Apparently, being a private citizen involves muddy Wellington boots, children fishing from little boats, children warming their feet in front of crackling fires in the English countryside and a Duchess splashing through muddy puddles. Who knew?
You guys, I have finally figured out what Harry and Meghan are doing to me. They are turning their lives into a Nancy Meyers movie and I’m in near overload. I would like to know where I can buy a ticket for the full season of this, and I need to be in the front row.
For the past week, we have heard an extraordinary amount of negativity about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex being private citizens. It’s as if they want us to believe that the Duke and Duchess are homeless nobodies who have been kicked out of the palace. As if anything King Charles announced in that letter was substantially different from the status quo since the Sandringham Agreement.
Harry and Meghan are not returning as working royals. We all know that already. Their charitable work is their own. Their commercial interests are their own. Their HRH styles remain unused. Their status is essentially that of private citizens.
Fine.
But somebody forgot to tell Harry and Meghan that being private citizens is supposed to look considerably less fabulous than what Meghan splashed all over her Instagram feed this Sunday afternoon.
Because Meghan has now begun sharing glimpses of the family’s new life in Britain on Instagram, and she has chosen a rather wonderful word for it: “Idyllic.”
Well, yes.
It rather looks it.
And then there was the tiny detail that caught my eye immediately.
On the first video Meghan shared of their life back in the UK, she added a little Union Jack with a heart as a watermark. A British flag. With a heart. Wow. Talk about soft-power diplomacy.
Meghan doesn’t need a royal correspondent standing beside her to explain that one. A tiny Union Jack, a tiny heart—and somehow the Duchess has said an enormous amount without saying anything at all.
Whatever complications exist between Harry, Meghan and the royal institution, this little family appears to be saying something quite different about Britain itself.
We are here. And we love this. And we love you. That may be the most interesting part of their return.
Because suddenly “private citizen” looks less like standing in line at the post office and more like the opening montage of a Nancy Meyers film.
Remember the Jude Law-Cameron Diaz movie The Holiday? That chocolate-box English fantasy was actually Surrey rather than the Cotswolds, but seeing the footage on Meghan’s Instagram, you understand immediately why my mind went there.
There is Harry in a little boat, fishing with the children. There is Lilibet riding her bicycle while Archie cheers her on. There is a flock of sheep. Or were they reindeer? There are dogs bounding through the countryside.
There are muddy puddles. There are Wellington boots. There is a child warming little feet beside a fire. There is Meghan splashing through the mud. And there are Harry and Meghan walking hand in hand through the English countryside. Good grief.
This is not what exile looks like. This is a lifestyle movie.
Somebody Find Me the Kitchen
Now I need to see the kitchen. You know there is a kitchen. And if Nancy Meyers has taught us anything, it is that the kitchen is where the entire fantasy comes together.
I want the enormous wooden table. I want the slightly battered copper pans. I want a ridiculous bowl of lemons that no family could reasonably consume before they go bad.
I want Meghan in an oversized shirt baking something involving blackberries while Harry wanders through the back door with two muddy dogs and asks whether anybody has seen his gloves. I want children’s drawings stuck somewhere they aren’t supposed to be. I want rain against the windows. I want a casserole. Because this is what makes the Sussex story so unexpectedly charming at the moment.The glamour hasn’t disappeared. It has simply changed clothes.
Royal Glamour in Wellington Boots
For generations, royal glamour was presented to us through palaces, tiaras, carriages, uniforms and balconies. Harry and Meghan’s version increasingly looks different. It is a Duchess in muddy boots. A prince holding a fishing rod. Children on bicycles. A Labrador disappearing down a country path. A fire. A walk. A hand held.
And somehow, that feels enormously aspirational.
It doesn’t mean there isn’t considerable privilege behind those images. Of course there is. This is not Little House on the Prairie. It’s California ease meeting English country life. It’s Montecito lemons beside Cotswolds mud. It’s school runs and country lanes. It’s fishing with the children and then, presumably, somebody remembering there is a Zoom call with California. It is a thoroughly modern version of aristocratic domesticity. And I think that is precisely why it works.
That Little Union Jack Matters
There is something else about that Union Jack with the heart that I find rather touching.
Harry and Meghan’s difficulties are with an institution. Their relationship with Britain can be something else entirely. Those two things do not have to be identical.
A person can have painful experiences in a country and still love its landscape, its traditions, its friends, its seasons, its muddy fields and, in Harry’s case, the thousand tiny things that make somewhere home.
Perhaps Meghan understands that distinction too. The little heart beside the British flag doesn’t look like constitutional messaging. It looks personal. And maybe that is precisely what this new chapter is about. Not reclaiming a position. Reclaiming a life.
The Nancy Meyers Effect
Nancy Meyers understood something about aspiration that Hollywood sometimes forgets.
The fantasy isn’t always the yacht. Sometimes it’s the kitchen. It’s having enough time to make dinner properly. Beautiful light coming through a window. A comfortable sweater. A house people actually want to come home to. Children running around outside. It’s being deeply in love with somebody you’ve known long enough to look completely natural walking beside them. And perhaps most importantly, it’s the idea that adulthood doesn’t have to mean that the beautiful part of the story is finished.
You can change countries. Change houses. Change careers. Change your relationship with your family. Start businesses. Raise children. Lose things. Gain other things. And still create something warm and lovely out of the life that remains.
That idea has particular resonance at The Marion Chronicles, where we talk so much about women over 5 0 creating an aspirational life.Aspiration does not have to mean acquiring more.
Sometimes aspiration means arranging your life differently.
They Left the Palace and Kept the Fairy Tale
And that may be my favourite part of this entire Sussex chapter.
Harry and Meghan were once presented as the couple who walked away from the fairy tale.
Except I’m no longer convinced they did.
Perhaps they simply changed genres.
The palace fairy tale came with gilded rooms, protocol, hierarchy and obligation.
Their version has dogs. Children. California. Portugal. The English countryside.
Muddy boots by the door.
A fishing boat on a quiet lake.
A mother laughing as she splashes through a puddle.
A little girl pedalling her bicycle while her brother cheers.
And somewhere inside the house, a fire waiting for cold feet.
Then Meghan places a tiny Union Jack and a heart in the corner of the picture and calls the whole thing idyllic.
Maybe that says more about this chapter than a thousand royal briefings ever could.
Call them non-working royals.
Call them the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
Call them private citizens.
But if this is what private-citizen life looks like in Sussexland, I have only one complaint.
Nancy Meyers should be directing it.
