How Prince Harry’s Detour To Visit Meghan Markle Intensified Tension Between Palace And British Press
Prince Harry’s 1,700-mile detour to visit Meghan Markle is criticized not just for its breach of protocol, but also for the alleged lies of the prince’s team to cover up his secret. On Wednesday morning, Harry was photographed looking cheerful while attending a charity fundraiser in London. It didn’t matter if he had just arrived in the country that same morning.
His two-week Caribbean royal tour would have been smooth, but Harry made news for making a detour to see his girlfriend in Toronto. Harry paid for his own airfare but not for the added security work which would reportedly be shouldered by the taxpayers.
While the gesture is deemed romantic by some, the British press is reportedly fuming because of how Harry’s team blatantly lied about his plan. Tom Sykes of The Daily Beast wrote that a veteran royal reporter asked one of Harry’s aides if he would fly directly to London from Barbados. The aide agreed.
For Sykes, “telling outright lies to the press” alienates reporters “whose jobs (and mortgages) depend on getting accurate information to their readers.” The Palace’s PR team did a great job covering Harry’s two-week tour, but the news about his detour seems to be dominating all the wonderful things written about his Caribbean royal engagements.
Harry’s stopover at Meghan’s is attracting criticisms because of the outright breach of royal protocol. In 2004, Prince Andrew met the outrage of taxpayers because of his penchant for combining business trips with his golfing breaks. That year, a protocol was drawn discouraging royals to combine their personal trips with business engagements.
Harry and Meghan met in May after being introduced to each other by a mutual friend. Things between the two appear to be escalating quickly. Recently, Prince William’s younger brother had to issue a statement through the Kensington Palace asking the press and “social media trolls” to not attack her. The statement declared that a line was “crossed” after Meghan became the focus of a “wave of abuse and harassment.”
Some of this has been very public – the smear on the front page of a national newspaper; the racial undertones of comment pieces; and the outright sexism and racism of social media trolls and web article comments.”
The Suits actress is on the receiving end of both sexist and racist remarks because of her romance with Harry. It isn’t the first time that Harry’s girlfriend has been tormented. His former girlfriends, Cressida Bonas and Chelsy Davy, have previously talked about how their private lives were intruded by both the public and the paparazzi. Nonetheless, the statement from the Palace cites that “Miss Markle’s situation is worse than anything before.”
People reported that after welcoming Harry in Toronto and spending two days with him, Meghan was spotted wearing a beaded bracelet – the same one Harry wore in several instances. Prior to the debut of their “his and hers” bracelets, she similarly wore a gold necklace bearing the letters M and H. There was an instance where Meghan was likewise photographed walking into the Palace where she reportedly spent the night. Some are wondering if the couple will soon announce an engagement.
The prince is no stranger to scandals. On the last day of his royal tour, he visited the Joshua Children’s Home in Guyana where he talked about the privileges and the responsibilities of being a part of the royal family.
“What’s it like being a prince? Good and bad. There’s lots of privileges of course that you get from when you’re born, but then with privilege comes a lot of responsibility. You’ve got to take the good and the bad. Being a prince means you’ve got to enhance all the positivity, try and encourage people to see the good stuff about life.”
Harry also described the Buckingham Palace to the children as a place with luscious food and plenty of thrones.
[Featured Image by Matthew Lloyd/Getty Images]