DM: Prince Harry & Meghans sussex.com is a breach of their promises to QEII

As you can see, the Daily Mail is NOT OK with sussex.com, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s new website, in which they’re trying to organize everything in one website framework. When the website went live, the Mail immediately got sources to cry about the whole thing was terribly “gauche” and how the royals should do something about it. The Windsors can’t do sh-t unless they’re prepared to go to Parliament just to remove Harry and Meghan’s Sussex titles. Which I wouldn’t rule out, even if the Windsors would look like idiots for not removing Prince Andrew’s York titles. Anyway, Sarah Vine barfed out yet another screed about how the Sussex titles should be removed, and I’m not going to excerpt any of it. Meanwhile, the Mail got Becky English to coauthor this completely bonkers piece about the website which brought down the monarchy.

Prince Harry and Meghan’s new website using their Sussex titles is a betrayal of their agreement with the late Queen Elizabeth, it was claimed last night. The couple’s ‘provocative’ decision to relaunch their homepage as ‘Sussex.com’ sparked accusations they are trying to be ‘more Royal’.

Well-placed sources said the new online venture would provide a ‘big challenge’ for Buckingham Palace’s Lord Chamberlain. The top Royal official must decide whether to take the Sussexes to task or ‘let it slide’ in order to keep the already fragile family peace. The growing row centres around the Duke and Duchess’s decision to replace their Archewell website – the umbrella name for all their philanthropic and business endeavours – with ‘Sussex.com’.

Many close to the royal household believe it is a flagrant breach of the supposedly cast-iron assurances Harry and Meghan gave the late Queen when they acrimoniously quit as working royals in 2020, and comes perilously close to using their royal status for commercial gain. Others described it as a betrayal of the agreement, ‘if not in letter, certainly in spirit’.

But a source close to the couple brushed off the claims and defended the use of their royal titles for the website. They said: ‘Prince Harry and Meghan are the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. That is a fact. It is their surname and family name.’

The palace has declined to comment, preferring to focus on The King who returned to London yesterday for meetings and cancer treatment.

But one insider said: ‘Buckingham Palace may have its hands tied in taking action. The King has other things he needs to focus on at the moment and the last thing His Majesty needs is another fight with his son. But this won’t go down well at all.’

Following the so-called ‘Sandringham summit’ in 2020, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex agreed to step back from royal duties and not use their HRH titles for business purposes or trade off their royal connections. They were also forced to put on ice their existing website, Sussexroyal.com, which had been launched weeks earlier without any warning and effectively contained their ‘manifesto’ for a new life half-in, half-out of the royal family. Since then they have traded under their new guise of Archewell. The couple’s decision to launch Sussex.com this week was therefore seen as reopening old wounds.

Insiders highlighted the decision to use only Meghan’s royal coat of arms on the web page and not Harry’s. Some theorised that having the prince’s coat of arms would be too provocative ‘even for them’. Others wondered whether it was because ‘ultimately this is a re-branding for Meghan’.

[From The Daily Mail]

Harry’s coat of arms would have been TOO PROVOCATIVE! The Welsh Guards would have to ride at dawn to defeat the provocative coat of arms! Anyway, the Mail can’t stick to one rationale for why this is a slap in the face to a dead queen – Harry agreed to not use his HRH and he isn’t. He agreed to stop using the “Sussex Royal” branding for social media and the one website. The issue, we were told, was the word “royal.” The Windsors believe that they alone own the word “royal.” The Sussexes are not using the word “royal.” They also ignored that family in their personal bios on sussex.com. So what’s the issue? Also: I would be very interested in hearing if Harry actually had to sign anything in 2020 and, if so, what exactly he signed. Because reading between the lines of this ridiculous outrage, the Windsors don’t actually have anything other than “but Harry promised, this was the vague verbal agreement!” We know Meghan didn’t sign anything… because they excluded her from all of the exit talks.

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Photos courtesy of Backgrid, cover courtesy of the Mail.

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