There are plenty of British tabloids that’ll tell you they saw this coming: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announced yesterday that they’re going to “step back” as senior members of the Royal Family. That doesn’t mean they’re quitting or renouncing their fancy titles as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. They’ve just decided to, “carve out a progressive new role within this institution.”
Part of that carving includes becoming FINANCIALLY INDEPENDENT. They’re also going to split their time between the U.K. and North America. Harry has a series on mental health in the works for Apple TV+.
They also want to be free to interact with the media in any way they see fit. The family currently participates in something called the Royal Rota system. It’s basically a pool of British press organizations that get exclusive access to official engagements of the Royal Family.
Harry and Meghan haven’t been happy with how the British media’s been treating them. Harry recently complained about the way they’ve been trying to juice up a feud between him and his brother, Prince William.
And Meghan said, “The biggest thing that I know is that I never thought this would be easy. But I thought it would be fair. And that’s the part that’s really hard to reconcile.”
But no matter what happens, they say they still plan to, “honor our duty to the Queen, the Commonwealth, and our patronages.”
Sources say Harry and Meghan didn’t clear any of this with the fam beforehand, and it threw them for a loop. And the response from Buckingham Palace kind of backs that up. They said, “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.”
There have been some great reactions on Twitter, like, “Harry and Meghan are resigning to spend less time with their family.”
There’s already a snappy hashtag for this: #Megxit. Someone else congratulated her on “Yoko Ono-ing” the Royal Family. And, of course, someone had to drop in the SpongeBob “Ight, Imma head out” meme. (You’ll find more here.)
