Harry and Meghan: working hard or hardly working?

Archewell, the company set up by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle just before they “Megxited” the British royal family, has released its 2021 tax filing. They suggest what we all suspected to be true the whole time: Meghan and Harry have spent the last three years doing very little at all. The documents show that the couple worked a grand total of one hour each a week at the foundation, racking up a time sheet of fifty-two hours in a year. Hey, those chickens aren’t going to look after themselves. 

Anybody who has been keeping an eye on Archewell should be perplexed. In 2021, the charity gave out $3 million in grants to refugee resettlement charities and funding for Covid 19 vaccines. It raised $13 million from benefactors. The pair also raised just $4,500 in public donations. $10 million comes from a single private donor, which has since led to speculation that it was handed to the pair by Oprah Winfrey, in return for the interview the Duke and Duchess of Sussex gave in March 2021. 

But for a company that’s gone through staff like disposable forks — sixteen employees since it began — Archewell doesn’t seem like a bad place to work. While Harry and Meghan don’t take a salary for their hard work, CEO James Holt reportedly also works one hour a week and receives a $59,846 salary and $3,832 in other benefits.

In their infamous January 2020 statement, Meghan and Harry wrote how stepping down as working royals would “provide our family with the space to focus on the next chapter, including the launch of our new charitable entity.”

Just one month prior, the Sussexes had launched the Archewell website, with childhood photos of themselves with their mothers, Doria Ragland and the late Princess Diana. 

“I am my mother’s son, and I am our son’s mother,” the official letter read. “Together we bring you Archewell. We believe in the best of humanity. Because we have seen the best of humanity… from our mothers and strangers alike.” 

Arche is Greek for “source of action.” According to Archewell’s website, their action would include “uplifting and uniting communities — local and global, online and offline — one act of compassion at a time to fuel systemic cultural change.” Gotcha. 

Archewell’s mission statement is all progressive buzzwords thrown together meant to mean nothing. Or maybe you have to find the meaning. Maybe that’s the point. Human nature loves a vacuum.  

In the first 611 days of Archewell’s multi-million pound agreement with Spotify — the Sussexes branched out from charity to the entertainment business pretty quickly—Meghan and Harry had only managed to produce one thirty-three-minute ‘holiday special.’ 

Since then, we’ve had about twelve more hours of content from Megs. Her podcast, Archetypes, was all about words that offended her. She signed off the series saying that she will be back for a second season as thanks to this outlet she finally “feels seen.” Who knows if she’ll have anything left to say after the Meghan & Harry Netflix series, her possible memoir and the relaunch of her personal blog, the Tig.

Finally, after three years of speculation, the Archewell tax return hints at the true reason why Meghan and Harry stepped down as working royals. While they may claim that their decision was down to institutional racism, tabloids, privacy or big bad men in gray suits, the answer may be more prosaic: the life of a working royal means “work” — and that’s not something they are willing to do.