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Meghan Markle’s final day in Australia began with meeting survivors and first responders connected to the Bondi Beach shooting, the December 14, 2025 terror attack on a Hanukkah event in Sydney that left 15 people dead.
Minutes later, the clothes Meghan was wearing were available for purchase on her new fashion platform, OneOff, with Meghan earning up to 15% of the sale prices.
Selling the clothes off her own back at the site of a massacre where 15 people died might come easily to Meghan, but, like any right-minded person, I find it sickening—much as I found it sickening earlier in the week when the clothes she wore when visiting a children’s cancer hospital were put on the platform.
(Meghan then changed before going to a veterans’ art event later in the day, and also put that outfit online.)
How wise the Queen was when she advised this foolish, impatient, know-it-all couple not to try and combine a life of service with a life of profit.
How idiotic they were to ignore her.
Today’s display was particularly grating to Buckingham Palace, one former staffer told me, as this is the sort of solemn, empathetic engagement that working royals carry out: meeting victims and listening to first responders at a place marked by grief.
To nakedly commercialize such duties in this way is not just hugely disrespectful, it is also unbelievably shortsighted.
I do not think anybody would seriously object if Harry and Meghan went to Australia purely to do business, make money, and pursue private commercial opportunities. Equally, I do not think many people would object if they were simply privately supporting charities dear to their hearts.
The problem is that not only have they merged these two positions, but that they have then marketed the results.
What this trip has done is reopen an argument that was supposed to have been settled in February 2021, when Buckingham Palace, under Queen Elizabeth, said of Harry and Meghan that “in stepping away from the work of The Royal Family it is not possible to continue with the responsibilities and duties that come with a life of public service.”
The Palace position was that public service, in the royal sense, could not be mixed with commercial independence in the same package.
Harry and Meghan’s response was the line that became the banner for their side of the argument: “We can all live a life of service. Service is universal.”
This trip, with a structure so recognizably royal, is their attempt to make that point— although in my humble opinion it has only proved the queen’s foresight.
I have no doubt that if Harry and Meghan had disclosed this was what they were planning to do, she would have removed their royal titles to prevent the confusion that is currently extant about their roles.
It is now beyond obvious that to expect the British people and those of other realms to sit around and wait for Prince William to remove the Sussex titles upon his ascension to the throne is a delay King Charles cannot afford.
The second half of Friday was occupied by Meghan making her two-hour appearance at the Her Best Life retreat at the InterContinental Sydney Coogee Beach, a luxury women’s wellness event with VIP packages including a group photograph—which now looks like a largely harmless hustle.
But his short-term pursuit of cash will do terrible damage to the Sussexes.
The tour has drawn crowds in Australia. Harry and Meghan can still attract attention.
The issue is what they are doing with that attention. It looks performative, public-service symbolism, monetized.
The monarchy has always been obsessive about demarcating the line between duty and commerce. Bondi shows why.
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