Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Caused ‘Very Serious Damage’ to Monarchy

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s dramatic split from the royal family may have caused lasting damage to the monarchy — and left a major hole that Prince William and Kate Middleton are still struggling to fill.

Royal biographer Catherine Mayer claims the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s 2020 departure weakened the institution, particularly among younger people who once viewed Harry and Meghan as the modern, glamorous face of the royal family.

“I believe that the rupture in the family that saw Meghan and Harry go to the United States has done very serious damage to the monarchy,” Mayer, author of Divide & Rule, told Fox News.

However, Mayer stressed that she was not placing all the blame on the California-based couple.

“But to say that is not to say that I blame them for what happened,” she explained. “This has been very painful for everybody and for the institution.”

Harry and Meghan stunned the world in January 2020 when they announced plans to step back as senior working royals. They eventually moved to the United States, where they began building a new life outside palace control.

Their exit, quickly dubbed “Megxit,” also left the monarchy with an increasingly older group of working royals. William and Kate are now among the youngest senior family members regularly carrying out official duties.

According to Mayer, Harry and Meghan possessed something the rest of the royal family has struggled to recreate — a natural ability to connect with younger generations and people throughout the Commonwealth.

The Sussexes “undoubtedly” appealed to audiences that are “not really there with the rest of the family,” she said.

William and Kate may be the monarchy’s best hope of winning back those younger supporters, but Mayer argued that the Prince and Princess of Wales take a more traditional and cautious approach.

“The only ones who can potentially do it are Kate and William, and they’re more of a small ‘c’ conservative in their approach,” she said.

William and Kate, both 44, share three children: Prince George, 13, Princess Charlotte, 11, and Prince Louis, 9.

The children have recently made more public appearances, including attending the Commonwealth Games with their parents during a rare outing involving the entire family.

Royal watchers may enjoy seeing the young Wales children grow up, but it could be years before any of them become full-time working royals.

That leaves a glaring age gap inside the monarchy.

“They’re young, but they’re in their 40s,” Mayer said of William and Kate. “Their children are really young. And there’s nobody in between George and his parents, William and Kate, to capture the imagination of younger audiences.”

Although Harry and Meghan are close in age to William and Kate, Mayer said the Sussexes once had a much wider appeal.

“They had this appeal, a much broader appeal, and that’s been lost now,” she said.

The royal family’s popularity has also reportedly taken a hit amid continuing controversy involving Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and renewed scrutiny of his relationship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Still, Mayer suggested the loss of Harry and Meghan made the monarchy’s public relations problems even harder to overcome.

Despite their popularity with some younger supporters, the author admitted that keeping the Sussexes inside the royal system may never have been realistic.

Years of tension reportedly existed between Harry and William, as well as between Meghan and Kate and other members of the palace establishment.

“There were real frictions between the brothers, William and Harry, as well as between the women and within the palace system,” Mayer said.

She also claimed Meghan may not have fully understood the strict hierarchy controlling royal life — particularly the reality that William and Kate would always receive greater prominence because William is the heir to the throne.

“I don’t think Meghan really understood that the monarchy will always give preference to the monarch and the immediate heir,” Mayer said.

She added that palace insiders can become uncomfortable when an individual royal begins attracting more attention than the institution itself.

“Its members get very nervous when somebody feels bigger and more glamorous than the institution,” Mayer explained. “The last thing they wanted to do was make her into some big star.”

More than six years after Harry and Meghan walked away, their royal exit continues to cast a long shadow over the family.

And according to Mayer, the monarchy did not simply lose two working royals — it lost two of its strongest links to a younger and more diverse audience.