A royal expert and author has argued the Duke and Duchess of Sussex do not necessarily need their titles in order to flourish financially and socially in their new life in the US. Penny Junor pointed to the fact the couple are household names and hugely still manage to generate a massive amount of public interest despite leaving the Royal Family.
Asked if they would be stripped, she said it wouldn’t matter either way.
She told Express.co.uk: “I don’t think they need their titles. I don’t think it matters a hoot whether they keep their titles.
“I think it would be quite uncharitable of the Queen if they were to lose their titles but they don’t need them.
“Everybody in the world knows who Harry and Meghan are.
“And every contract they’ve got they will get the extra noughts on the end of the contract because of who they are and they’ll probably get the contract for who they are, because of their royal connections.
“And that’s going to be the case whether they’re HRH or not.”
Earlier this month Meghan, 39, announced that she had invested in an oat milk latte start-up in California, and enlisted the help of her friend Oprah Winfrey to push the product on Instagram.
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Ms Junor said any suggestion Meghan and Harry would need their royal titles to land lucrative business contracts like the Netflix and Spotify mega deals was “absolutely nonsense”.
She explained: “Everybody knows their stories. Until they’re an old man and an old woman people will carry on knowing their stories, I suspect.”
In September it was announced that the Sussexes had signed a mega-production deal with streaming giant Netflix.
The pair are set to make TV series, children’s shows and documentaries under the terms of the multi-year contract.
The pact raised eyebrows not least because of the site’s hit royal show, The Crown, which has been criticised for depicting the lives of the royals in an untruthful way.
Ms Junor questioned if Harry could make a good go of the Netflix project, given the fact he has no previous experience in media, production or theatre.
She said: “The Netflix thing, I don’t see how it’s going to work because Harry is a helicopter pilot. Is he really going to be able to make programmes?
“And is it the right thing to be getting into bed with the company that made The Crown that has really done damage to his family?
“The bottom line is they need money. They have bought themselves a really extravagant house and they have a very extravagant lifestyle so they need money to support that and they wanted to be financially independent.”
