How lovely it is to see – and now hear! – the King’s ‘other ‘grandchildren at long last.
On Sunday Meghan treated us to pictures of Archie, five, and his three-year-old sister Lilibet picking roses in the garden of the family’s Montecito mansion.
The day before, it was videos of Archie excitedly feeding their Koi carp and Lilibet helping her ‘Mom’ make strawberry jam. Both children have American accents and Lilibet an adorable lisp.
We don’t get to see their faces, of course, just the back of a head or a cute little profile. But in the past few months we’ve certainly seen more of them than ever before in the carefully curated snaps released by Meghan.
And the cynic in me is wondering: why now?
When the Duke and Duchess of Sussex walked away from the Royal family and a life of public duty to quit these shores, they cited their need for ‘privacy’ as a key reason for doing so. ‘I think everyone has a basic right to privacy,’ Meghan told Oprah Winfrey during that tell-all TV interview, seemingly unaware of the irony.
More revelations were to come in their 2022 Netflix documentary, closely followed by Harry’s memoir Spare that even revealed how he lost his virginity in a field behind a pub.
Little wonder they were then witheringly lampooned in an episode of South Park featuring the thinly disguised ‘Prince and Princess of Canada’ and their ‘World Wide Privacy Tour’!
I suppose interpretations of the word private may vary. The Sussexes, it seemed, were happy to override a desire for privacy if it could be leveraged financially. But at least when it came to their children, I thought they were getting it right.
So, after years of keeping Archie and Lilibet out of view – apart from the release of sanctioned images – why are they suddenly cropping up now?
Is it because their presence might be perceived as helping Meghan’s aspirational lifestyle brand, As Ever, sold as it is on the idea of perfection in the home and joyful family life as she projects the Californian image of motherhood and apple pie?
The Duchess is said to have entrepreneurial ambitions, but things haven’t been going quite her way of late. The Sussexes’ Spotify deal collapsed and her Netflix reality series With Love, Meghan was a critical failure. There is footage shot for a second series but quite why anyone would bother watching this banal show is beyond me.
I can’t honestly believe that Harry will be entirely happy with his children being seen on social media in this way. No one knows better than the prince that placing your children in the spotlight like this diminishes any claims you make for privacy.
Her latest podcast venture, Confessions of a Female Founder, is struggling after just a handful of episodes, dropping out of the Spotify top 100 podcasts and failing to penetrate the Apple top 200. A dearth of big name guests seem to be the problem, as the Sussexes’ popularity slides in the US.
And now suddenly we have sweet videos of the children posted on Meghan’s Instagram account, a surefire way of securing headlines in newspapers and media sites worldwide.
Whatever the motivation for Meghan’s actions this weekend, I can’t help thinking how lovely it would have been for their grandfather King Charles – who hasn’t seen his half-American grandchildren face to face since they were aged three and one – to receive those videos privately rather than having to share them with millions of us. And we can only imagine how he must have felt.
