It is now a question of when. Not if.
The bombshell announcement out of Buckingham Palace that Andrew has been stripped of his status as a prince immediately, that he will henceforth be known as ‘Mr. Mountbatten Windsor’, and that he has been forced to surrender the lease to Royal Lodge leaves no doubt in my mind: Harry and Meghan are next.
The sun begins to set over Montecito — permanently.
And Prince William, as we posited earlier this week, emerges as the apparent force behind these most welcome reforms — despite the official statement having come from the King.
This is William’s monarchy now.
In that light, Andrew feels more like a pawn removed by William to clear the way for his real target: Harry.
If the late Queen’s favorite son can be coldly ejected and stripped of his birthright — if William can have convinced the infamously conflict-averse Charles to renounce his own brother — well, Harry’s days as prince and Duke of Sussex are surely numbered.
As for Meghan? Like Fergie, she would just be collateral damage. An afterthought. Flotsam in search of a shore – perhaps QVC’s Pennsylvania headquarters and where she might shill As Ever overstock on deep discount.
So much for Meghan’s correction, to one Mindy Kaling on her otherwise thuddingly boring Netflix show, that she was no longer Meghan ‘Markle’.
‘I’m Sussex now!’ she proclaimed.
For how much longer, one wonders indeed.
We clearly have a forceful, fed-up take-no-prisoners William on the ascent — and oh, the glory of it all!
To know that Meghan and Harry may now be consigned to the dustbin of Royal history is perhaps the most tantalizing and satisfying finale of the modern age.
Sayonara, Sussexes!
Whatever would become of the enormous, monogrammed Longchamp tote that Meghan so recently and ostentatiously displayed on social media, embossed with ‘DS’?
Will it be chucked on her physical and spiritual trash heap, left atop all of Meghan’s other discards? Including, but not limited to: her infirm father Thomas; her sister and brother; Harry’s grandmother, grandfather, father and stepmother, brother, sister-in-law, nephews and niece?
And oh, how could we forget Jessica Mulroney and all manner of Meghan’s ‘friends’ who seemingly served their purpose; the varied and sundry staffers who have fled the Sussexes’ employ, the most recent defector Emily Robinson, Meghan’s 10th publicist in five years, who had previously worked on Netflix’s The Crown?
That’s not to mention the people and entities who seem to have backed away from Harry and Meghan slowly: Netflix, Spotify, Lemonada (the podcast makers have not renewed their deal with the Duchess), Oprah… Wherever will Harry and Meghan turn?
Certainly not to the people of Meghan’s native Los Angeles, who reportedly booed the couple as they were shown on the jumbotron during a Dodgers game this week.
Nor the critics outraged that Meghan and Harry were seated front row, with baseball legend Sandy Koufax relegated to a seat behind them.
Imagine. Would a single soul ever question Kate’s seating at Wimbledon?
How it must burn Meghan, all that rapturous applause that greets the Princess of Wales every year, but most especially as she emerged from her cancer treatments to take her rightful place courtside.
Kate, though silent, is doubtless among William’s prime motives in dispatching first his uncle, and perhaps next his brother.
It was Harry who reprinted Kate’s private text messages with Meghan in Spare. It was Harry and Meghan’s cheerleader, their glorified biographer Omid Scobie, who named Kate and Charles as the so-called ‘royal racists’.
Those betrayals, and the subsequent cancer diagnoses of Charles and Kate, have seemed to have a clarifying effect on William. Grief is often accompanied by anger, and anger needs an outlet.
William appears to have found quite the productive one.
And so Andrew is the first to be excised.
The language in Thursday’s shock statement is uncharacteristically muscular. Gone are the days of ‘recollections may vary’.
Despite the King’s official authorship, it surely has William’s fingerprints all over it.
‘His Majesty has today initiated a formal process to remove the Style, Titles and Honors of Prince Andrew,’ the announcement begins.
After declaring that Andrew has been evicted from Royal Lodge and must find ‘private accommodations’ to live out his days in disgrace, the statement turns into utter condemnation.
‘These censures are deemed necessary, notwithstanding the fact that [Andrew] continues to deny the allegations against him. Their Majesties wish to make clear that their thoughts and utmost sympathies have been, and will remain with, the victims and survivors of any and all forms of abuse.’
Of course, Harry and Meghan’s constant sniping is in no way comparable to Andrew and his involvement with the pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
But the royals have a forensic eye for language and detail. Note: any and all forms of abuse.
Might that conceivably extend to calling the royals racist, before Oprah and a global audience, as Prince Philip lay dying? To say nothing of mocking the Queen on Netflix, as Meghan did, then claiming that when she was suicidal, the royals denied her mental help; or of Harry repeatedly betraying King Charles and William in ‘Spare’, and even writing of a private argument between the three of them after Philip’s funeral.
If William is just getting started, he surely knows the world is cheering him on, that any further attacks from his brother and sister-in-law, those epic dramatists, would be laughed off and dismissed.
A former royal aide at Kensington Palace, William and Kate’s London residence, told the Daily Mail that ‘now that they’re picking away at the edges [of the family]’ — that would be Andrew — ‘a bigger unravelling is coming.’
That bigger unravelling is, to my mind, Harry and Meghan’s royal titles, status and honours.
‘The role William has — to try to forge something sustainable — is now in stark relief. And no, Charles isn’t up to that job,’ the former aide continued. ‘Once Andrew stops being the convenient cover, then where will people look next?’
Westward, we hope, to Montecito.
