When Prince Harry got rooked at the Sandringham Summit and was forced to take a “hard exit,” part of that dumb deal was that the Sussexes could no longer use or brand themselves with any variation of “Sussex Royal.” That was their Instagram handle and they had named their website Sussex Royal, the website in which they laid out their plans for exit and their hope for some kind of half-in situation. Once the hard-exit was complete, they made a final post on their Sussex Royal Instagram and left it active (although they have not updated it since 2020). Same with their website – no updates since 2020, but the website is still up and around. This is the Daily Mail’s big exclusive: that the internet is forever, and that the Sussexes’ old website – which they were forced to abandon per the terms of the Sandringham Summit – has not been updated.
Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s ‘Sussex Royal’ website has still not been deleted despite a promise not to use the self-anointed label in 2020 – and it has not been updated to mark the Queen’s death, MailOnline can reveal today.
The Sussexes agreed not to use the ‘Sussex Royal’ title ‘in any territory’ post Spring 2020 after they stepped down as senior royals. But despite this pledge to re-brand, sussexroyal.com remains live almost three years after Megxit, as does their Sussex Royal Instagram account with 9 million followers.
The couple spent tens of thousands of pounds on the website’s design and a section pledging to ‘serve the monarchy’ when ‘called upon’ has not been updated to reflect the death of Queen Elizabeth II – or Harry’s father becoming King Charles III.
One royal watcher who spotted the error told MailOnline today: ‘I am amazed that their Sussex Royal website is still in the public domain. The Queen is deceased and the Sussexes agreed not to use Sussex Royal moving forwards’.
Another said: ‘At the very least it should reflect the Queen’s death and be updated with King Charles III’. A third tweeted sarcastically: ‘According to Sussex Royal website, our late Queen is still very much alive’.
It is not clear who operates or owns the Sussex Royal website because it has been kept anonymous by GoDaddy in the US. A spokesman for the Sussexes did not respond to MailOnline’s requests for comment.
The Sussexes’ Instagram page, @sussexroyal, amassed 11.2million followers. Three years on it is also still online but has lost 2million followers.
The Sussex Royal website’s launch was said to have ‘hurt’ the Queen and dismayed Palace officials when it appeared in 2020.
[From The Daily Mail]
What “hurt” the Windsors is the fact that the Sussexes used the Sussex Royal site to spell out their ideas for being half-out of the institution and their perfectly reasonable plans to negotiate what they wanted. It meant that Buckingham Palace, Clarence House and Kensington Palace couldn’t run the table and lie about who said what and what the Sussexes were asking for. I suspect that’s why the site is still up too – as a reminder that this situation was utterly unnecessary and that the Sussexes were treated with cruelty. Either that or the Sussexes just forgot about it and they’ve moved on since 2020. Certainly the bigger question is: why is the Mail getting quotes from royal sources about a defunct site which has been untouched since 2020? I also believe that William and Kate are still butthurt about the Sussex Royal Instagram and how popular it was.
Photos courtesy of Backgrid.
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