Harry & Meghan: a right royal case of sabotage?

A trailer for the new Netflix documentary Harry & Meghan has added a new twist to the royal saga between Princes Harry and William.

The series, which comprises six episodes and is rated 15, will tell the inside story of why the couple decided to step down from royal duties. Although the show has no official release date, the teaser trailer itself revealed a series of previously unseen photographs as well as footage of Meghan wiping away tears.

‘Declaration of war’

The trailer’s release “could hardly have been timed for more explosive impact”, said Louis Chilton in The Independent. The appetiser for the “unprecedented new documentary” comes “just a day after the late Queen’s lady-in-waiting, Lady Susan Hussey, resigned from the palace over a racism scandal”.

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And it was only last year that the Duchess of Sussex told Oprah Winfrey in a two-hour TV interview that when she was pregnant with her first child Archie there had been “concerns and conversations” among unnamed members of the royal family “about how dark his skin might be when he was born”.

Dan Wootton, writing for Mail Online, described the 59-second “vile” Netflix trailer as a declaration of “all out war on the British Royal Family”.

Wootton also focused on the timing of the release, but instead claimed it was “specifically designed to derail William and Kate’s already troubled US tour”, the Prince and Princess of Wales having arrived in Boston on Wednesday for a three-day trip centred around William’s Earthshot Prize climate charity.

“It’s confirmation that, despite the hopes of a grieving King Charles, the relationship with his youngest son and daughter-in-law is now forever smashed,” Wootton continued. He added that “there’s no going back after this full-throttled attack on the British monarchy” and called on the King to “go nuclear too by stripping his son and his wife of their royal titles”.

Writing in The Times, Hilary Rose agreed with Wootton, sarcastically declaring the timing of the trailer release a “happy, scene-stealing coincidence”. Rose believes the Sussexes, while their true motivation is anyone’s guess, are attempting to “suck the oxygen out of every single thing the Waleses do between now and kingdom come”. She even admitted to feeling sorry for William and Kate despite their “lives of unimaginable wealth and privilege” for what William’s brother and his Hollywood wife are putting them through.

‘Winning the battle but losing the war’

“What were you both thinking?!” asked Paul Baldwin of the Sussexes in the Daily Express. Baldwin said that before the trailer’s release and in light of the Lady Hussey racism scandal, he had started to think that maybe Harry and Meghan “really were victims”. However, his sympathies have since waned with the release of what he described as a “toe-curling, truly bizarre promo-video”.

In the Daily Mail, Maureen Callahan concluded that while “Harry and Meghan are winning the battle” they are certainly “going to lose this war”. Callahan added that “it’s as if Harry and Meghan have nothing better to do than go through the royal schedule and figure out ways to screw the family over”.

In her conclusion, Callahan asserted that ultimately “these two have nothing new to say”. The couple will not win the attrition war they’re fighting with the royal family because “they exist only in opposition to the royals. They have nothing to offer.”

While criticism of the Sussexes was plentiful across the mainstream media, the New York Post did highlight some support for Harry and Meghan, citing a tweet that argued “imagine being right that staff in the royal household are racist but no-one believed you”, in reference to the widely criticised comments from Lady Hussey.