Poor Meghan. Having meticulously planned for what must surely have been months, if not years, the Duchess of Sussex relaunched herself last week as the perfect, wholesome stay-at-home Royal mom of two via her new lifestyle blog American Riviera Orchard.
Her timing couldn’t have been better, of course, because that other Royal mum, Kate, was invisible.
But just days after Meg’s vision for her new umbrella company, Mama Knows Best, was unveiled to the world via a slick video, featuring her dressed in white in a sparkly fairytale princess kitchen, the real Royal mummy made her return.
Yes, slap bang in the middle of Meghan’s reinvention, at a time when she must have confidently imagined she would be hogging the headlines, that video appeared of Kate and William at their local farm shop in Windsor.
Kate was looking smiley, happy — bouncy even. Despite all that speculation about her health, here she was clearly very much alive and kicking.
The video went viral, making front page news throughout the world, and giving the lie to the social media doubters and conspiracy theorists and their increasingly outrageous and distasteful posts.
Meg’s vision for her new umbrella company, Mama Knows Best, was unveiled to the world via a slick video, featuring her dressed in white in a sparkly fairytale princess kitchen
The Duchess of Sussex (pictured with Prince Harry) relaunched herself as the perfect, wholesome stay-at-home Royal mom-of-two via her new lifestyle blog American Riviera Orchard
Kate appeared thinner – who wouldn’t after abdominal surgery? – but she looked the picture of contentment in a sports top and leggings: an ordinary mum out weekend shopping with her husband.
There was no disputing the origins of the video either. It was taken by fellow shopper Nelson Silva, who spotted Kate and William in the bread section of the Windsor Farm Shop on Saturday. He filmed them on his iPhone as they left the store just a mile from their home, Adelaide Cottage, on the Windsor Castle estate. To prove its authenticity, the video contained exact details of the date, time and place it was recorded.
And who was the world more obsessed by? Not Meghan and her marmalades and jams, or posh knives and forks, or mugs and tablecloths, but Kate and her wellbeing.
Global headlines were not about Meghan’s oh so carefully chosen knick-knacks but Kate’s smile, which cost nothing.
Perhaps the clever, calculating Meghan believed her new mom blog would eclipse the Royal psychodrama – with the King ailing, the Queen battling on, the Prince of Wales’s general air of despondency, and his wife recovering from surgery while at the centre of a Mother’s Day photoshop ‘scandal’ – allowing her to shine in the highly convenient void that was left.
She may have thought news of her new Martha Stewart-style venture – expected to earn her millions – breaking just minutes before Prince William spoke movingly at the Diana Legacy Awards in London a week ago, would leave his appearance in the shade.
Was she truly unaware of how opportunistic this might look?
William and Kate’s trust factor among the public is up ten and nine points respectively to 49 per cent each, ahead of even the King and Queen
Then, in a second act of what some might judge as hijacking the limelight, Harry and Meghan announced the winner of their $100,000 Archewell Foundation Digital Civil Rights Award while William was still on stage at the Diana Awards.
Any cynic might think those self-styled humanitarians were, in fact, money-grabbing chiselers instead.
Or, as their former Spotify boss famously described them after their multi-million pound deal floundered thanks to their ‘underwhelming’ content, a couple of ‘grifters’ (a term roughly translated from American to English as ‘con artists’).
Make no bones about it, this has been a bad week for the Sussexes. But, as events have proved, they are rapidly losing what remained of the love and respect of the British public.
This was also the week when Harry and Meghan were downgraded on the official Buckingham Palace website, their hagiographies reduced from many thousands of words to mere hundreds, and relegated to the very bottom of the page and sharing a billing alongside the disgraced Prince Andrew – now a mere footnote in the Royal hierarchy.
Meghan’s entry describes her as a former actress who ran a website, and includes details of her charitable engagements in her brief time as a working royal.
Harry’s contains a few words about his birth and upbringing, his time in the Armed Forces and the Invictus Games for wounded and injured service personnel that he founded (undoubtedly, a worthwhile venture).
But worse was to come when a poll in the Mail revealed that barely 17 per cent of Britons actually trust a single word that comes out of Meghan’s mouth and only 22 per cent of us believe or trust Prince Harry, while both William and Kate’s trust factor is up ten and nine points respectively to 49 per cent each, ahead of even the King and Queen.
Hardly the ideal background for the launch of Meghan as the new mompreneur.
Perhaps Kate, the sister-in-law whom she and Harry so denigrated in his book Spare and during the Oprah interview – when she was accused of making a fragile Meghan cry over a bridesmaid’s dress – is actually the one who’s had the last word.
Without saying a single word.
