched the website anyway, “leaving the monarch with zero formal warning before the news went public.”