Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, know the meaning of the phrase: a picture is worth a thousand words.
While Markle and Prince Harry grew frustrated with how they were treated as working royals, they were not 100 percent sure they wanted to leave.
The couple was weighing their options. For a brief time, they were even considering an offer from Queen Elizabeth II to relocate to South Africa to have an “ordinary existence.”
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex were also thinking about living in Canada with the possibility of still representing the monarchy in some capacity.
As Prince Harry and his spouse were trying to figure out the best options for themselves — a Royal Family portrait emerged that pushed them towards the exit or “Megxit” door.
Buckingham Palace unveiled a stunning photo that featured Queen Elizabeth and the heirs to the throne, King Charles, Prince William, and Prince George.
According to royal author Andrew Morton, Prince Harry and Markle saw the picture as “a wake-up wall” and were convinced that the “entire institution” was against them.
In his book Meghan: A Hollywood Princess, Morton wrote: “The royal couple suspected that the entire institution was conspiring against them. As they saw it, the evidence was all around them. The unspoken code was straightforward: the future of the Monarchy was assured, with or without Meghan and Harry.”
The release of the photo pushed Prince Harry and Markle to cancel a meeting they had scheduled with Queen Elizabeth to talk about their future and roles in the monarchy.
Morton claimed: “This sense that, despite their international popularity, they were low down the royal totem pole was confirmed when Harry arranged to meet the Queen for a grandson-to-grandmother chat in early January. At the last minute, the meeting was postponed.”
Days after the photo fiasco, Prince Harry and Markle announced that they were stepping back from their roles as senior royals and moving to California for good.
During an appearance on The Mirror‘s podcast, The Commonwealth, Morton dropped the revelation that Prince Harry and his wife started strategizing their exit route earlier than previously thought.
Six months after their wedding, Markle and the prince knew that they wanted to be somewhere else other than England.
Morton told the podcast: “Harry was having conversations in a London hotel with Oprah Winfrey in November 2018, just six months after they’d been married. So they were thinking about a different direction of travel pretty early on.”
He added: “The irony is they had been given the keys to the first-class lounge when Prince Harry was given the position of Youth Ambassador to William and Catherine. This was effectively the Queen’s way of saying, ‘you do the rest of the world, leave the Royal Family to do the UK where they will eventually be the Heads of State.'”
That photo definitely let Prince Harry know that he is just a spare in the grand scheme of the British monarchy.
