If as Royal Family members you are private, then press reports can't really critisize what you say off-script, at home, when not working. The press don't know what you've said. So discretion is a fine defence against being trashed in the media. You may be trashed, but it will be for your public and working behaviour, utterances, omissions. As these are just work aspects, and all governed by rules and protocols and the company ethos, you can't really identify intimately and personally with your performance or any criticism levelled at it. That helps you to remain calm and confident.
The royal situation isn't unique - it applies to many high- profile bosses. If the manager of a top- six Premier League football team complained about the abuse fans shout at him, or the things the press write, then people would say: ' But what about the club? What about its next crunch match? What about it getting into Europe? What about the fans who've paid for season tickets? What about our club's history? The answer would be to quit, if you don't like the pressure, but not to moan about your own position when your goal is to serve the club.. And the same goes for boss in the public eye. Alan Sugar could stop doing ' The Apprentice', if have didn't like TV pundits rubbishing his style. Being scrutinised, and in your eyes unfavourably reported, tends to go with being important or famous. Luckily, fame doesn't usually come instantly, so you have time to take it in, adjust, or step off the roller- coaster if you feel it is getting too much for you.
Harry could have said on becoming engaged: " We'll take this key moment as an opportunity to step away. Meghan and I will be getting married, but we don't want to work in the Firm, as working royals. I've had mixed feelings for some years now - well, ever since I turned 18, and that's why I went off the rails, a bit. It's a good time to reassess, and I don't want to put my new wife through what I went through."
If Harry has known for some time that the royal machine stifles you, why bring his wife into it then? Didn't he talk about his misgivings to her when he got engaged? Isn't there a disconnect in what he is saying now?
I also don't get why the Sussex's leaving message said they were going to carve out ' a progressive new role' within the Royal Family, if it was the case that they were escaping it to find peace. I don't understand why, at a vulnerable moment in their lives, they set about patenting things relating to their future role. I don't understand it because, it wouldn't be what I would do in their shoes, but I suppose we are all different.
The leaving message, in March 2020, said that they would continue to support the monarchy. Is that really the case now? Do Harry's podcasts really do something positive for the British Monarchy?.
It is all right to change your mind and not to be 100 per cent consistent, but you have to expect that audiences will say to themselves: " What's the message going to be next year?" and " Is this just what he's feeling at the moment?" Once audiences feel that speakers are expressing what they feel in the heat of the moment, instead of references a deep- seated purpose, their utterances begin to sound like any old family ding ding and a massive amount of washing dirty linen in public.
I hope the royals in England don't stoop to airing their private complaints and feelings because, frankly, they are doing a job and are not being paid to shine the spotlight on themselves.
And discretion really is the better part of valour. And none of Harry's assertions about what Prince Charles did or did not say to him will be triangulated by other testaments, so, like all tittle tattle, the claims will eventually fizzle to nothing in the public consciousness.