Harry and Meghan solemnly pledged to a ‘life of service’. It’s underwhelming so far! 

With its bucking broncos, yee-hawing cowboys and pitchers of cold beer, the Fort Worth Stockyards is a rowdy and testosterone-fuelled throwback to the old days of the American West.

While today tourists throng the mule and horse-barns that were once the last ‘civilised’ outpost for livestock traders on Texas’s famous Chisholm Trail, breeders compete for trophies for their longhorn cattle and prize bulls.

Last weekend, however, there was another spectacle at the first night of its championship rodeo — a Stetson-wearing Prince Harry. 

Judging by the photographs posted online — before they were mysteriously deleted — the Duke of Sussex did not look entirely comfortable.

Perhaps it was the gushing posts that appeared on Instagram. ‘We get a lot of rodeo royalty but this is the first prince I’ve seen,’ enthused Cory Melton, a muscular wrangler who breeds bucking bulls. 

Yet his genial observation — which also claimed that Harry was going to enter the bull-riding competition but had lost his ‘rigging bag’, an essential piece of rodeo kit — was swiftly removed.

As, too, was a message brimming with Southern hospitality from rodeo secretary Cindy Reid, in which she generously thanked Harry for his visit.

No doubt some will wonder if an event reeking of ‘toxic masculinity’ might sit uneasily with Harry’s image as the self-appointed Prince of Woke. But was there, perhaps, another explanation why he might not be pleased to see pictures of himself at the so-called ‘Cowtown coliseum’?

The visit coincided almost exactly with the first anniversary of his and Meghan’s Oprah Winfrey interview from which, we were assured, a ‘global wave of service’ would be unleashed by the couple. 

An appearance at a kitsch tourist attraction can hardly be described as an illustration of their ‘shared commitment’ to a life of good works. Indeed, the embers of their incendiary claims about cruelty, neglect, snobbery and racism aimed at the heart of the Royal Family are still glowing.

More than 50 million people around the world — including 12 million in Britain and 17 million in the U.S. — tuned in to hear Meghan discuss how royal life had made her suicidal, blame sister-in-law Kate for making her cry at a bridesmaids’ dress-fitting and, infamously, allege that a member of the Royal Family had questioned what colour her son Archie’s skin would be.

The repercussions are still being felt as are the memorably damning soundbites: ‘Were you silent, or were you silenced?’; ‘My family literally cut me off financially’; and complaints that Archie ‘won’t be given security, he’s not going to be given a title’. 

More significantly, 12 months after the so-called ‘interview of the decade’, we are entitled to ask what on earth a couple who set themselves the loftiest of standards has actually been doing since — apart from overseeing the stream of platitudes and wearily right-on slogans that are issued with monotonous regularity from the luxury of their nine-bedroom, 16-bathroom mansion?

Take, for example, their attendance at last month’s National Association for the Advancement of Colored People Image Awards, where they accepted the President’s Award that recognises special achievement and distinguished public service.

Over the years this venerable organisation — set up in 1909 in response to violence against black people — has handed its most prestigious award to some significant individuals, who have done much to raise the aspirations of America’s black population, from boxer Muhammad Ali to preacher-turned-politician Jesse Jackson and former U.S. Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice.

No wonder questions have been asked about the frankly modest achievements, by comparison, of the duke and duchess.

Yet according to the citation, they received this honour for ‘heeding the call to social justice’ and ‘joining the struggle for equity’ in America and around the world.

Doubtless it was merely a coincidence that the media for the awards was organised by Sunshine Sachs, the New York-based public relations outfit that has been advising Meghan since her days as an actress.

Activism, of course, is part of the identity the couple have moulded for themselves since abandoning their royal lives for California. As the website for the Archewell Foundation, their American-registered charity, grandly proclaimed: ‘Each of us can change our communities. All of us can change the world.’

But for all this and other high-minded declarations, the ‘shared purpose and global action’ has not quite materialised.

For instance on her 40th birthday last August Meghan launched her ’40 x 40′ project, a scheme which asked 40 of the duchess’s friends to give 40 minutes of their time to advise women how to get back into the workplace after the Covid-19 pandemic. In a video with actress Melissa McCarthy, Meghan promised the scheme would have a ‘ripple’ effect across the world as each person asked 40 of their friends to take part and so on.

But what has it accomplished? According to reports, the initiative has since gone rather quiet.

There is one area, of course, where there has not been silence — the various legal battles they have fought with newspapers and broadcasters including The Mail on Sunday, The Sun and the BBC, and more recently, the Home Office, which Harry is suing over the loss of their police protection in the UK, for which he has offered to pay.

It is only fair to point out that the main event in the Sussexes’ lives in this 12-month period has been the birth last June of their second child, Lilibet, and Meghan has therefore spent much of the past year on maternity leave.

The Queen has still not met the great-granddaughter given her family nickname and it is not clear when that situation will change.

We now know Harry and Meghan will not attend the thanksgiving service for Prince Philip later this month and their presence at June’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations — which coincides with Lilibet’s first birthday — is increasingly uncertain. In fact, relations between the Sussexes and the Royal Family have barely improved since the Oprah ‘truth-bombs’.

If anything, they have worsened. Harry’s revelation that he has collaborated with a ghostwriter on a tell-all memoir, due out this autumn, has spread a deep anxiety across the royal household. 

A well-placed source this week told the Mail that the Royal Family were ‘absolutely dreading’ its publication. ‘God knows what one-eyed nonsense will be in it,’ the source said. The fear that its contents could overshadow the Queen’s anniversary is more intense than those that surrounded Prince Andrew before he settled his sex-abuse lawsuit.

We understand that recent reports that Harry and his father are in frequent contact are wide of the mark. Prince Charles is often unavailable when his son calls and, because he does not have a mobile phone, Harry relies on officials to patch him through when he does ring. And that is often not possible.

This is an extraordinary case of history repeating itself. At the height of the marital differences between Harry’s parents, Princess Diana was similarly thwarted in phone calls to both Charles and other senior royals.

And in both cases there has been an issue of trust. Thirty years ago, Charles never forgave Diana for leaking intimate family secrets to author Andrew Morton. Now, Palace aides believe Harry could damage Charles’s hopes of making his wife, the Duchess of Cornwall, his queen if he raises new questions about her role in the break-up of his father and mother’s marriage.

Pointedly, Harry was silent when the Queen announced her stated wish that Camilla should be her son’s queen when the time comes — rather than a mere princess consort as was originally planned.

There has been at least one phone call between Charles and his son where voices were raised.

As a friend of Charles says: ‘Simply put, the worry is how on earth will things be resolved if Harry is unkind about Camilla.’

As for Harry’s relationship with his brother, that has still not recovered from the Oprah interview — and the allegations (still being investigated) that Meghan had bullied royal staff, something that Meghan’s lawyers have denied.

Whether the Duchess of Sussex ever returns to Britain remains to be seen. She was absent from Prince Philip’s funeral because of her pregnancy and did not accompany Harry to the unveiling of his mother’s statue in Kensington Gardens in July.

Glimpses even in the U.S. have been rare. Her first post-Oprah appearance was in the trailer for The Me You Can’t See, an American documentary series on mental health featuring Harry, the singer Lady Gaga and actress Glenn Close. Then there was her toe-curling turn on the Ellen DeGeneres show where she took part in a skit, drinking from a baby’s bottle and singing a song about kittens.

Television is, of course, crucial to the Sussex brand. Their biggest commercial deal on moving to the U.S. was a £75 million contract to make shows for Netflix. And what do they have to show for that? Precious little so far.

Only two series are thought to be in the pipeline — Heart Of Invictus about Harry’s initiative for wounded warriors, the Invictus Games, and an animated show titled Pearl, the adventures of a 12-year-old girl inspired by influential women in history. Meghan and David Furnish, Sir Elton John’s husband, are producers.

So what else have they done since that Oprah spectacular? Have they achieved even one of their ambitions, or has it been a year of living aimlessly?

The answer, according to our audit, suggests accomplishments have been scant. Two weeks after Oprah, Harry was unveiled as ‘chief impact officer’ for mental ‘wellness’ app BetterUp, described as ‘a platform for coaching and mental fitness’ in the workplace.

On May 3, the duke was a participant on stage at the ‘Vax Live’ awareness concert at the SoFi stadium in California with artists such as Jennifer Lopez and the Foo Fighters and which called on world leaders to make Covid vaccines available all over the world.

A fortnight later he was happily filmed going through therapy on an Apple TV+ series that focused on the importance of mental health. Four days after the birth of their daughter, Meghan published her children’s book The Bench, with hundreds of copies given away free to schools and children’s libraries across the U.S.

Although it became a New York Times bestseller within a week of release, overall sales are said to be disappointing. Certainly, it has not been flying off shelves at the couple’s local book store, Tecolote in Montecito. A store saleswoman was reported saying: ‘Meghan has never come into the shop.’

On July 1, Harry was in London for the flying visit to unveil, alongside William, the Princess Diana statue outside Kensington Palace. Then, 18 days later, came the bombshell announcement from Penguin Random House of his autobiography with his grandiose statement: ‘I’m writing this not as the prince I was born [sic] but as the man I’ve become.’

World events rarely pass without some kind of intervention from the Sussexes. Thus, on August 17, with Kabul in crisis following the return of the Taliban, they issued a statement about the ‘many layers of pain’ in Afghanistan while also pontificating on the humanitarian disaster in Haiti following an earthquake.

So far so predictable. Making the cover of Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People issue last September was surely validation for all their endeavours.

Next stop New York, where then mayor Bill de Blasio pulled out all the stops for the couple’s ‘royal’ visit. On stage at the Global Citizen Live, a 24-hour broadcast from Central Park, on September 25, they held hands.

Intriguingly, their participation came after Global Citizen was named Organisation of the Year at the 2021 American Business Awards — nominated by none other than . . . Sunshine Sachs.

Six weeks later, the couple were back in the Big Apple for the November 11 Salute to Freedom gala, which honoured military veterans and to which Harry wore his insignia as a Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order (KCVO), a medal he received from the Queen.

That same month, Meghan was criticised for using her royal title to lobby U.S. senators on the issue of paid parental leave.

Then came the couple’s Christmas card — showing the first photo of their daughter — and its cheesy message: ‘Archie made us a Mama and Papa, and Lili made us a family.’

In February, Harry opened up to BetterUp about how he sets aside 45 minutes a day to ‘build resilience’ and meditate. He admitted to ‘burning the candle at both ends’ before he learnt how to embrace what he described as ‘inner work’.

All in all, the couple’s schedule hardly compares with the daily work of the royals they left behind.

So might this indicate they have been busier in their private lives?

The evidence does not suggest so. They have shared information about Archie’s chicken coop and in April there was footage of them playing with their new dog Pula on the beach in Montecito.

Last month, accompanied by his cousin Princess Eugenie, Harry was photographed at the Super Bowl in Los Angeles, American football’s blue riband event. And on February 22, Harry, Meghan, Eugenie and her husband Jack Brooksbank were pictured dining out in Santa Barbara.

But sightings in their neighbourhood are rare. Harry has been spotted pootling on an electric bike while being trailed by his security team and also at the wheel of his Range Rover. He has also been seen buying groceries while Meghan was spotted in December carrying bags from the Pierre LaFond delicatessen.

They did attend the town’s July 4 parade. But according to Sharon Byrne of the Montecito Association, ‘no one knew it was them’. And they contributed as sponsors for Montecito’s Christmas parade.

With so few local appearances, rumours circulated that they may even have moved out — but this does not appear to be the case.

Certainly, locals are protective of their celebrity residents.

For example when reporter Richard Mineards revealed that Archie had taken his first riding lesson, he did not name the upmarket stables he attended.

But it’s always been that way in Montecito. There are no ‘maps to the stars’ or tour buses past their homes, as in Beverly Hills.

A neighbour who has lived near the Sussexes’ property said he had never clapped eyes on them. ‘I’ve only ever seen their security,’ he said.

The bodyguards who constantly patrol the couple’s perimeter fence in golf carts are far more visible.

Only Harry and Meghan can say whether a year that began with the hype and rage of their Oprah interview has turned out quite how they intended.

On the face of it, however, it doesn’t seem to have added up to much.