Go more than 80 years back in time, and a British publication issuing a ten day ultimatum to members of its monarchy would be unlikely. Take for instance, the decision of British tabloids to refrain from writing about Edward VIII — the newly-coronated king — and his affair with the American divorcee, Wallis Simpson. By this time, in 1936, American and European tabloids were already reporting the rumours. But Fleet Street respected its informal agreement with the royal household to keep it a secret.

 

So why is it different today? Why are Britain’s tabloids giving Markle such a hard time? The couple has spoken extensively about the turmoil caused by the media’s harsh scrutiny of their every move. A tearful Duchess told journalist Tom Bradby in an ITV interview that her friends had warned her about British tabloids, saying to her, “They will destroy your life.”

 

Are Meghan and Harry right in claiming that they are being singled out by the media? Did the tabloids’ treatment of the couple seal the deal for their decision to be royal-no-more? Before being linked to Harry, Markle was best known for acting in the American series, Suits. Today, her life is radically different. Since her fairytale wedding to Prince Harry in 2018, the British tabloids have not been kind to the Duchess of Sussex. According to The Guardian, Markle gets twice as many negative headlines as positive ones. From cradling her baby bump to eating avocados, the Duchess of Sussex has also been called out for doing the very same things that her sister-in-law, Kate Middleton, received endearing approval for.

 

A quick look at Britain’s media history shows that other royals have also been subject to harsh scrutiny. Princess Diana, after all, was hounded by the press minutes before her death, and another royal outsider, Sarah Ferguson (ex-wife of Prince Andrew) was fat-shamed by tabloids. And still, Markle’s treatment appears to stand out. Is it racism? Is it her outsider status as an American divorcee? Or perhaps, could the rumours that she has a commandeering personality be the reason why the media finds it so attractive to excoriate her?

 

While these reasons do play a role, there is more to it. A Hollywood past that makes Meghan’s behaviour more celebrity than royal, and a willingness to violate the terms of the informal ‘gentleman’s agreement’ that Fleet Street and the monarchy have been party to. These are two factors that have propelled the media to change its coverage vis-a-vis the royal couple. The cherry on top — or the jewel on the tiara — are British tabloids as we know them in the 21st century. They are harsh, merciless, and always on the prowl for a good story.

 

The royals who didn’t want to be royal?

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Even though the British monarchy commands a level of celebrity that is unsurpassed by many, it still balks at the idea of ‘celebrity behaviour’. Perhaps words like ‘royal’ and ‘regal’ are preferred. Markle came to the House of Windsor with a public footprint: a past life as an actress and social media personality. Thanks to her popular lifestyle blog, The Tig, she had nearly three million Instagram followers before she shut all her social media accounts. If anything, the wedding was a testament to this celebrity — the English patrician class walking side by side at Westminster Abbey with Hollywood A-listers like George Clooney and Oprah Winfrey.

 

This influenced how the couple presented itself to the public after the wedding. Unlike other members of the British monarchy who have largely remained staunchly apolitical, Harry and Meghan spoke up — about climate change, about Donald Trump (she’s not a fan of either). They took private jets. She had a lavish baby shower in New York with her glamorous friends. Angela Levin, Harry’s official biographer, wrote in The Telegraph that the couple’s lives had taken a decidedly celebrity-turn after the wedding. Writing in August, she hinted at the tension this created, asking, “Is their future going to be immersed in the celebrity world or the royal one? It is impossible to choose both.”

 

And for Fleet Street, that was fodder. In August last year, Lady Colin Campbell, a royal commentator, called Markle’s behaviour “graceless,” lamenting that she was “more celebrity than royal” — a story that was picked up by many tabloids. Levin wrote about the couple’s dichotomous roles as “dutiful public servants” and “globe-trotting, celebrity A-listers.”

 

But Meghan Markle is not the first example of Hollywood meeting royalty. The most famous instance has to be actress Grace Kelly leaving her life in Tinseltown at the peak of her career to get married to Prince Rainier III of Monaco. The 1956 wedding — like Meghan and Harry’s — was a spectacle. It was orchestrated by production house MGM and televised to the world as a fairy tale. And suddenly, the small European princedom shot to global renown.

 

But even after her untimely death in a car accident, Grace Kelly’s relationship with the Monacan media remained positive. The island’s popular newspapers like Monaco Matin complimented her for style and charm and mourned her tragic loss. Even though Kelly’s marriage also brought a whiff of ‘celebrity-dom’ to the royal house of Grimaldi, she wasn’t disparaged for it the way Meghan has been.

 

The differences can probably help explain that: there is the fact that the House of Windsor is larger, more powerful and more renowned than the royal Kingdom of Monaco. By virtue of its size and scale, it is subject to more media attention. But then again, Monaco’s press did not thrive on harsh royal scrutiny the way Fleet Street does.

 

The private Prince and the discrete Duchess

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After her wedding, at which her father was conspicuously absent, Meghan Markle wrote a letter to Thomas Markle. She started with, “Daddy, it is with a heavy heart that I write this”, and addressed instances in which he had given interviews to the press, fabricated stories and staged photo-ops, and attacked Prince Harry: all signs of a difficult relationship between the two. The letter, only meant to be read by Thomas Markle, was later published by The Mail on Sunday. According to Markle Sr, he had shared it with the press to defend himself from wrongful portrayal in the media.

 

The Duchess of Sussex filed a lawsuit against The Mail, on grounds of breach of copyright and selective editing, invasion of privacy, and misuse of personal data. “The contents of a private letter were published unlawfully in an intentionally distributive manner to manipulate you, the reader”, read the official statement on the Sussex’s website. It was also at this time that Prince Harry sued two other tabloids for earlier instances of phone-hacking.

 

Even though royal members have sued the press before, the spate of lawsuits initiated by Harry and Markle in 2019 have been uncharacteristic. Fleet Street responded with outrage, in what they perceived to be a violation by the couple of the media-monarchy press agreement. Britain’s royal family has had a turbulent past with the media, but even so, this was a drastic move by Harry and Meghan. As the New York Times pointed out, it was “unusual, even by the standards of that sometimes-bitter history”.

 

One explanation for the tense relationship between the royal couple and the media goes way back. For Prince Harry, this is directly related to his mother’s complex relationship with the media. The final moments of Princess Diana’s life involve paparazzi on motorcycles chasing after her car. In a statement late last year, Prince Harry referred to the aggressive behavior of the British tabloid media, sharing that his “deepest fear is history repeating itself”. He explains: “I lost my mother and now I watch my wife falling victim to the same powerful forces”.

 

Meghan Markle’s relationship with the media is of more recent times. As a well-known Hollywood actress, she was used to media attention in the United States. But that was a different kind of attention: one that centred on her role as an actress, lifestyle influencer and celebrity. Life as British royalty? By her own admission, that has brought harsher scrutiny than Markle expected.

 

Rules of the game

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Another reason for the uneasy relationship is a difference in the perception of privacy between the media and the monarchy. The royal family has the right to the protection of private life, and it highly values privacy. Harry and Meghan have shown that, whenever they believe these rights are violated, they will undertake legal action. The media, on the contrary, feels entitled to greater access to the lives of the royals. Some are part of the Royal Rota, a press pool that covers the royal family, and then there is the informal ‘gentleman’s agreement’ with the monarchy. Edward Owens, who wrote the book The Family Firm. Monarchy, Mass Media and the British Public, 1932-53, explains that “unless you are part of the inner circle, no one really knows what the rules are.” According to him, the royal family “calls the shots” and carefully orchestrates its media image.

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But the British tabloids see things differently to the couple. The Mail on Sunday justified the publication of the letter to Thomas Markle by stating that the issue was of “legitimate public interest”. Moreover, the newspapers said, the couple needs the press. They “rely on publicity about themselves and their lives to maintain the privileged positions they hold,” read an official statement issued to the court. It’s clear then that the press and the couple don’t agree on the level of privacy that they are entitled to, resulting in legal action and a worsened relationship between the two.

 

A glimpse at royalty

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The privacy debate in monarchies even exists across the Atlantic, in continental Europe. Take, for instance, the 2013 lawsuit by the Dutch royal family against the Nieuwe Revu magazine. Shortly before Prince Willem-Alexander was to be inaugurated as King of the Netherlands, his oldest daughter, Amalia, was photographed by paparazzi while playing on a hockey field.

 

Starting in 2005, the Dutch royal family’s privacy has been codified and protected in the country’s Media Code. In order for the three daughters of King Willem-Alexander and Queen Máxima to live a relatively undisturbed childhood, the family asks that they be left alone in private settings. In return, the press is invited to all formal events and to a twice-yearly photoshoot of the royals on holiday. With the Media Code, the Government Information Service tries to balance both the privacy of the royal family as well as the demand for royal access by the press. Similar to Britain, the agreement is not legally binding, but the Media Code is largely respected. News outlets that do not oblige to it argue that the decision to publish an image depends on the news value and relevance of each story or picture. If they publish something without the consent of the Government Information Service, it is ultimately the courts that decide whether the publication is lawful or not.

 

In case of the pictures of Amalia, the royal family felt it was entitled to higher levels of privacy than what the press believed was acceptable. The editor-in-chief of Nieuwe Revu, Erik Noomen, argued that the Media Code was “outdated and unfit” for modern democracy. The fact that the 9-year old girl was “only one heartbeat away from the throne” gave the Dutch public the right to get to know her, he said. Noomen questioned the media agreement by asking whether the royal family, an entity under employment of the tax-paying Dutch citizens, deserves more privacy than ‘regular’ celebrities. The court, however, ruled in favour of the royal family, following an established legal pattern that tends to uphold the privacy of the monarchy.

 

Both the British and the Dutch royal family are popular in their home countries and enjoy frequent media attention. They highly value privacy, especially so that their children can grow up outside the public eye. The media, on the other hand, feels entitled to insider access, given that the royals play a prominent role in national life and also because taxpayer money is used to fund their lives. In both cases, Dutch and British media made the argument that they — and the public — should be granted more access.

 

And yet, the Dutch media has remained on good terms with its monarchy. But in Britain — and especially for Meghan and Harry — the relationship only seems to have worsened. Tabloid columnists such as Piers Morgan and Katie Hind continue to disparage the couple, even though they have made it clear that they want out of the system. This contrast makes sense, given that the Netherlands doesn’t have a tabloid press as extreme as the UK’s. The “super market-tabloid” genre is non-existent, according to academic Deuze. Dutch people don't like to read about hard-hitting scandals as much as the British public does, because, he says, they “do not want to know about the wrongdoing of their favorite stars.”

 

Victims of the press?

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Some point to British tabloids’ past actions to show that the press has, in fact, been a supporter of the monarchy and that it would be unfair to argue that Britain’s newspapers are harsher than others. After all, Fleet Street did stay mum about Edward VIII’s affair with Wallis Simpson at the behest of the royal press office. But that wasn’t a courtesy that editor Dan Wootton was willing to extend to the Sussexes when he found out that they might have plans to move to Canada. An ultimatum of sorts was issued: the couple had 10 days to respond to the information, and Wootton was going to report the story no matter what.

 

So what has changed? Well, for one, the British media’s relationship with the monarchy. Starting in around the 1970s (and propelled by Rupert Murdoch’s relaunch of The Sun in 1969), Britain’s tabloid culture saw a market-driven, scandal-hungry media which hawkishly eyed the lives of celebrities, hungrily waiting for sensational news that would drive up its readership. And nobody was exempt. As historian and author Owens explains, this is the time when it became apparent that royalty status didn’t provide any amnesty from tabloid scrutiny.

 

As the press climate became more competitive in the UK, the media started to use the royal family to increase its readership. It also adopted the stance that it was appropriate to question the monarchy, which after all, was an institution that was funded to some extent by public money. And that reputation has persisted. Adrian Bingham, historian and author of Tabloid century: the popular press in Britain, 1896 to the present, says, “British tabloids have traditionally prioritised getting the story above ethical considerations. There is a lot of pressure on journalists to obtain scoops and beat rivals. That often results in intrusive coverage that may well seem ‘harsh’. This is supplemented by a tradition of columnists who, again, have to be opinionated and controversial to stand out. Newspapers want to get people talking, rather than be kind.”

 

But it is too easy to blame only the press. The royal family was also willing to exploit these developments to work to its advantage. Even as early as the reign of Queen Victoria, the British monarchy realized the value of using the media to increase its public image. The 20th century saw the emergence of a new form of media exposure — one that highlighted the family-centred nature of the House of Windsor and apolitical values like self-sacrifice and duty to country. Owens calls this a “mass media monarchy,” one that solidified itself in the mid-twentieth century, under the reign of George V, Queen Elizabeth’s grandfather. “There was a huge amount of discretion in connection with the royal family,” he explains. “The monarchy was revered by newspaper editors and journalists who agreed that it was a nationally important institution.”

 

Media images of a stoic Elizabeth — who took to the throne after her father’s unexpected death — served to intensify the portrayal of the royal family as dedicated to public service at the cost of its members’ private desires. This has contributed, at times, to the image of the monarchy as a victim, which Owens believes is part of a narrative designed to evoke the sympathy of the masses.

 

This culture of self-sacrifice was deeply at odds with the values of self-fulfilment and individualism. A lot has changed since Queen Elizabeth’s coronation (we have, after all, been treated to images of Young William and Harry at raucous parties), but the press is happy to capitalize on moments of self-fulfilment. And what Meghan and Harry did — by keeping their son’s birth a secret, by standing up for political causes they believe in, and finally, leaving the royal family — all amounted to self-fulfilment. That makes for great news.

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