In the lead up to King Charles’s 2023 coronation, the bulk of the gossip, prognostication and outrage was about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. “Will Harry come? Will Meghan come? She better not come! They better bring their children! They aren’t allowed on the balcony! Only Archie is allowed on the balcony! Meghan isn’t even welcome!” You get the idea. At the end of the day, Harry came to the Chubbly solo for, like, a whirlwind 24 hours trip, and as his father was waving stiffly from the balcony, Harry was already en route to Heathrow with a clothes hanger in hand. Those same people were absolutely furious that Meghan didn’t go to the coronation and they were even more upset that she didn’t give a f–k about their coronation in the first place. Well, three years later and those same people are already obsessing over the possibility that Meghan could “come back” for a visit in June/July, for the Invictus Games One Year To Go events in Birmingham. Meghan hasn’t stepped foot on Isla de Saltines since September 2022, and I fear that the next five months will be dominated by royalists and columnists obsessively forecasting what Meghan will do, say and wear if and when she visits. Speaking of, Shane Watson’s recent Times column was surprisingly funny about the panic William and Kate are feeling these days:
Last week’s news from the Sussex camp was that Prince Harry is likely to win back his UK police protection so there’s nothing standing in the way of an imminent return. This week’s news is even bigger.
The question we were all asking was: does that mean Meghan’s coming back for the first time since 2022? And now it seems that, yes, Meghan is on board for a summer visit to coincide with an Invictus Games event marking the one year countdown to the games themselves in 2027.
Sources close to the couple think it likely that she will accompany her husband and meet the King (another hot rumour is that Harry would like him to be at the Games), and it seems it’s really happening. If there were any doubt, the Prince of Wales has just hired a crisis management expert, Liza Ravenscroft, who is described by a former boss as “bulletproof sunshine”, which is a term we’ll now be using a lot (“Come on, we’re arriving at Granny’s — bulletproof sunshine all round please!”) and also sounds like exactly what the Waleses require in the lead-up to a Sussex grand tour.
Of all the royals, William and Kate are the ones who will need to assume the brace position when the Sussex show rolls into town and, unfortunately for them, Meghan’s year has started with a mega boosting bang.
Thanks to a technical glitch on the website of the duchess’s As Ever brand, shoppers were momentarily able to see how much of her product was left in stock, which then allowed some motivated sleuths to work out exactly how many boxes of her signature “fruit spread” had been sold. They calculated that so far she has made — wait for it — £26.7 million in sales of jam. So, not quite the vanity flop we assumed it would be.
We assumed that the vastly overpriced jam had been dropped off, in moss-filled trugs, on the doorsteps of everyone with more than eight bathrooms in the Montecito area, but it turns out she has legitimately sold a ton of it, and that’s just the As Ever preserves. Who knows what the figures are on the edible flower sprinkles? Some of us may have spent the past year mocking her compulsion to craft and elevate and personalise, but it turns out that against all the odds (or should that be, all our hopes) Meghan is nailing the lifestyle brand game.
All of which is important because — security or no security — Meghan was not coming back to the UK as the dutiful wife of the Invictus Games founder. She was never stepping onto the tarmac at Heathrow as the Yoko of the royal family, somewhat chastened by the cancelled Spotify deal, the reduced Netflix deal and the alleged backlash in the US where Wills and Kate’s popularity polling outstrips theirs by some considerable amount. She will happily return now because it will be as one of the Californian business elite, flying the flag of mindful wealth and success — all of which is going to make it even harder than it would have for the Waleses to swallow, and even more gripping to watch for the rest of us. I think we can say with some certainty that Liza Bulletproof Sunshine will at this moment be war-gaming every scenario in the book for the Sussexes’ visit.
On the fashion upstaging front it’s hard to tread on the Princess of Wales’s toes since she has made a point of stepping back from serious fashion, but Meghan won’t be able to resist finding a way. As we know from her appearance on the front row in Paris during the collections, Meghan is on manoeuvres in that area so we can expect dramatic monochrome statements in the evenings and appropriate Kate nudging stuff in the day.
Kate has made connecting with nature her special interest and Meghan gives the impression that’s also her special subject (she’s the jam maker after all, and the honey maker) so you can bet there will be visits to high-profile kitchen gardens, a visit to David Beckham’s garden maybe, some public trowelling and vegetable “harvesting”. If they come with the children there will be photo opportunities for planting with miniature tools (the sort we know Meghan puts in kids’ party bags) and Meghan will find an opportunity to wear a baker boy hat (bigger and more expensive than Kate’s). Archie and Lilibet will find themselves dressed, for the duration of the trip, like the charges of Norland Nannies circa 1958 — compulsory velvet Alice bands and smocked dresses for Lilibet and tidy chinos and a sports coat for Archie. Then when in London Meghan will want to go to Inter Alia, for sure (it’s a legal-based drama, so she will have it in mind to play the role on Broadway) and they will have to re-route West End traffic.
While this heavily pays “the Sussex tax,” it’s funny that Watson is actually saying that William and Kate are panicking about the Sussexes and that’s why they hired the crisis manager. “She will happily return now because it will be as one of the Californian business elite, flying the flag of mindful wealth and success — all of which is going to make it even harder than it would have for the Waleses to swallow, and even more gripping to watch for the rest of us.” All of that is correct – no one is more upset by the Sussexes’ wealth and success than William and Kate. “I think we can say with some certainty that Liza Bulletproof Sunshine will at this moment be war-gaming every scenario in the book for the Sussexes’ visit.” Almost as if that’s exactly why William hired a crisis manager – because his brother is going to visit in less than six months. There’s even an acknowledgement that the British press has been rooting for Meghan to fail, but she hasn’t.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.
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