Prince Harry and Meghan Markle pulled their children from a U.K. school just days into the term because the commute exposed them to traffic and security risks—the same class of people who lecture working Americans about defunding police and embracing open borders won't tolerate a single unprotected car ride for their own kids.
Archie, 7, and Lilibet, 5, attended the school for roughly two days before the couple's private security team flagged the route as untenable. A spokesman said the move came "following a discussion with the family's security team about the practicalities of their current arrangements," according to CNN. NBC's royal contributor Emily Nash spelled out the reasoning: on the first day, "they realized it was going to be quite a challenging journey for them and they risked sitting in traffic where they were potentially exposed to greater threats."
So the Sussexes, who spent years broadcasting their grievances to Netflix audiences and demanding the public treat them as victims, immediately prioritized their own children's safety the moment reality intruded. Good for them—every parent should. The problem is they want the public to foot the bill.
Harry has spent years fighting the British government for taxpayer-funded security. He lost a High Court challenge in February 2024 after the Home Office decided he would no longer receive the "same degree" of protection following his exit from royal duties. He lost again in May 2023 when he tried to simply pay for police protection himself—the Home Office argued it was "not appropriate for wealthy individuals to buy protective security from specialist police officers," CNN reported. Now, according to the Deseret News, both Harry and Meghan will undergo an official risk assessment by the Royal and VIP Executive Committee, and have been asked to hand over detailed daily routines, travel routes, and frequented addresses.
Let that sink in: a couple that King Charles III's own palace confirmed are "akin to private citizens with commercial and charitable interests" now expects a government security apparatus—funded by British taxpayers—to evaluate and potentially underwrite their protection. They want the privileges of royalty without the obligations, and they want the working class to pay for it.
This is the ruling class playbook in miniature. The same people who insist borders are cruel, that policing is inherently oppressive, and that ordinary citizens should accept diminished safety as the price of social progress will never accept those terms for themselves. Harry has invoked his mother's death repeatedly to justify his demands, drawing comparisons between Meghan's treatment and Princess Diana's fatal 1997 car crash, as CNN noted. The tragedy is real. But leveraging it to extract state-funded bodyguards for private citizens with Netflix deals is something else entirely.
The Sussexes made their choice: they stepped back from royal duties, kept their titles, sold their story to streaming platforms, and moved to a Montecito mansion. Now they want back in—on their terms, at public expense. The British government already said no twice. The question is whether permanent Washington and its global counterparts will keep saying yes to every elite demand for protection they'd deny the rest of us.
