R159 - Actually, Kate got the family Order last December, whilst pregnant, only most of us missed it. Still, it's recent enough and she is looking noticeably happier and more relaxed and confident these day. I'm guessing that with that third baby Kate is done with childbearing, which means that the Queen and Charles don't have to delay moving the chess pieces around whilst William establishes marriage and family. The Cambridges are quite obviously stable. The Queen and Charles are too old to wait until Prince Louis turns five, but at least the pregnancy and childbirth stuff is out of the way, the two older children are already past toddler stage, and it isn't as if Kate won't have plenty of help. It's time to start the next stage of this game.
I agree that Mulroney and Meghan were using each other, and whilst Mulroney made a fool of Meghan sartorially, Meghan would still assert that she got the bigger prize, and she's probably right. It's a lot easier to fire Mulroney when her "style" doesn't fly with buyers and viewers, than it would be to get rid of a recently minted royal Duchess with HRH in front of her name, the Duke's baby in the nursery, etc. Meghan isn't going anywhere any time soon. So she may have had a bit of a rough start, but she's in this for the long haul. She gets nothing out of a fast exit with a baby under one arm and a trunk full of questionable clothes under the other.
The Sussexes have to know - or at least, Harry knows, one can't ever be sure about Sparkle - that once William and Kate step up to the Wales titles and the Duchy revenues, the Sussexes appear even more secondary, yet still expected to work for their privileges (and they are privileged beyond the expectations of about 99.9% of the seven billion who inhabit this planet) and keep the side up. Because, ultimately, the side is theirs, too. If the monarchy falls, Harry and Meghan will be lucky to get out with her jewellery and the kiddies. So they have no choice but to smile politely as the hierarchy that has given so much to them, also diminishes them as time goes on. That's the way the game is played.
Meghan can hug and mug and caress Harry in public and make speeches about feminism - no matter how the fraus on sites like CB whine about how much more fun and hardworking and better with the plebx [fill in the blanks] Harry and Meghan are: unless William is found to be a child molester who boils bunnies for brekkers in front of his kids, and Parliament removes him - the long game goes to the Cambridges.
So there it is. My guess is, Sparkle knows this is the best she's ever going to do, but I'm not sure she understood how much boredom, routine, and secondary status she would have to endure for the perks.
And, yes, Harry doesn't look happy. He got engaged fast to a woman he didn't know that well, married her but six months ago, will be a father in another six months, got sent off on a tour with a gruelling schedule that clearly bored the shit out of him despite the presence of the new Missus, and is going home to see chess pieces in motion long anticipated but over which he has no control and more of the same boring work - probably even more boring to an ex-military man, however well protected.
I said it when they got engaged, I said it when they got married, I'll say it again: Harry made a huge mistake, not in marrying the actress, but in not giving up his place in the line of succession and saying he preferred a private life with his new wife. The family would have given him a handsome annuity, his father is rich and wouldn't have disinherited him. Instead, Harry probably felt that he had no idea how to forge a private life without the wall of family privilege behind him. He should have taken the chance when he could and gotten out, and if Meghan refused to marry him without the royal role, he would have dodged a bullet and found another nice girl.
He's a fool. He's got a lifetime of boredom ahead of him in payment for diminishing status, eclipse by his attention-loving wife, and, probably, further estrangement from his brother.
