bitchy | Mail: The Sussexes are creating their own ‘royal household’ in Montecito

Back in 2020, Buckingham Palace, Clarence House and Kensington Palace’s courtiers convinced themselves that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex would come crawling back to them, humbled, broke and on the verge of divorce. Courtiers smugly told reporters that Harry and Meghan had no way of replicating the “palace office” or being able to run their own quasi-royal operation outside of the Firm. All of the courtiers were quickly proved wrong – Harry and Meghan signed lucrative contracts and staffed up their new business and foundation. Five years later, those courtiers are still trying to understand what happened and how they were so wrong about the Sussexes. They’re still trying to lie about Harry and Meghan and pretend that the Sussexes are unpopular or unsuccessful or on the verge of losing everything. And now this: the Mail claims that, suddenly, Harry and Meghan have created their own de facto “royal household” and they’re staffing it like a royal office. What are we doing here?

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have created their own ‘royal’ household, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. The couple, who left their roles as senior royals in 2020, have dramatically revamped the structure of their staff to make it more like the hierarchical system that has successfully underpinned Prince Harry’s family for decades.

Meredith Kendall Maines, a seasoned communications strategist whose role has already drawn comparisons with Sir Clive Alderton, the formidable Private Secretary to King Charles and Queen Camilla, will be at the helm of a team of 11, operating out of Montecito, California, and the UK. The new operation will be run separately to Archewell, the Sussexes’ philanthropic foundation.

The MoS can reveal the restructuring, which will see each senior appointee reportedly earning a six-figure salary, will include: The duke and duchess each having their own chief of staff; Harry launching his own as-yet-undisclosed commercial venture in the next few months; Meghan’s lifestyle business, As Ever, expanding its range of products later this year.

The duke, 40, is said to have been growing increasingly weary of the negative publicity he and Meghan have attracted, particularly in the UK where he has been fighting several legal cases over his privacy and security. The couple, who celebrated their seventh wedding anniversary last week, are said to be keen to rehabilitate their reputations after several damaging blows to their popularity in poll ratings.

Last night a source told this newspaper: ‘A Royal Household-style structure will give them both a streamlined framework that has been missing since they left the Royal Family. The recent polling showing that [Harry] is one of the lowest-regarded royals means he has at last conceded there’s nowhere to go but up. There’s humility there. It’s time to streamline his operation and find a new way of getting his message across. Service above oneself is the cornerstone of everything he does.’

Previously, the Sussexes relied on informal advisers but the hope is that by following the same trusted methods as the monarchy they will be able to safeguard their reputation and build their business and philanthropic interests.

One of the first tasks of the operation will be to mastermind the launch of Harry’s own commercial venture as he attempts to find new ‘purpose’ after stepping away from his African charity, Sentebale, amid bullying accusations by its chair. While it is understood the prince will continue to focus on the Invictus Games Foundation, he is also said to have ‘commercial ideas of his own’ – the details of which will be revealed later this year. A source said: ‘Harry is unkindly described as the ‘spare’ to Meghan’s endeavours. In reality, he has been giving her the space to flourish. Now it is his time to throw himself into exciting new work. Invictus will always come first, but he has also been working on commercial ideas of his own.’

The new household will also help steer Meghan’s business, As Ever, as it prepares to launch new products alongside its sold-out range of jams and teas. Reporting directly to Ms Maines will be Meghan and Harry’s two new chiefs of staff. Miranda Barbot, a veteran political and media adviser who helped re-elect US President Barack Obama in 2012, will work solely for Harry. First hired by the Sussexes in 2022, she is already a trusted hand and masterminded their successful three-day trip to Nigeria last year, which was said to have been ‘controlled skilfully’.

My somewhat unpopular opinion is that Harry and Meghan moved so slowly for years (2020-2022) because they were trying to replicate some kind of “royal office” before ultimately abandoning that idea for a more hybrid corporate-America type of organization. As in, this current storyline is Team Windsor trying to take some kind of credit for Harry and Meghan’s successes, all while blaming them for not adopting this “method” earlier. When the reality is that Archewell is not currently organized like a royal court and the Sussexes have learned the hard way that they need to operate in a more forward, streamlined and corporate-America sort of way.

The Daily Mail also had a connected exclusive from Charlotte Griffiths, who claims that her “trusted contacts” told her months ago that Prince Harry had “grown dissatisfied with bad advice from US-based image experts, he was instead starting to consult with people ‘from his old life’ as a working royal.” The same people from his old-life who leak sh-t to the Daily Mail? The same people from his old life who now advise the work-shy heir? No. Now, I absolutely believe that Harry had some culture-shock when he moved to America, and it took him a second to work out what kind of structure would work best for him, but no, he’s not looking wistfully back at all of those old-fart courtiers who knifed him in the back constantly.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.