Meghan and Harry’s victory on Twitter means bad news for Kate

COMMENTARY

You may not know Tim O’Donovan’s name, but every year at the end of December he causes quite a stir in the British press. That’s because since 1979 he has assiduously and meticulously added up the number of official engagements carried out by the Queen and her family. Your annual report is always fascinating read.

(Fun fact: The fearsome Princess Anne has topped the list for years, although Charles took her to the hardworking position and took the top spot in 2019.)

This year, having seen real shoe leather perfectly preserved while the family has waited for the pandemic to lurk on their estates, all we could really count on are Zoom calls, which are somehow much less interesting.

But still, here is a statistic that palace mandarins should pay close attention to.

According to figures provided by Twitter to royal biographer Omid Scobie, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, was the most tweeted about a member of the royal family in 2020 for a “landslide” with Prince Harry at number two.

William and Kate Duke and Duchess of Cambridge came in seventh and eighth, respectively.

At first glance, this makes perfect sense: 2020 gave us Megxit; Meghan and Harry moved to Los Angeles and developed the unfortunate habit of mashing themselves much more frequently than when they were in London; sign not one, but two mega deals; rub shoulders with the elites of Silicon Valley, Washington, Wall Street, and Hollywood (digitally anyway).

And the Duchess still found the time to sit down with Gloria Steinem for an elegant video, shot in black and white, tete-a-tete, during which she gifted the world with the particular irony-free display of the phrase ‘linked not classified’. .

And the rest of SAR? Well, they, or at least his troops of trusted personnel, managed to set up Zoom accounts and whisper some virtual engagements for a national spirit uprising venue.

(Although, can I be frank? While anyone would be happy if a member of the royal family chose you for a quick videoconfab, does that moment contribute substantially to a massive national morale boost? I have my doubts.)

Still, if there’s one lesson we can learn from this year, it’s that when it comes to the Windsor house versus the Sussex house, there is a clear, sure, bet-your-money-on-it’s winner time and time again. .

I mean, of course, Harry and Meghan.

In the three years since the former actress officially entered real life (at least since she landed some real diamonds on her left hand), the pair have been a captivating and fascinating presence.

Sure, they’re often deeply polarized with their eagerness to chart their own course, which earned them, in equal parts, I suppose, passionate fans and vociferous critics. Depending on your view of things, they were either a much-needed breath of fresh air or defeated tradition and disrespected the Queen and deserved to be rushed to the Tower of London in a hurry.

But what is irrefutable is that the Sussexes have completely and utterly consumed the media oxygen around the royal family this year, a situation that is highly unlikely to change anytime soon.

And that’s a huge problem for the royal family, especially Kate, Duchess of Cambridge.

Next year marks ten years since she married Prince William as billions of people around the world watched, to hell with the time difference. As the next Queen (poor Camilla will have to settle for being titled Princess Consort when Charles ascends the throne) this impending storm will be one that could cloud her royal future for decades to come.

The institution of the monarchy, at least in this century, is a beast that needs great treasures of public and media interest to survive. But what if people are suddenly much less interested in listening or watching?

What if the eyes of the world are continually drawn to the luxurious coastal enclave of Montecito and its two most famous new inhabitants?

The royal family needs people to care about what they do and to offer them at least an ounce of respect. They should be viewed as worthwhile investments given that the Sovereign Grant (which pays for your official work and upkeep of the palaces owned by the Crown Estate) is worth approximately $ 145 million annually, that is, cash that would otherwise be spent to the government coffers.

Essentially, the royal family has to prove their worth, over and over again, to the public and it is much more difficult to achieve that goal when there is a much more fascinating and seductive competitive show elsewhere.

Kate’s Early Years initiative, which was stepped up this year with a landmark national survey on parenting, will be her legacy and could help profoundly change government thinking and spending. The potential for your work to have a truly significant impact on British society is very real and to your immense credit. Let us stop now, momentarily, and give the woman her due.

But … it’s not at all fascinating to see it from afar.

And, in the coming decades, “royal family” and the crown will come to mean William and Kate and their family. When we talk about this situation it is with the knowledge that all this is a growing predicament that the Cambridges will inherit and that it will be their turn to resolve.

What will it mean for William and Kate in the future if they are doing some really useful good work (their big focus is on climate change) and the world’s attention is elsewhere?

Like the thought experiment about a tree falling in the forest, does a real engagement really matter if no one from Fleet Street is there to witness it or if the world is busy tweeting, posting, and commenting elsewhere?

Not that this messy situation is Harry and Meghan’s fault, of course. They just want to have their beautiful home and their beautiful charity (Archewell: Coming 2021!) And beautiful $ 183 million (thanks Netflix and Spotify) and their adorable celebrity friends (hey Oprah! Turmeric coffee on mine?) .

They may not have set out to be a thorn in the queen’s sides (and one day King William and Queen Catherine), but they are looking more and more like what they could be anyway.

There are other problems here, namely, the royal family has never had to deal with a competitive alternative. If the life of Diana, the Princess of Wales had not been cut so heartbreakingly in a Paris tunnel, we might have seen a version of this scenario at the time, the dazzling royal run around the world as a humanitarian ambassador, followed by the world press, enthralled. , in his wake and leaving the tedious Windsor and his plaque reveal schtick in his fabulous wake.

The growing problem that we may well see much more of in the coming year, as life (fingers and toes intersect, folks!) Moves toward normalcy, is that with all that Harry and Meghan they do and say, they are pulling the actions of the royal family words in absolute relief. The monarchy has never really had an alternative to be judged against. Now they do.

Let’s take out our crystal ball to say, Mother’s Day 2021.

Every year Kensington Palace releases some nice new pictures and some heart emojis, and they’re all set and dusted.

Will the Sussexes launch a global initiative aimed at tackling the deplorable state of maternal mortality in developing countries? Would they pay a surprise visit to Sierra Leone (which has the highest and most dire maternal mortality rate in the world) to announce a global initiative to tackle the problem?

You see my point here: one side will continue to follow the same playbook and do things from memory, while the other side certainly has a whiteboard right now and is enjoying a celestial thinking session with a group from Tesla. driving, Tik Tok loving strategists.

Under this new paradigm, will the royal family and its trusty, if not boring ways, live up to it? What if Harry and Meghan simply demonstrate, by dint of their own hard work, that there could be a better and more effective way to do good?

And that’s the sad irony here: everyone is just trying to do a good job. For the Cambridges and Sussexes, they may be separated by a continent, an ocean, and the ability to use their HRH, but they are linked by being people committed to making the world a better place.

With Meghan and Harry’s ‘win’ on Twitter this year, they have proven themselves to be Windsor’s noise makers par excellence. And those Cambridges? They will have a lot of work ahead of them if they ever want to make themselves heard over the din of Sussex.