Edward and Sophie were the Harry and Meghan of their day but after their private careers became a well-publicised disaster, they rejoined the family and knuckled down to turn the public’s view of them around – could the Sussexes now follow their lead?

They were a young couple who wanted to be ‘half in, half out’ of the Royal Family but struggled after their plans ran into difficulties, causing them to be lampooned by the press. 

No, not Prince Harry and Meghan, this is the story of the late Queen’s youngest son Edward and his wife Sophie. 

But there are a number of remarkable similarities in the two couples’ stories, the biggest being they shared a belief that they wanted to contribute to the Royal Family from time to time while carrying out their own activities.  

When Sophie and Edward married they insisted on not giving up their day jobs – she in PR and he in television production – which was unheard of in royal circles at the time.

However the decision to carve their own path eventually blew up in their faces after a series of public scandals. Sound familiar?

Sophie was caught boasting to an undercover journalist about her PR firm’s royal connections, Edward’s film company tried to avoid a ban on filming his nephew Prince William at university, and there was his disastrous TV show It’s A Royal Knockout in 1987.

Now referred to as ‘the Harry and Meghan of their day’ for trying to do things outside of the traditional Royal Family framework, Edward and Sophie eventually gave up on their commercial activities and became full-time royals.

And although in the aftermath of the slew of scandals it was thought Edward and Sophie would never recover, they proved the doubters wrong and after nearly 25 years of hard work, are now regarded as valued supporting members of the family.

They wound down their businesses and dug into royal duties to become known as a safe pair of hands for any event needing a royal presence.

This involved long years of turning up day-in-day-out to village fetes, health clinics, charity fundraisers and generally doing what the British public expects from their Royal Family – service.

Some have suggested that the couple’s path to redemption could be an example for Prince Harry and Meghan to follow.

After all there are reports Harry is unhappy in America and has been looking for a way to return to royal life in the future, with claims he has been asking former aides on advice for his ‘rehabilitation’ strategy.

Courtiers told the Daily Mail’s Richard Eden in November that they are increasingly convinced that Harry wants to resume his old way of life, when he felt he was using his privileged position to make a difference for worthwhile causes.

And although the couples acted similarly while in The Firm, the resemblance between them goes further back.

Both women were outsiders to the aristocracy, with Meghan’s father working humbly as a lighting director and Sophie’s a tyre salesman. 

The men they married were both third in line to the throne when they were born and in contrast, to use criminally old-fashioned parlance, of their ‘commoner’ backgrounds, had lived every waking moment in the limelight.

Edward, like Harry, was in some ways the black sheep of his family from the beginning. 

Unlike his two brothers Charles and Andrew, military life never suited him and he left the Royal Marines after just four months. 

Instead he decided to take on a totally different challenge, one which had not been attempted by a member of the family before – producing a TV show.

Only a few months after leaving the Marines he created a spin-off show of the hit game show It’s AKnockout featuring Andrew, Fergie, Edward and Anne as the team captains.

Dubbed ‘It’s A Royal Knockout’, it saw the family members dressed in period costume in a celebrity tournament at Alton Towers theme park. 

But the resulting 1987 TV programme was loud and undignified, becoming a PR disaster.

To make matters worse, Edward stormed out of the ensuing press conference after reporters made it clear they thought the show had been a flop. 

He was dubbed ‘Prince Brat’ by the Daily Mail’s most celebrated columnist at the time, Lynda Lee-Potter, for his rude manners.

According to royal author Ingrid Seward, the Queen Mother, who was about to celebrate her 87th birthday, was incensed by the show, telling her grandchildren she’d spent years building the reputation of the monarchy with the King, only to have them try to destroy it in one evening. 

Distinguished royal historian Ben Pimlott described it in his biography of the monarch as ‘excruciating’ and a ‘critical moment in the altering image of British royalty’ because it ‘made the public stunningly aware that a sense of decorum was not an automatic quality in the Royal Family’. 

Edward continued to try to make a career in the entertainment world work.

In 1993 the prince launched Ardent Productions, in which he personally invested £205,000.

It floundered in its first year, failing to win a single commission, but in July 1995 there was a breakthrough, with Channel 4 agreeing to let the then earl front a short series on the niche game of real tennis – an indoor pursuit, played with wooden racquets.

Ardent’s big break came in 1996 with Edward On Edward, a documentary fronted by the prince about Edward VIII, his abdication in 1938 and his subsequent controversial life.

In 1998, at which point Edward was paying himself a salary of £119,000, Ardent moved its glamorous premises in central London to Edward’s Bagshot Park residence near Windsor.

In 2001 it declared a profit of just £30,000 – which was after Edward waived the usual £50,000 yearly rent for its office space in the Bagshot Park stables.

It all went horribly wrong in 2001 when, while making the series Royalty From A To Z for the US market, a two-man camera crew from the company filmed Prince William, Edward’s nephew, at the University of St Andrews.

The move violated a press agreement concerning William’s privacy. There was an apologetic statement from Ardent claiming the filming took place without Edward’s knowledge.

Andrew Neil, then the Rector of St Andrews University, said: ‘The intrusion by the production company owned by the prince’s uncle beggared belief. Even after he had been told they did not leave immediately. 

‘But for it to be broken by a company owned by his own uncle, well, you just couldn’t make it up.’ 

Edward stepped down as joint managing editor and halted his involvement in March 2002.

Meanwhile Sophie was also determined to make her career in PR work while she was a member of the Royal Family.

But her budding day job also came crashing down when she was sensationally caught up in a humiliating ‘sting’ operation engineered by the News of the World.

The Murdoch-owned Sunday tabloid had caught her talking candidly with an undercover reporter, known as the ‘Fake Sheik’, who was posing as a potential client. 

Undercover reporter Mazher Mahmood posed as a wealthy Arab to investigate a tip-off that Sophie’s PR company was selling access to the Royal Family in 2001.

But most damaging to The Firm was when Sophie was taped making embarrassing comments about the royals and the then prime minister Tony Blair, who she branded ‘presidential’ and criticised for his policies towards the countryside.

She also said William Hague’s face was ‘all wrong’ and Cherie Blair was ‘even worse’ than her husband. But worst of all, she was seen publicly to be trading on her royal connections. 

The now disgraced News of the World eventually decided not to run the story after striking a deal with Buckingham Palace to interview Sophie for a world-exclusive interview instead. 

The headline ‘My Edward is Not Gay’, was splashed across the front page instead to address rumours at the time, despite the couple having been married since 1999.

Royal expert Richard Eden described the story as a ‘really humiliating moment’ for Sophie in the Daily Mail’s new TV show Reading the Royals in November.

But things got even worse when other newspapers found out about Sophie’s taped comments, and News of the World decided to run the original story anyway.

Eden said: ‘It was an early prelude to the problems we have had with Harry and Meghan.

‘They thought they could combine private work with public duties but it became clear it was too difficult, there were too many problems associated with that.’

Many thought Sophie and Edward would never recover from the ‘fake sheik’ scandal at the time. 

But despite the damage it did to the Royal Family, the Queen was sympathetic towards Sophie, and continued to back her after the mistake.

A few months later, Sophie announced her intention to ‘cease all connections’ with her PR firm. She would instead roll up her sleeves and join the Royal Family as a fully fledged member.

Since then she has turned it all around, but it took hard work.

She is now the second hardest-working female royal after Anne, and has won plaudits for her choice of work on preventable blindness and the issue of sexual violence in war.

One senior Whitehall source said recently that her championing of the cause has been ‘invaluable’.

Sophie’s image, too, has changed over the years. The ill-fitting suits from the High Street she favoured as a young PR executive were long ago dispensed with, and in the past decade she has become something of a fashion icon herself. 

Her happy marriage to Edward has produced two lovely children, James, who is finishing school, and Lady Louise, an English literature student at St Andrews University.

Sophie is devoted to and fiercely protective of her children, having endured serious medical complications during the birth of Louise due to an ectopic pregnancy which almost killed her. 

The couple celebrated 25 years of marriage in typically low-key style in July, with a group of close pals at Royal Ascot (and not even in the royal carriage procession), according to Daily Mail Royal Editor Rebecca English.

Sophie became such a successful royal over the years that the late Queen reportedly regarded her as a ‘second daughter’ and chose her to help introduce Meghan to The Firm once she married Harry.

But in his 2023 book Our King: Charles III, royal expert Robert Jobson claimed Meghan dismissed the Queen’s suggestion. 

Queen Elizabeth II ‘wanted Meghan to make a success of her new role’ and suggested Sophie as a mentor – but the Duchess of Sussex ‘wasn’t interested’, according to Gyles Brandreth. 

He said the Queen suggested the former Countess of Wessex as a ‘sort of mentor’ to the duchess, however, Meghan ‘felt she had Harry’ and didn’t need further help from an adviser. 

During Harry and Meghan’s short but tumultuous time as working royals from 2018 to the beginning of 2020, they also felt working ‘half in, half out’ would suit them too.

But they were denied the opportunity to go part-time, with royal expert Rachel Burchfield explaining that in the past 20 years, the ‘game has clearly changed’.

Speaking on Podcast Royal, she said: ‘Before the Harry and Meghan decision was made, nearly 20years prior, Edward and Sophie were pretty much “half in, half out” royals before they became full-time working royals.

‘I think they were part-time royals for the first three years of their marriage, but obviously, the game has clearly changed.’

She continued that Harry and Meghan had requested to do fewer royal engagements while still retaining benefits such as security, which the late Queen didn’t allow. 

Following the well-publicised decision of Harry and Meghan to walk away entirely and eventually move to California, Sophie and Edward were some of the only royals to  publicly comment about their dramatic exit.

In a rare interview with the Sunday Times, Sophie said: ‘I just hope they will be happy.’

She then explained that the Royal Family do all they can to try to help new members adjust to the royal life, adding: ‘We all try to help any new members of the family.’

Edward also admitted it was a ‘very sad’ situation in response to Megxit when speaking to CNN in June 2021.

‘Listen, weirdly we’ve all been there before – we’ve all had excessive intrusion and attention in our lives. And we’ve all dealt with it in slightly different ways, and listen, we wish them the very best of luck. It’s a really hard decision,’ he said. 

‘It’s difficult for everyone but that’s families for you,’ he explained.

Perhaps the reason why one royal couple was able to adjust more easily to royal life than the other due to their personalities. 

Royal expert Richard Fitzwilliams described Sophie as ‘cheerful, dedicated and attentive’, claiming that she has always been ‘the achiever’. 

However, in contrast, he suggested that the Duchess of Sussex is a very different character from the Duchess of Edinburgh, claiming that while Meghan is ‘self-obsessed’, Sophie prefers to ‘get on with it’.

He told Femail in July: ‘Sophie was famously a confidante of the late Queen and King Charles knows he can trust her implicitly.

‘Her temperament is very different from Meghan’s. The latter, though not without talent, is self-obsessed and reportedly temperamental.

‘Sophie is attached to nearly 70 organisations. Meghan had only a few patronages, Harry had a few more [and] they chose to give them up to make a new life elsewhere.

‘Sophie and Edward do not seek publicity or praise. Like Princess Anne, they get on with it, are trusted, do a lot of good and not just for themselves, as the Sussexes do often appear to do.’

He said the previous year: ‘Harry and Meghan might take note that, in the face of initial adversity when they too had problems and bad press, Edward and Sophie have done remarkable service to the Royal Family.’

But despite the differences in personality, some have suggested the Edward and Sophie rehabilitation model could be a possible path back for the disillusioned couple.

True, they will never again be paid millions by companies to create TV shows or to write books, but they will still live a privileged and rewarding life.

‘If the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are prepared to give up their private work and return to royal life, they would be welcomed back,’ one courtier told Richard Eden in November. ‘Certainly, as long as King Charles is monarch.’

But therein lies a warning to the Sussexes: Prince William is unlikely to be as forgiving as his father.

As although there are undoubtedly several similarities in the two couples, there is one glaring difference between how the couples’ royal careers ended.

Edward and Sophie were thoroughly embarrassed and criticised by their family, but they never burned bridges by publicly attacking them. 

They never went on Oprah to imply they were racist, they never published a Netflix ‘docu-series’ mocking curtsying to the Queen, and they never published a memoir spilling the most intimate of family secrets.

But it seems the couples have taken different paths for now, and there is no sign of things changing any time soon.

Netflix released its trailer for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s tacky sounding series about polo in November, with the royals’ favourite pastime breathlessly described as ‘a sexy sport – dirty, sweaty boys riding’.

A world away, Sophie had an announcement of her own – that she had become the royal patron of Plan International UK, a global children’s charity of which the late Prince Philip was formerly patron. 

Separately, she later met survivors of the Yazidi genocide in Iraq at their photography exhibition, The Women Who Beat ISIS, in London.

There is no denying that Harry and Meghan have done admirable work for charity, particularly through their Archewell Foundation.

But the contrast between Sophie’s heartfelt work and the Sussexes’ latest unregal, money-making project highlights the markedly different paths their lives have taken.

Meghan’s lifestyle business, American Riviera Orchard, is yet to sell a single product almost nine months after it was launched online amid great fanfare. 

The couple’s deal with audio giant Spotify was ended unceremoniously and their contract with Netflix comes up for renewal next year, so their thoughts may well be turning to how to return to royal roles – and the funding that goes with it. 

But the royal couples do occasionally bump into each other.

When Meghan and Harry return for royal events, such as at the funeral of the Queen in September 2022, it fell to Sophie to act as peacemaker between them and the rest of the family.

On the visit Sophie, who was formerly the Countess of Wessex, was duty-bound to defer to Prince Harry’s wife who, as a duchess, was of a higher rank.

But as of 2023, when her husband, Prince Edward, was given the title of Duke of Edinburgh, she was also made a duchess.

A friend of the couple told the Mail on Sunday last year: ‘Sophie is relieved.  

‘She no longer has to curtsey to someone in the family who has not only left royal duties but has spent the past three years criticising the institution that Sophie works so hard to support.’