Be warned, this will be long.
When they got engaged, Meghan was ridiculed for saying she didn’t know much about Harry’s family. I think it’s now very clear that she had no idea. She probably thought it was the same as any other celebrity family (an environment she’s used to) but didn’t understand the differences due to their head of state roles and the restrictions these bring.
Kate is British and like most of us, grew up with the knowledge of the institution of the royal family and had another 10 years when she was at quite a young age (so ripe to be moulded) to be taught anything else she needed to know and conditioned to not voice her opinion about things and be trained to do her role as future consort.
Meghan joined the family in her mid 30’s and like most of us at that age had lived a life, built a career and been able to freely voice her thought’s and opinions and largely, be a lot less malleable. To have that ability taken away from you would come as quite the shock I would think and being able to do things like call out governments on their actions that were harming their people would be difficult, particularly when your role involves visiting parts of the world are apparent. There was no time for her to be given the same level of training as Kate due to her age and them wanting to get on with having children. Additionally, the treatment of her by the press would have made her want to get away from it all as soon as she could.
Similarly, we’ve seen the institutions stiff upper lip at it’s best recently, with the way they dealt with (or didn’t) the Andrew situation and, if it’s true, the brushing under the carpet of William’s affair. I suspect Meghan may have struggled with how these things are handled in the family as opposed to what she is used to. I think the source of the William/Harry feud is William’s affair and Harry’s issue with how the royal family have dealt with it, which has naturally drawn comparisons with how his mum was treated following the issues with his parents. If Meghan also had issues, when he mentioned “powerful forces” in his interview, he may have been referring the institution, not the press. The Andrew stuff would likely have cemented their thinking.
I’ve always suspected Harry wanted to be in the army for a long time and was furious when he was pulled out. Since then, I don’t think he’s ever been comfortable here and has continually taken the opportunity to be elsewhere. I think marrying Meghan enabled him to gain a better understanding of other options available to them. The initial moving to Africa plan was likely vetoed by the palace due to security concerns so they had to have a rethink and they probably thought that moving to another commonwealth country would be more palatable for HM.
If they floated the idea with Buck Pal, I suspect that the response would have been let’s wait and see how best we can do this. Given that the DoE has recently retired and Andrew, Beatrice and Eugene out of action for the foreseeable, they probably wanted to deal with how their responsibilities would be covered first before looking at Harry and Megan’s situation. Harry would then have been told to step up to cover more, meaning that the move would have been impossible anytime soon, and if their intention is to be settled somewhere before Archie starts school, they wouldn’t have wanted that.
Knowing that HM wouldn’t have taken the action as quickly as they wanted, they have clearly taken matters into their own hands to force her hand. It’s likely Harry that pushed this, knowing how his family work, but Meghan that gave him the confidence to finally stop towing the line with the institution. The commercialisation stuff is likely pushed by Meghan though – I imagine she has more expertise in that area.
I understand why they wanted to do what they have done and if that’s what their end goal was, they would have been supported. However, the way in which they have approached it is extremely crass. They have responsibilities here. As a member of the Royal Family, you’re born into privilege but you’re also born into duty. After enjoying 35 years of privilege, Harry could have put a bit more time into his obligations before he quietly faded into the background once Charles had been on the throne for a while. He could also have ensured that Meghan properly understood what she was getting herself into but they rushed into this (again, the reasons for this are understandable). This is, I think, where we see the difference between the queen and the rest of the Royals – for her, duty comes first (William and Kate seem to be coming round to this too). For others, duty comes after happiness. I’m conflicted which should come first in their roles, but they will have to pick one, not this strange halfway house that they seem to have decided on which they think will please everyone. It’s done quite the opposite.