The late Queen would have been “horrified” by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s criticism of the Commonwealth, a royal expert has said. The Duchess of Sussex was appointed as vice-president of the Commonwealth Trust in March 2019, while her husband was president, with the hope the couple would breathe fresh life into the voluntary association of 56 nations – most of which were once part of the British Empire.
At the time, Meghan even claimed her work would “highlight the trust’s partnerships with young people across the Commonwealth, and in particular its work supporting women and girls”. But the couple left the trust when they stepped down as working royals in 2020 – and when they aired their Netflix docuseries in December 2022, the pair hired experts to criticise the institution.
The Daily Mail’s diary editor Richard Eden said: “It’s almost lucky that Queen Elizabeth isn’t alive to see this because the Commonwealth was so central to her and bringing people together. It’s a voluntary organisation whereas [in the documentary], it’s dismissed as this colonial body used for Britain to extract money and resources from the rest of the world. She would have been horrified.”
In the documentary, academic Afua Hirsch called the Commonwealth “Empire 2.0” while author Kehinde Andrews claimed “nothing has changed” from the UK’s colonial past, apart from the Royal Family’s “better PR”.
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