Royal Staff Were Reportedly Told to ‘Ask Themselves’ 1 Question About Trust in Queen Elizabeth After Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Left
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s 2020 exit from royal life brought about many changes to the British royal family. One of which supposedly involved royal office staff and a “code” for courtiers. According to a book, private secretaries were to “ask themselves” one question after the couple’s leaving.
A ‘royal household code’ listed a ‘guiding principle’ for private secretaries after Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s exit
Author and royal journalist Valentine Low detailed how the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s exit prompted a new code for courtiers in his book, Courtiers: The Hidden Power Behind the Crown.
Per Newsweek, he wrote the palace enacted a royal household policy in the wake of the couple’s stepping back as senior royals. “After Megxit, the palace produced a royal household code for courtiers called Guidelines for Private Secretaries and Heads of Teams,” Low wrote.
Among the code’s contents was a specific note to private secretaries, those who work very closely with royals, on how they should make decisions.
The code “advises private secretaries that when they are unclear about what to do, they should ask themselves: ‘Am I putting at risk the trust the nation places in Her Majesty?'” Low said. Furthermore, it describes the question as the “guiding principle on which all decisions are judged.”
Also in the code is what the journalist described as “a glaring example of shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted.”
“It says that working royals cannot undertake commercial work for personal financial gain on the strength of their royal status,” he wrote.
Private secretaries have one shot to stop royals from ‘doing something stupid’
“For better or worse, courtiers have to make up their own minds,” Low wrote in Courtiers.
“If they [the royals] are doing something stupid, that’s your responsibility: not to support them doing stupid things, but to make sure they don’t do them,” an unnamed private secretary told the author. “And if they are going to do them, you call [the queen’s] private secretary and say this has got to be stopped …”
“The challenge is that you are an employee,” the private secretary continued. “And if you lose your principal’s trust, you won’t have a job, because clearly they have got to trust you. You can have one go at stopping them, as it were. But that’s it.”
Harry and Meghan’s staff called themselves the ‘Sussex Survivors Club’
The bombshells in Courtiers include Low’s claim Meghan allegedly bullied staff, resulting in a nickname. It became “so bad” their team later called themselves the “Sussex Survivors Club,” he wrote.
“Sources say the team came up with a damning epithet for Meghan: a ‘narcissistic sociopath.’ They also reportedly said on repeated occasions: ‘We were played.’”
Meanwhile, in the years since her and Harry’s exit, Meghan has denied the bullying allegations.
