Fun-loving, popular and living the life Harry and Meghan turned their backs on: Inside story of royal couple who are model of what Sussexes could have been – and the revealing details that show just what they have lost: ANGELA MOLLARD

This week marks five years since Megxit, the infamous moment the Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced they were ditching the Royal Family for a life of freedom.

They planned to pursue exciting new work opportunities, find fans further afield and enjoy a happiness that had eluded them as senior members of The Firm.

So it must be somewhat galling for Harry and Meghan, as they continue to struggle to make their mark in America, to see another royal couple living the life that still eludes them.

Mike and Zara Tindall, daughter of Princess Anne and granddaughter of Queen Elizabeth II, are a template of what the couple could have been – fun-loving, easy-going and immensely popular. 

And as they throw themselves into their annual summer season Down Under, the Tindalls make combining purposeful endeavours with a jolly good time look effortless.

Adored in both hemispheres for their warmth and down-to-earth attitude, they’re not quite what we expect from royalty – but exactly what the institution needs.

In Australia for the annual equestrian event, the Magic Millions Carnival, where both are ambassadors – Zara competes and Mike helps with judging karaoke and compering – they’re a couple who’ve cleverly designed a life that straddles palaces and beaches, monarchy and mates.

The Tindalls are proof that you can be both royal and ‘normal’. Snapping carefree selfies with admirers at the Pacific Fair Magic Millions Polo event, Zara, 43, and her husband, 46, are a cheery antidote to the Sussexes.

Zara was spotted doing some shopping at Budds Beach, in the heart of Surfer’s Paradise, today

It’s worth noting that Zara has also become something of a fashion icon on this trip, combining style with a neat royal nod to her hosts by stepping out in a summer midi dress from Australian designer Leo Lin on Sunday, and a floral black lace design, also from the Sydney-based label, at the Racing Women Awards night on Friday.

While Meghan, 43, is returning to her role as a lifestyle influencer with carefully curated Instagram posts promoting With Love, Meghan – her new Netflix show that’s straight from the trad wife playbook – Harry, 40, seems to fill his days with court cases and surfing.

How much easier their life would have been if they’d opted for a low-key but royal-adjacent life like the Tindalls.

Before their trip to Oz, the Tindalls spent Christmas Day at church in Sandringham with the King, Queen, William and Kate. This week they’re hanging out on the Gold Coast with the likes of Thor actor Chris Hemsworth and his wife, the Spanish model and actress Elsa Pataky, who are also Magic Millions ambassadors, plus rugby league legend Billy Slater and his wife Nicola.

The friendships are genuine, with Pataky recently telling me they’d enjoyed family meals together at the Hemsworth home in Byron Bay, in addition to trips to Sea World and Wet’n’Wild, a water-themed park where fellow visitors were no doubt amused to see a Hollywood actor and King Charles’s eldest niece, who’s 21st in line to the throne, together on the slides.

It no doubt helps cement friendships that the couples’ children are similar ages: Hemsworth and Pataky have ten-year-old twins and a daughter aged 12.

Pataky, who has visited the Tindalls at their home in the Cotswolds, revealed that the friends’ WhatsApp group regularly pings long after their Magic Millions ambassadorial commitments are completed.

The Tindalls arguably enjoy the best life of anyone in the Royal Family and it’s precisely the model Harry and Meghan could have carved out if they’d negotiated Megxit with greater care and diplomacy.

How much easier life would be for Meghan and Harry if they’d opted for a low-key but royal-adjacent life like the Tindalls. Picutred, the couple in With Love, Meghan on Netflix

Unlike the Tindalls, who enjoy a jolly relationship with Princess Anne, Harry and Meghan have little or no relationship with their respective fathers. Their children are denied the companionship of some of their cousins, they are unable to keep various staff for any length of time and the new year begins with yet another court battle for the duke.

Even Meghan’s new Netflix series, due to drop on January 15, looks in the opinion of many like a highly contrived facsimile of ground already covered by Gwyneth Paltrow and Martha Stewart.

If the aim is not perfection, as Meghan’s voiceover in the With Love, Meghan trailer proclaims, then why did she need to do a second take of her first Instagram post, whimsically showing her writing ‘2025’ in the sand?

Conversely, the easy-going Tindalls could well turn out to be the ideal Commonwealth ambassadors for a future King William. Ironically, the Sussexes were offered the roles as President and Vice President of The Queen’s Commonwealth Trust before they ditched their roles as working members of the Royal Family.

Yet, had they addressed their evident unhappiness with a more considered and collegiate approach, there’s every chance the wise late monarch might have found a way for them to enjoy a life like the Tindalls – something that approximated the half-in, half-out role they initially proposed.

Their sensitivity and urgency, however, allowed no room, or time, for tailoring a new arrangement that could have combined their desire for privacy and independent work with a warm relationship with the Royal Family.

Of course, the Tindalls don’t have official royal titles, nor are they officially representing Britain in Australia. Yet they have fashioned for themselves a role that makes good use of their public popularity on the monarchy’s behalf, while retaining their status as a private family.

Last year they turned up to support Prince William at a garden party at Buckingham Palace when the Princess of Wales couldn’t attend due to her cancer treatment.

Zara plays polo as part of a Magic Millions event on Sunday

Meanwhile their children, Mia, ten, Lena, six, and Lucas, three, clearly have a close and easy relationship with their cousins George, 11, Charlotte, nine, and Louis, six.

Otherwise, the Tindalls enjoy a cosy family life, great friends and portfolio careers which allow them to work on everything from podcasts to engagements abroad.

Indeed, as Zara told the Australian Financial Review last month, they love their annual visits to Australia and the country is particularly meaningful for the couple, as it’s where they met in 2003 following rugby union star Mike’s victorious participation in the World Cup.

Revealing that the couple have a picture of the Manly Wharf Bar where they met on the wall of their Gloucestershire home, she said: ‘Australia is a very special place for us. We love the lifestyle and the weather obviously is incredible. It’s very relaxed. We’ve got a lot of friends out there.’

Pataky confirms the Magic Millions ambassadors are like a ‘big family’.

As she told me: ‘We have dinners and have the best time. Zara and Mike have brought their kids to our home. We have so many pets and their daughter Lena fell in love with our bearded dragon lizard. They had to buy one for her when they got back to England.’

With his keen interest in polo, there’s every likelihood that Prince Harry could have potentially been a contender for a Magic Millions ambassadorship of his own. Instead, he perhaps looks on with envy as his cousin and her husband enjoy fun times with his long-time friend, the Argentinial model and polo player Nacho Figueras, who was also on the Gold Coast this weekend.

The fact is Harry, a rugby enthusiast with a keen sense of humour, always shared a natural camaraderie with Mike Tindall, who won over the nation when he appeared in I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here in his budgy smugglers in 2022. Tindall later launched his own line of the famed swimwear, donating the profits to Cure Parkinson’s (his father Philip was diagnosed with the disease in 2003).

Zara, meanwhile, juggles her equestrian ambitions – she has not ruled out competing in the 2032 Brisbane Olympics – with motherhood and causes close to her heart, including the Retraining of Racehorses and the Magic Millions Racing Women Initiative designed to get more women into the industry.

Katie Page, who owns the equestrian carnival with her retailer husband Gerry Harvey, is a huge fan of the King’s niece, having hired her as an ambassador in 2012. Mike joined as an ambassador in 2016. As Page says, Zara is a dream to work with.

‘I’ve watched her with people and nothing is too much trouble,’ she says. ‘She’s so generous with her time, and when she’s there everyone wants to say hello.’

In fact, just the kind of easy-going popularity Harry and Meghan seem to crave.