Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have been accused of intentionally trying to sabotage the royal family with an attention-grabbing stunt.
King Charles and Camilla arrived in Samoa earlier this week off the back of their tumultuous visit to Australia, which saw Charles snubbed, threatened, and even heckled by an aboriginal senator. Anyways, there are a number of items on Charles’ itinerary while he’s in Samoa, but one of his more important engagements had to be his appearance at the Commonwealth summit to give a speech. This was his first time attending the summit as a monarch, and during his speech, the King addressed the leaders representing the 56 Commonwealth nations. As you can imagine, it was a pretty big deal.
But while all that was happening in Samoa, Charles’ youngest son, Prince Harry, has stolen the limelight from his father by deciding to release the paperback edition of his memoir, Spare. The book caused waves upon its initial release and all but sealed Harry’s fate as a royal outcast thanks to some of the secrets he spilled about his relatives within the pages.
The book broke sales records when it was initially released, so a new edition is not a surprise. That said, it will no doubt stir the pot once more as we can expect more sales and more attention given to it.
Was this an intentional attempt to steal the spotlight?
The timing of this release is awfully convenient and there has been some speculation that the Sussexes may have timed it intentionally to take attention away from their relatives and redirect it towards themselves. Richard Fitzwilliams, a royal expert, shared his belief that there is a possibility that Harry could have chosen the date, but admits it could have been the publisher’s decision.
“It is open to question whether Harry chose the date of the release of his memoir, Spare, or whether its publishers Random House, decided on it, […] However, it is inconvenient, to put it mildly, that it is in the middle of a highly significant royal tour for King Charles.”
To be honest the royals are a pretty busy family so there was always likely going to be some “inconvenient” clash whenever Harry decided to release the new edition, (if it was really his choice to begin with). Maybe he is trying to get one over on his father, or maybe it really is a coincidence.
This isn’t the first time this has happened
Back in June, Meghan came under fire from royal commentator Kinsey Schofield for trying to upstage Princess Catherine who made her first public appearance since her cancer diagnosis at the Trooping of the Colour parade. The reason? A friend of the Sussexes had bought some dog treats from Meghan’s lifestyle brand and he shared it to his Instagram story.
Just like Harry’s book release, you could connect the dots and assume that this is all a part of the Sussexes masterplan to get back at their family, but in reality, there’s no evidence to suggest Harry is intentionally re-releasing just to mess with his family.