Megxit Is an Unfair Term, Royal Expert Says

It’s Meghan Markle that gets the lion’s share of blame for she and husband Prince Harry’s January 2020 step back as working members of the royal family—but that’s not fair, says Tina Brown, author of The Palace Papers, released this week. It was Harry who always wanted to quit the Firm, she says, and Meghan just gave him the tools to do it.

Brown even claims the Queen knew Harry would go his own way at one point, but only when Harry met Meghan was he able to actually take the leap, as the former actress “understood the world of agents and deals.” (The pair have signed multimillion dollar deals with Netflix and Spotify.)

“A very close person in the circle said to me, you know, we always knew that Harry was going to go at some point,” Brown says. “He was really unhappy. The Queen knew that at some point it was highly likely that Harry would want out. But they didn’t know it would be so fast, and they didn’t see it happening in the way that it did.”

Speaking in a video interview with The Washington Post, per the Mirror, Brown also added that the term “Megxit” was unfair, as it was Harry who wanted the split all along.

“I think that it is true, though, that Meghan has been unfairly—you know, I say this in the book. I actually think that it was unfair, in a sense, to call it Megxit because I really think Harry wanted out himself,” she says.

In Meghan he found an educated, worldly, sophisticated strategist that helped give Harry “the tools to leave…because she was wired in,” Brown says. “She understood the world of agents and deals. And, I mean, this wasn’t Harry’s world. But suddenly he had in Meghan a very worldly strategist, who he decided to trust above all the other advisors.”

Brown says she doesn’t think that it was the best move, though “I get that he wanted, you know, this more exciting and imaginative use of his—of his gifts. But I think there was a lot that could have been achieved inside the royal family,” she says.