Meghan and Harry the victims of circumstance, according to Meghan and Harry - are they right however?

To say it’s been a painful twelve months for Harry and Meghan Markle would be an understatement; the bombshell memoir that Harry which revealed how many enemy soldiers he killed during his tours of duty, being ridiculed by ‘South Park’ (with eerie accuracy) and now being dumped by Spotify for not reaching a, to paraphrase, “production benchmark.” 

That last issue also raised doubts as to how much input Meghan Markle had during her brief podcast series, ‘Archetypes,’ and being called a “grifter” as the couple now only have their Netflix deal left - which, if reports are correct, already seems in jeopardy after their announcement they would no longer talk about their life as working Royal members.

But there is a good explanation for all the misfortune that the couple are experiencing, and it turns out that it’s all situations that have been completely out of their control.

A Daily Mail article recalls the feeling at Brand Sussex is that they were dealt a pretty lousy hand to begin with, and that their downfall is only part of a greater issue surrounding streaming services on the one hand, and contending with the death of beloved members of the Royal family, including Harry’s grandmother and grandfather, Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip, the Duke of Edinburgh, in a short space of time.

“Bad timing” is what the newspaper have stated are the claims coming from Harry and Meghan’s camp, with the “ailing health” of Prince Phillip believed to have overshadowed the bombshell interview the pair gave to Oprah Winfrey, while the launch of Meghan’s podcast series was “overshadowed” by the death of Queen Elizabeth II.

That meant that instead of focusing on a non working member of the Royal family, our attention was (understandably) diverted to the death of the longest reigning monarch in British history; the publicity, Meghan’s camp attest, was dampened by the history death. That same source that spoke to the Daily Mail said the couple believe that the timing of their projects have been “unlucky.”

The topic of COVID-19 and the pandemic was also attributed as a reason for the poor showing the couple have made since receding from Royal duties, putting their plans on the backfoot for almost two years, much like the rest of us.

But is it all a case of bad timing, or is some of it, as one reader posted in the comments section, a lack of accountability?

The news that Meghan didn’t undertake some of her interviews in her podcast series doesn’t seem like it was an aspect out of their control, nor some of their ideas that have recently been revealed to, again, public ridicule.

This included the idea of a prequel to “Little Women”, with reports saying that the royal couple want to develop a feminist version of Miss Havisham called “Bad Manners”, which would see the character cast as a 'strong woman living in a patriarchal society'. This was both scorned and laughed at when the news came out of the ideas being pitched to Netflix, while Harry’s allegedly 'puzzled' Spotify executives with some of his podcast ideas including claims he pitched to interview Vladimir Putin, Mark Zuckerberg and Donald Trump about 'childhood trauma'.

We still might get one good thing out of it though; of the ideas pitched to Netflix, one involving Harry’s self-professed “second home” of Africa. A Netflix insider confirmed to Page Six that a Harry's Africa-type show was one of the more warmly received suggestions from the father-of-two., while another source said: 'Obviously, Harry has a lot of roots in Africa and he feels at home there.'