'No One's Punching Back': Meghan, Harry's Royal Digs Met With 'Noble' Silence

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's Netflix broadside at the royal family may not cause damage because they "seem to be punching but no one's punching back," a crisis management expert told Newsweek.

Part two of Harry & Meghan saw the duke accuse Prince William of shouting and screaming at the "Sandringham Summit" where the couple's royal exit deal was hammered out in January 2020.

The couple and their lawyer suggested William was behind damaging leaks about their lives, whether to newspapers or through evidence submitted to the Court of Appeal.

However, unlike in the days after their Oprah Winfrey interview, the royal family has so far responded with silence.

Edward Coram James, chief executive of the PR agency Go Up, told Newsweek that William made a mistake after the Sussexes' Winfrey interview when he told journalists, "We're very much not a racist family."

He said: "He almost gave unnecessary air time to it, which only increased the headlines and broke that 'noble silence' thing they do and made him appear to climb back into the fray. I think it's quite notable that he hasn't really given any comments since then."

Not only has William not put his head above the parapet to counter his brother's account of royal life, but the royal family put on a united front at a Christmas carol service at Westminster Abbey the night after the latest Netflix episodes dropped.

Coram James said Harry and Meghan "seem to be punching, but no one is punching back" and have not taken enough responsibility for their own role in the rift to come across as humble.

He added: "I don't think this will damage William. From a crisis communications point of view, I think the Sussexes have by and large managed to make themselves very unrelatable. And because they've managed to make themselves very unrelatable, the people they are accusing don't necessarily experience too much damage.

"I think what could be damaging is if William gives oxygen to it. So if the royals start making lots of strenuous denials, people now associate silence with denial with the royal family and commenting as panicking."

William and Kate were pictured smiling with their children on the front page of national newspapers in Britain, including The Sun and the Daily Mail.

While the positive response to William and Kate from newspapers criticized on the docuseries doesn't come as a surprise, the royal family appears to show no signs of being under pressure to publicly respond to the Sussexes' allegations. This is in stark contrast to their approach following Oprah with Meghan and Harry.

The CBS tell-all in March 2021 inflamed passions in the U.K. media for weeks afterwards. British broadcaster Piers Morgan walked out of Good Morning Britain after questioning Meghan's account of her suicidal feelings. There are few signs of a similarly febrile mood in the country following the Netflix docuseries.

Intriguingly though, Harry and Meghan told Winfrey that royal relations deteriorated because family members were jealous of Meghan, citing the example of a Remembrance service on November 10, 2018, in which the duchess beat senior royals, including Queen Elizabeth II, to make the front page of The Daily Telegraph.

If that is genuinely the royal family's measure of success, then Kensington Palace would presumably be buoyed by the fact William, Kate, and their older children, Prince George, Princess Charlotte, made the front page picture in the U.K. broadsheet ahead of Harry and Meghan. The headline read: "Team Wales puts on a united front."

They also beat King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort, who were also at the event, to be the main picture on the newspaper's cover.

Coram James said Harry and Meghan should have taken some responsibility for the way royal relations fell apart but instead gave a one-sided account, swerving the opportunity to engage with the counter-argument, including allegations they bullied their staff.

"They're really serious claims," he said, adding, "You don't have X number of former aides saying I was bullied out of my job just as a favor to the Queen.

"By making it out to be a giant smear campaign with zero culpability for your client, it just doesn't ring true. What would ring true is, I was in an extremely stressful situation.

"I was deeply unhappy, my entire life had been changed, my freedom had been taken away, I was hounded by the press, everything was going wrong and perhaps I lashed out sometimes to those closest to me and for that, I'm deeply sorry. You look at the allegations in that context and you think, 'Wow, that makes sense. Poor Meghan.'"

Jason Knauf, former Kensington Palace communications secretary, emailed Prince William's private secretary in October 2018 to accuse Meghan of bullying two PAs out of the royal household.

That message was then leaked to the U.K. broadsheet The Times in March 2021, days before the Oprah Winfrey interview was due to air.

The timings are significant because October 2018 is the month that Harry and Meghan say royal relations deteriorated, though they cite jealousy off the back of a successful tour of Australia and the South Pacific.

Meanwhile, Times' royal correspondent Valentine Low, who broke the story on the bullying allegations, wrote in his book Courtiers that the tour was beset by disputes between Harry and Meghan and their staff which provoked tears from an aide.

The bullying allegations are dealt with on Netflix during a short segment in which James Holt, of the couple's Archewell Foundation, suggested the timing was intended to undermine the Winfrey interview.

Harry then adds: "To see this institutional gaslighting that happens is—it is extraordinary. And that's why everything that's happened to us was always going to happen to us. Because if you speak truth to power, that's how they respond."

However, neither Meghan nor Harry addressed the allegations on camera, though the documentary makers showed a March 2021 statement from the couple's spokesperson which called the allegations "misleading" and "harmful."

Coram James said there were also moments when the couple came across well, including in archive footage of an interview Meghan gave ITV's Tom Bradby during a visit to South Africa in the fall of 2019, in which she famously said she was not OK.

He said: "The moment that they showed the ITV interview where she clearly looks shaken, I thought that was very important that they include.

"She seems genuinely shaken by the events that had been unfolding. It's probably the most powerful moment of the entire documentary as an inflection point for that."