A FORMER Royal Protection Offer has claimed he doesn’t have any sympathy for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
Ken Wharfe, former Protection Officer to Prince William, Harry and the late Princess Diana, appeared on The Sun’s Royal Exclusive show, and shared that life can’t be “that bad” when the couple live in a huge mansion full of cash.
After stepping down as working royals and leaving the UK in 2020, Harry is now based in California with wife Meghan, 43, and their two children, Archie, five, and Lilibet, three, in a sprawling £12 million, nine-bedroom mansion in Montecito.
Not only do they have A-listers including Oprah Winfrey and Gwyneth Paltrow as their neighbours, but Harry is thought to have an impressive net worth of around £48 million.
Despite stepping down from royal life, it was rumoured he secured a $20 million (£17 million) advance from publisher Penguin Random House before the release of his memoir Spare.
In 1994, The Queen Mother put away around £19 million into a trust fund for her great grandchildren – which includes William and Harry.
According to The Guardian, the brothers split £6 million of this trust at age 21 and Harry took the majority of the money to “compensate for not becoming sovereign”.
As well as funds coming in from their great grandmother, Forbes reported that Princess Diana left her boys nearly £8 million after taxes.
It was also set up that once William and Harry turned 25, they would start to receive around £340,000 a year
It is thought that Meghan is worth a similar amount to her husband, and before she tied the knot with Harry, she was worth an estimated £3.5 million, as a result of her role in American drama Suits.
But despite having millions in the bank, it appears that the couple are falling out with Hollywood and losing friends.
As a result, speaking to The Sun’s Royal Editor, Matt Wilkinson, Ken said: “My own view is, whether they ran out of friends or things to do in America, which hang on a minute, it can’t be that bad living in the size mansion that they do.
“And they’ve still got quite a bit of cash to make life worth living, so it’s not that bad.
“I don’t have a great deal of sympathy for them.”
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Royal author Robert Jobson then addressed claims that the US media are turning on Meghan, after she was dubbed ‘Duchess Difficult’ and a ‘Dictator in High Heels’, despite Archewell hailing these quotes as ‘fabricated’ and ‘nonsense’.
Robert explained: “The reality is, obviously there are a number of people that dislike her and are leaking quite heavily against her.
“There’s been a number of staff turnover of staff.
“I think she does get a lot of bad press, she’s an easy shot.”
It can’t be that bad living in the size mansion that they do
Ken Wharfe
Consequently, Robert added: “I think that they’ve decided to put out a series of statements to change the narrative.
“That’s what their PR people will say – you’ve got to change the narrative.”
Despite this, the royal expert slammed: “It won’t change the narrative.”
A timeline of Prince Harry's family feud
The first hints of friction reportedly came after William was introduced to Meghan when she was staying at Kensington Palace.
Once she’d returned home to Canada, William and Harry sat down for a brother-to-brother chat.
He knew Harry was already head-over-heels for her but it has been claimed he advised him to take it slowly.
The younger prince reportedly didn’t take too kindly to the advice, with one royal source saying he “went mental”.
Then in June 2019 Harry and Meghan officially split off from the charity they shared with William and Kate.
The Royal Foundation will be divided between the Sussexes and Cambridges as the couples focus on their own separate charitable endeavours.
Prince William and Prince Harry first established the Royal Foundation in 2009 before Kate joined two years later shortly after their engagement was announced.
The trio would often appear together at events and the Foundation had huge successes with projects like the Invictus Games for injured veterans and the mental health Heads Together campaign.
The Royal Foundation said the decision was made following the conclusion of a review into its structure – but added both couples will continue to work together in the future.
Harry and Meg were living in close proximity to Kate and Wills within the Kensington Palace estate, but they switched to Frogmore Cottage in Windsor before baby Archie was born.
The move further increased rumours of a fallout.
Harry also hinted in his ITV documentary “Harry and Meghan, An African Journey” that he and his brother had grown apart.
In 2021, Harry and Meghan give their bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey where Harry accused his dad of cutting him off financially.
Harry then jetted back to UK to join William in unveiling a statue to their mother Princess Diana in the grounds of Kensington Palace. But sources claimed William didn’t want to attend the memorial amid their ongoing rift.
In 2022, just before their grandmother the Queen died, sources claimed Kate acts as a “peacemaker” between the brothers.
Harry claimed his brother “knocked him to the floor” during an argument about Meghan, in his memoir.
In Spare, Harry said William branded Meghan “rude” and “difficult” during a row.
Harry alleged William “grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and … knocked me to the floor”.
He said he was left with a visible injury to his back following the argument in 2019 at Nottingham Cottage on the grounds of Kensington Palace, where he was living at the time.
In January this year, Harry flew in to be with Charles after the monarch’s shock cancer diagnosis.
Harry flew back to the US the following day – without seeing Wills.
In May he visited the UK for a three-day visit without seeing King Charles or Prince William.