I thought I was a big royal watcher til I met y’all. 
“I don’t want them launching a line of tea towels”. I’m quite fond of nice tea towels (and tea). H and M could promote their own brand of tea and tea towels and scones, etc. I quite like the idea! 
It is not a terrible time for the brits etc (looking at you Australia) to rethink the whole establishment though, looking at how members leverage connections is something the public should pay attention to. I suspect once the queen pops her clogs there is going to be a major restructure.
The monarch at least serves a reasonable function - there’s a separation of duties. The monarch can host the state dinners and all the other formalities so the Prime Minister doesn’t have to. Our President spends a lot of time on ceremonial duties that might be better handled by others.
I had some sympathy with Thomas Markle until his recent UK TV interview, in which he said this…
‘At this point, they owe me. The royals owe me. Harry owes me, Meghan owes me. What I’ve been through I should be rewarded for. My daughter told me that when I reach my senior years she’ll take care of me. I’m in my senior years now – it’s time to look after Daddy.’
If he has any hope of meeting his newest grandchild, or salvaging a shred of anything from his daughter, he really should consider maintaining a silence, because anything that comes out of his mouth, just makes things worse for him!
Kids don’t owe their parents
I lost any possible sympathy for Thomas Markle when he failed to immediately shut down his horrible daughter, Samantha. I don’t blame Meghan one bit for excluding that entire side of the family; she gave him a chance to be at the wedding and he took money from tabloids and posed for pictures for them, then lied about having a heart attack and missed the wedding. I really doubt that he just started being horrible when she got engaged. She really needs to protect herself and her family from this toxicity.
My question is how are their taxes going to be handled? Megan is still an American citizen, so she will owe taxes, as will Archie if he receives any substantial gift or income. With them living outside of England, will she still be able to become a British citizen?
Agree @silverlady that I think that taxes and security are the two things that are going to be problematic and might be difficult. I wonder if those things weren’t as well thought out as maybe they should have been.
The thing I remember when H&M got married was that she was going to have to give up her American citizenship because of tax implications. Obviously that didn’t happen and seems to me that it might be a headache
The Daily (a NYT’s daily podcast) features this news story of Harry and Megan this morning. “Why 'Megxit” Matters" - I love this podcast each morning which gives an easy to understand summary of current events stories.
It’s about 30 minutes long - didn’t get to listen to it all yet (my commute is less than 30 minutes!) but I found it informative as someone who is not fully in tune to the royal ways/stories/history.
Blech…
Whether they would have continued with being official royals receiving income from their share of the Sovereign Grant or gifts from Charles or instead left to earn dirty capitalist income from work and product sales, all those things were and would continue to be taxable to Meghan. She is an American citizen. Changing the source of that income doesn’t change her tax liability.
And as for whether any of this impacts her application for British citizenship, perhaps she has decided she’s perfectly fine with not being a British citizen. It’s hard to see how she benefits or how her life changes in any way from being a British citizen.
I feel bad for the Queen not being able to see her great grandson. Isn’t there a Canada that’s closer to home? Like Grenada?
They aren’t moving away permanently, they are splitting time between Canada and UK.
There is no reason why they cannot maintain and nourish meaningful relationships while spending 6 months a year away. Many of us live far from our kids and still manage just fine.
I would think most people do not live long enough to have great grand children. Some don’t live long enough to see grandchildren. And a lot of people live great distances from their kids/grandkids. With no means to see them often at all. At 93 and doing as well as she is, I am not sure there is much to feel bad about with respect to the Queen.
I wish the paparazzi would leave them alone now versus hiding in the bushes to take a picture of them hiking.
Grenada really isn’t much closer anyway.
Most parts of Canada are closer to London than Grenada is. Vancouver is only about 350 miles further than Grenada
I just googled. QE has 8 great-grandchildren by 4 different grandchildren. (Peter Phillips, Zara Phillips Tindall, William, Harry). Given her age and commitments I seriously doubt that she’s spending much time with them–especially individually. I’m sure they show up for her birthdays–official & real–but I doubt she’s spending a lot of time playing with them. George may be an exception due to his place in the line of succession.
BTW, Autumn Phillips was “forced” to convert from Catholicism to marry her H, but retained her Canadian citizenship, so her kids are dual citizens. (I say forced because the only consequence if she didn’t was that AFAIK, her H Peter would have been out of the royal line of succession.) So, there some precedent for Meghan retaining her US citizenship.
If Archie spends half the year in the UK, great-gran will probably be able to see him as much as she sees Peter & Zara’s kids–if she wants to.
The latest news says Canada doesn’t want to pay their security which could cost up to 10 million a year. Yikes! It seems all of these details should have been discussed behind closed doors before any announcements were made.
Canada SHOULDN’T pay for their security. If that was raised, it shouldn’t have been IMO.