Being a successful royal is all about optics.
Queen Elizabeth II based her entire public persona on the dictum, “I have to be seen to be believed.” It’s why she wore head-to-toe fluorescent neons, embarked on royal tours around the world into her nineties, and, strategically, said so little in public that we were forced to scrutinize those carefully curated public appearances to suss out hints of the real person behind the highlighter-yellow coat. Over 70 years of seismic cultural shifts, very little altered in how she presented herself to the public.
A generation later, however, royal optics are increasingly in flux. A nice picture and a regal wave just doesn’t cut it anymore. We’re all brands now, savvily shaping our own public selves and keenly aware of the art of image-building, with social media is hosting endless voices shouting their two cents from the sidelines. We’re conditioned to build parasocial relationships with famous people, “authenticity” being the currency they use to gain our attention.
There’s a new reign now, and like any organization that has undergone a leadership shakeup, The Firm is polishing up its key messaging. Fusty old “duty” has been rebranded as “service,” championing old ways of doing things is “tradition” rebranded as “sustainability,” and going by a video shown at the coronation, Winnie The Pooh is the new Paddington Bear.
Like any large corporation, The Firm has sub-brands, and chief among these are the Prince and Princess of Wales. William and Kate have stepped into an even brighter spotlight now that the (literal) parent company has changed management, helmed by someone who currently lacks the invaluable goodwill that his predecessor brought to the role.
Until very recently, William and Kate’s almost universal likability was their trump card. Sure, they’re exceptionally wealthy people who have jobs for life in an increasingly archaic institution, but they’re also the smiling, photogenic couple with three cute kids who look like a stock photo search result for “happy family.” “Warmth” was almost certainly on their brand guidelines list — demonstrated by William sitting down to talk with football players about mental health or Kate swapping stories with other mothers in walkabout crowds — alongside that buzzword of our times, “relatability.”
Recently, however, that sheen of inoffensive niceness has come under fire, from several fronts. There have been cries for them to “do more”: more public engagements — despite being the crowd faves, they’re among the least active of the royals on that front — and more meaningful action. During their disastrous tour of the Caribbean last year, an outcry for the couple to acknowledge the region’s painful colonial history and burgeoning republican sentiment resulted in William releasing a rare statement in which he talked about “serving and supporting” people by doing “whatever they think best.”
They’ve also sustained reputational damage from Prince Harry’s memoir. Kate came off relatively lightly but was painted as a mean girl who, threatened by Meghan’s potential to eclipse her as the family star, made no effort to ease her transition into royal life, and pettily fixated on seating charts and bridesmaid dresses while her sister-in-law, viciously attacked by tabloids and social media, fell into a dark spiral of isolation. Oh, and she wouldn’t share her lip gloss.
But William’s personal brand — doting dad, Diana’s rock, steady hand without a whiff of the scandal that plagued his parents — suffered the most. Harry wrote of his brother physically assaulting him, as well as his temper, his insensitivity, the entitlement that had been indoctrinated into him as the heir.
A raft of stories has emerged recently about “fighting” and “tension” between Will and Kate behind closed doors — at the coronation, at the Jordanian royal wedding — informed by this newly introduced notion of William as a short-tempered brute. It’s the kind of stuff that a concerted campaign of stories by “close friends” claiming Will is a good bloke doesn’t easily erase.
Perhaps in reaction, we’ve slowly seen Will and Kate pivot their brand away from one built on warm fuzzies to one with more gravitas. They’re the future king and queen, and they want us to know they’re taking it seriously. If their first decade in the spotlight was devoted to reminding us the royals are humans rather than relics of a bygone era (lest we forget the disastrous nineties, when even the queen’s popularity plummeted when she couldn’t emote in the way people wanted her to after Diana’s death), their second will be about asserting themselves as the bedrock on which a modern monarchy can be built.
Their social media has a new look, with slickly produced, cinematic videos, giving the air of a new investment in a sort of professionalism that’s far from the homely charm of, say, Kate’s photos of the kids in the garden.
Their starring roles at the coronation placed them firmly at the centre of the royal project, and their quasi-diplomatic forays, like their recent attendance at the Jordanian royal wedding, demonstrate their prominence on the world stage. Their respective “causes” are ambitious, with him saving the plant and her changing lives by overhauling the way we think about early childhood.
However, this brand evolution is not necessarily going down exactly as they’d hoped.
“Frankly, I think her ‘early years development’ thing has been really l-i-t-e lite,” says Elaine Lui, “eTalk” anchor, co-host on “The Social” and doyenne of Lainey Gossip, whose royals analysis is a must-read. “If you give her the benefit of the doubt and say she truly believes in this issue, she needs to lobby. You can’t just do a preschool visit. You have to show up and talk to the people who are legitimately passing laws that either help or hinder parents.”
The closest Kate’s come to that is meeting with business leaders to get them on board with her initiative. “I give her credit there, but that also seems really surface level,” Lui says. “She can get a meeting with almost anybody, so I want her to get in the faces of these CEOs and be like, ‘How can you creatively come up with solutions as a corporation?’” But as someone who’s supposed to be above politics — constitutional monarchy, and all that — that’s just not something Kate can do.
The Waleses are constrained by royal limitations; not so the other biggest royal brand, the house of Sussex, a startup founded by two high-profile ex-employees of The Firm.
Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, have been on a wild ride since going out on their own. Their initial post-royal phase has focused on their first “hero product”: the tale of their time in the royal family. Their big launches were the Oprah interview, their Netflix documentary and the culmination, Harry’s memoir Spare. They’ve dealt in personal tittle-tattle about the royals as individuals in the guise of taking on some bigger Goliaths: the toxicity of social media, the invasive practices of the tabloids, the racism and unconscious bias that still pervades much of society.
Meghan and Harry have always wanted to be seen jointly as a crusading, philanthropic powerhouse that will change the world. They’ve said they bonded over their shared passion for activism, and even in their brief stint as working royals they gravitated to more politically leaning causes, like Meghan’s cookbook that raised money for people affected by a fire caused by governmental negligence.
They’ve always been clear that they wanted to keep doing what they were doing as royals — yes, including being public people — just with more autonomy, both to advance their own interests and protect themselves in a way that they claim the palace refused to do on their behalf.
Phase two of this has been to distance themselves from the royal connection that made people care about them in the first place (while still retaining their titles, however) like Meghan’s deliberate non-attendance at the coronation, and Harry’s perfunctory presence that saw him bounce so fast he went to the airport in his suit.
They’re rebranding as celebrities, the A++ kind. And there are some indications — the success of Meghan’s podcast, for example — that they might be able to build a brand where their association to the Windsors isn’t the only reason people care about them.
But the leap from royalty to celebrity has had some setbacks. Harry’s memoir, while record-setting, seemed to further entrench the polarized opinions about him. His other big project this year, a lawsuit against British tabloids for phone hacking, among other illegal ways of getting stories about him, is currently underway, but today he earned the judge in the case’s ire when he failed to show up for his first day in court.
His excuse, via his lawyer? Harry, who had been scheduled to appear on Tuesday, with a later-breaking request from the judge for him to appear on Monday as well, only flew out of L.A. on Sunday so he could be with his daughter for her birthday. If his goal was to be taken seriously on this issue, it seems like a misstep — even as it bolsters his image as a far more involved father than his dad was.
This comes on the heels of the contentious “car chase” in New York City. What should have been a triumphant evening for Meghan — she was accepting a “Woman of Vision” award at the Ms. Foundation gala — devolved into chaos when the couple were followed by the paparazzi as they tried to drive home.
Their dramatically worded statement about the “near catastrophic” pursuit was undoubtedly intended as a rallying cry against intrusive press behaviour, but it was seized on by their detractors as a publicity stunt, a cynical play for relevance that milked the spectre of Diana’s death to further position themselves as victims.
“I can’t say that I’ve agreed with all their decisions,” says Lui. Case in point: The wording of their statement about the paparazzi incident in New York. “I would have liked to see that go through a few more drafts. It was rushed.”
Lui thinks they wanted to give context for the shots that had been taken of them in the car. “They were trying to shut down entertainment outlets and other people in the media that were disseminating the photos that were taken when they were under duress,” says Lui.
While it’s a common narrative that the Sussexes are desperate for attention, Lui points out that we actually see them — Meghan in particular — quite rarely. “There is a pervasive opinion that Meghan and Harry are overexposed,” she says. “They don’t get papped very often. They don’t attend every premiere, they’re not at every gala, she isn’t front row at every fashion show. In terms of branding, what I think they have tried to be over the last three years is more low-key, more exclusive. It’s just that the world won’t let them.”
Misinformation and bad faith coverage about the Sussexes panders to an audience that’s primed to loathe them. “It’s hard to talk about Meghan and Harry without involving all the misreporting around them,” says Lui. “When [Meghan] showed up hiking the day after the coronation, we hadn’t actually seen her in quite a while, nor had we heard from her. It was just that breathlessly, for weeks leading up to it, the tabloids made Meghan and Harry the main event of the King’s coronation.”
Given this context, the Sussexes may have embarked on an impossible project by asking to be discussed on their own terms, for the things they care about. “I don’t think that they see it that way, and that’s the subtle difference,” says Lui. “As corny as it sounds, that would be like admitting defeat.”
In fact, she believes their broader long-term plan is still being written. “I don’t feel like they have clearly articulated what it is that they want to do,” says Lui. But recently, Meghan signed with Hollywood superagency WME, the same agency that reps her friend, Serena Williams. Lui sees this as a move that signals the Sussexes are moving toward roles as “political, cultural influencers” who use their celebrity for good.
“I really like Serena’s break into luxury fashion, and that strategically happened over time,” says Lui. “There’s a team around Meghan who has experience picking the right brands to partner with, where everybody’s purposes can be aligned.”
Lui points to fellow WME client Angelina Jolie’s trajectory as a possible inspiration for Meghan. Her partnership with the French luxury brand Guerlain marries her own charitable interests via the beekeeping initiative they jointly established with UNESCO. “That is the magic they have to find for Meghan,” says Lui.
“I would like to see, over the next 12 months or so, what difference it will make. I think it’s too soon to say, but I would love, moving forward, to be able to analyze that critically and fairly without it being mixed in with all the other bull****.” A nuanced discussion of Harry and Meghan feels hard to do when the conversation around the couple is so toxic.
When it comes to their next step? “I wouldn’t rush it,” says Lui. “If I were on that team, I’d say, ‘Let’s take a breather, maybe for the rest of the summer.’ A lot has already gone down this year — the memoir, the coronation, multiple lawsuits — and I would give it a beat, and figure it out.”
It’s tempting to think of the Sussexes and Waleses as rivals, and as long as Meghan and Harry make critique of the royal family part of their public output, they will always be operating in reaction to each other. But given their separate challenges — for Will and Kate, establishing their legitimacy and modernity when the monarchy feels increasingly out of step with the times; for Meghan and Harry, remaining relevant while knowing that what makes them that way is the connection they’re desperate to shed — in the long run, their best chance of success lies in converging their entities. Could that ever happen? Watch this space.
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