During the infamous 2021 Oprah interview, the Duchess of Sussex said, of the Windsors: “I don’t know how they could expect that after all of this time we would still just be silent when there is an active role that the Firm is playing in perpetuating falsehoods about us.” But that is what the Windsors “expected.” The Windsors believed that they could effectively silence Prince Harry and Meghan forever, and as soon as H&M started correcting the record and speaking about their experiences, the Windsors lost their ever-loving minds. According to Tom Sykes, immediately following the Oprah interview, the Windsors wanted to evict the Sussexes from Frogmore Cottage as “punishment” for calling them racists (which would in fact prove their racism, but whatever), but QEII didn’t do it. She allowed the Sussexes to keep their paid lease on Frogmore. The Sussexes were evicted in January 2023, just months into King Charles’ reign, explicitly as punishment for Harry’s Spare.
Sykes is raking through all of this history because of the news about the Windsors wanting to “reverse” the costly renovations to Frogmore and “get rid of any trace” of the Sussexes, which also proved their racism, but whatever. Sykes claims that “Sussex sources” are furious about all of this. Some highlights from Sykes’ Royalist Substack & the Daily Beast’s coverage:
Furious Sussexes: I’ve been speaking to sources close to Prince Harry and Meghan, and they are furious, yay verily spitting hairs I tell you, about Frogmore Cottage. You’ll remember it was reported recently that the £2.4 million renovation of the property (originally paid for by the taxpayer, as it was going to be the official home of working royals, but repaid by the Sussexes after Megxit) is being stripped out, and the house converted back into staff flats.
The Windsors vs. the Sussexes: The palace’s argument—how could we have people who had sold us out on global television, who were planning to sell us out again on a streaming platform, living in our back garden?—is, therefore, not an unreasonable one. I think there is also no doubt that by then the Sussexes had comprehensively reneged on their side of the Sandringham Summit, which was, in summary, to uphold the values of the Queen. However, they do have some cards to play, principally by seeking to harness public astonishment at the scandalous fact that the property has now sat completely empty for three years at a cost of over half a million pounds to the public purse.
Sykes claims the eviction was an explicit punishment: “Had they left and not then spent the next five years chucking rocks at the institution, trying to smash, burn everything down, burn every bridge, I think they would have probably been allowed to keep Frogmore Cottage,” he said. “[If] they hadn’t gone public with all their resentments, they hadn’t made all the films, they hadn’t written the books, they hadn’t called the royal family racist…”
The eviction wouldn’t have happened under QEII: “What the Sussex side are telling me now is that King Charles waited until after the Queen had died to kick Harry out,” Sykes said. “And they say that the Queen would have blocked it because it was her wedding gift to them. I actually think Harry and Meghan are right about this, because if there was one thing the Queen hated, it was confrontation…The Sussexes are absolutely right in saying that she would never have allowed them to be kicked out, because she just wouldn’t have had the stomach for that particular fight, I don’t think. At the same time, Harry was incredibly naive to think that the royal family would not pull every lever they could, yes, to punish him, or alternatively, to force him into exile. Harry and Meghan actually didn’t give the royal family very much choice other than to evict them from the property.
[From The Royalist Substack & The Daily Beast]
Again, the Windsors genuinely believed that Harry & Meghan were never going to speak out about how they were abused by the institution (and specific people within the institution), so there was a rush to pile on and publicly punish Harry and Meghan for speaking out about the abuse they already suffered. And even then, QEII was a moderating force on all of the short-sighted and petty people in her orbit. She still wanted the Sussexes to have Frogmore as their UK base, and she was the one inviting them to the Jubbly and giving them special security for their visits. That all ended when Harry’s wrathful father became king. Anyway, I doubt Harry and Meghan really care at this point, but I hate that they wasted all of that money on that stupid little shack.
Photos courtesy of Netflix.
