It's Only Been Two Days and I'm Already Tired of Hearing About #Megxit
By Stacy Lee Kong
Photo: Mark Jones
Earlier this week, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced via Instagram that they’d be stepping back from their duties as senior members of the royal family. They plan to split their time between the U.K. and North America and will stop receiving taxpayer dollars (or at least, some taxpayer dollars—their finances aren’t totally transparent).
Photo: @sussexroyal
The announcement comes after “many months of reflection and internal discussions,” they wrote in their caption, before going on to say, “We have chosen to make a transition this year in starting to carve out a progressive new role within this institution… It is with your encouragement, particularly over the last few years, that we feel prepared to make this adjustment. We now plan to balance our time between the United Kingdom and North America, continuing to honour our duty to The Queen, the Commonwealth, and our patronages. This geographic balance will enable us to raise our son with an appreciation for the royal tradition into which he was born, while also providing our family with the space to focus on the next chapter, including the launch of our new charitable entity. We look forward to sharing the full details of this exciting next step in due course, as we continue to collaborate with Her Majesty The Queen, The Prince of Wales, The Duke of Cambridge and all relevant parties. Until then, please accept our deepest thanks for your continued support.”
The palace didn’t seem super pleased by the news, releasing a very short statement hours after the Sussex’s IG post went live, which said, in its entirety, "Discussions with The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are at an early stage. We understand their desire to take a different approach, but these are complicated issues that will take time to work through."
Privately, Harry’s family’s reaction reportedly varied from “furious” (the Queen) to “incandescent with rage” (Princes Charles and William). And a lot of people on the internet aren’t terribly pleased about the news either, which is, frankly, a little bit silly. But what’s worse is who they’re upset with.
Spoiler: it’s not Harry.
On January 9, The Sun, a British tabloid, dubbed the royals’ departure “Megxit,” a play on Brexit that places the blame for the Sussex’s decision squarely on Meghan Markle. Of course, they’re not the only ones who feel that way. Plenty of people, from anonymous Twitter trolls to less-anonymous Twitter trolls (a.k.a. Piers Morgan) seem to think there’s just one person who could possibly have convinced Harry to ditch the royal family, and that’s his weird, American, biracial wife. (Okay, fine, the descriptors were subtext.)
It’s the latest in a long string of racist, sexist and just plain mean treatment that Meghan has has faced not just from the British press, but also from members of Harry’s own family—let’s not forget Princess Michael of Kent, who chose to wear a blackamoor brooch to the Queen’s Christmas luncheon in 2017, which was likely her first public meeting with Harry’s then-fiancée. A coincidence, I’m sure.
But blaming her is also inaccurate. In fact, I’m willing to bet that he’s actually the driving force behind this decision.
It’s no secret that the circumstances surrounding Princess Diana’s death, and the way the tabloids treated her while she was alive, have deeply affected Harry. In October, he took the unusual (for a royal) step of releasing a statement about the way the press was treating Megan and he made a direct reference to his mother, saying, ““Though this action may not be the safe one, it is the right one. Because my deepest fear is history repeating itself. I’ve seen what happens when someone I love is commoditised to the point that they are no longer treated or seen as a real person. I lost my mother and now I watch my wife falling victim to the same powerful forces.”
And even before that, he has expressed disinterest in being a royal. In 2017, he told Newsweek how important an “ordinary life” is to him and that when he was younger, he didn’t want to “be in the position [he] was in” (that is, a member of the royal family). He even went on to say that he doesn’t think any member of the royal family really wants to be king or queen.
But even if he had been happy as a royal, it’s not like Meghan kidnapped him. Harry is a grown man who is at the very least deciding to make a life change that his wife has requested, or needs, or maybe mentioned once after a particularly terrible tweet (maybe the one comparing their son Archie to a chimpanzee?). If anything, we should be thinking about this move as a mutual decision—which means please, for the love of god, no more #Megxit.