Buckingham Palace staff "could either laugh or cry" when news broke that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle had accepted an award for their "lifelong commitment" to building equitable communities in 2022, a new book has claimed.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex were named as recipients of a "Ripple of Hope Award" from the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Foundation in December 2022, accepting the honor "in recognition of their work on racial justice, mental health, and other social impact initiatives."
The couple attended the glamorous New York City awards ceremony amid the anticipatory media fallout for their Netflix docuseries, which was set to air its first installment of episodes just two days later.
After receiving the award, Harry and Meghan issued a statement through their Archewell foundation which read: "Together we know that a ripple of hope can turn into a wave of change."
Though fans of the couple celebrated the award win, the decision to name them as recipients raised eyebrows in royal circles, particularly in the context of the life's work performed by Harry's father, the then-Prince Charles, biographer Robert Hardman has revealed in his new book, The Making of a King: King Charles III and the Modern Monarchy, which was published in Britain on Thursday.
"Back in Britain, staff who had watched the King bring about his own 'wave of change' over many decades, through his Prince's Trust, Business in the Community and multiple other organizations, could either laugh or cry," he wrote of the Ripple of Hope award win.
"Even the Sussexes' most fervent admirers would acknowledge that, in its two-year infancy, Archewell had yet to demonstrate a 'lifelong commitment.'"
At this time tough, December 2022, the palace was reportedly more concerned with what Harry and Meghan might be planning to say, rather than what awards they were planning to accept.
"What alarmed the King's team was what was coming next," Hardman wrote. "Just two days later [after the Ripple of Hope awards gala in New York]: the first three episodes of Harry & Meghan, that six-part documentary which the couple had been busy making when not 'building equitable communities'. In return, so it was reported, they would receive a substantial but undisclosed sum."
The show's first three episodes were released on December 8, and the final three on December 15. The series broke Netflix's streaming record for a documentary debut with over 81 million hours watched in its first week.
The palace, according to Hardman, braced itself for bombshells akin to those launched by the couple in their 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey, the most damning of which saw Meghan and Harry reveal that "concerns and conversations" had been raised within the royal family about the skin color of their future children.
In the end, though damaging issues were raised, the author concludes that the series did not match the worldwide shock and awe that followed the Oprah interview.
"Overall, this was not so much a documentary series as a curated self-portrait," Hardman wrote. "Hence the prominent credit in the title sequence for the couple's own production company, Archewell.
"Stylishly filmed and with bumper audiences, it was highly watchable and clearly a success from Netflix's point of view. But for the couple? It merely seemed to go over the same old ground and the same old resentments which had already polarized opinions on both sides of the Atlantic."
"The Sussexes' fans hugged them closer still," he concluded of the audience response. "Their critics groaned all the more. The neutrals remained neutral. In the words of one non-partisan television critic, it was 'six hours of first-world whingeing.'"
Newsweek approached representatives of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex via email for comment.
The Making of a King: King Charles III and the Modern Monarchy is published in the United States by Pegasus Books.
James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek's royal reporter, based in London. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter) at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.
Do you have a question about King Charles III, William and Kate, Meghan and Harry, or their family that you would like our experienced royal correspondents to answer? Email royals@newsweek.com. We'd love to hear from you.
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James Crawford-Smith is a Newsweek Royal Reporter, based in London, U.K. His focus is reporting on the British royal family ... Read more
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