The Sussexes' Trip to Nigeria Proved That 'There Is a Harry-Shaped Hole in the Monarchy'

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Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s trip to Nigeria last week felt like one of their former royal tours, but this visit wasn’t tied to the palace. The Sussexes were there at the invitation of the chief of defense staff, Christopher Musa, the country’s highest-ranking military official, who befriended the couple at the Invictus Games last summer. The warm welcome the Duke and Duchess of Sussex received is now catching the eyes of royal experts, who couldn’t look away from their global appeal.

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Tina Brown, author of The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor–the Truth and the Turmoil, shared her opinion on Harry and Meghan’s trip to Nigeria — and the couple’s critics aren’t going to be happy. “After all of the trashing of Harry this week… trying to blame him [for the rift],” she explained to the BBC. “When I saw him and Meghan in Nigeria, I had a nostalgia. I felt this is what it could have been. These two, who are enormously appealing to the public and who are very good at it, were out there in Nigeria sort of looking really attractive and being appealing people.”

Brown, going against the British tabloid narrative, shared the truth about the loss of Harry and Meghan from the senior royal ranks. “What a pity it is they’ve gone. There is that Harry-shaped hole in the monarchy at this time when they are at such beleaguered circumstances,” she said. If the couple’s issues with the media and the palace staffers had been addressed, they could have seamlessly pitched in while King Charles III and Kate Middleton recovered from cancer. Instead, the burden is being placed upon a few older royal family members, including Princess Anne, to pick up the slack — and with less fanfare than Harry and Meghan would have drawn.

Queen Elizabeth II nixed the idea of the Sussexes being “half in, half out” as royal family members when they presented the idea to her in January 2020. After the death of the monarch in 2022, there was still discussion about Charles maybe bringing the couple back for some royal events, not knowing the health crises that lay ahead. “And I hope Charles considers bringing them both back into the Firm the way they originally wanted: half in, half out, and earning their own salaries doing their own outside work,” said Kristen Meinzer, co-host of Newsweek‘s The Royal Report podcast. “That would be in keeping with Charles’ own desire to streamline the monarchy while also having enough bodies to do all the engagements required of the Crown (especially now that Andrew is off duty, the queen and Philip are dead, and Anne is getting older).”

Brown talked about the “charisma vacancy” Harry and Meghan left when they moved to California, and that glaring hole is a struggle for the royal family right now. It allows anti-monarchists to criticize the palace even more, and it proves that while the U.K. has torn the couple to shreds, the Sussexes’ goodwill is welcomed in many other parts of the world.

Before you go, click here to see more of Meghan Markle & Prince Harry’s milestones since leaving the royal family.

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