Something Has Shifted for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle — Their Australia Trip Makes It Clear
With the Instagram posts and philanthropic promises, a new strategy is taking shape — and it has a price tag attached.
Since stepping back from royal life in 2020, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have been searching for their next act. Five years on, the strategy is finally coming into focus, and it will be on full display when Markle lands in Australia later this month, $250,000 richer for a single evening's appearance. The Easter video she posted on Instagram on Sunday — her children Archie and Lilibet hunting eggs in a sun-drenched Montecito garden. Just two days earlier, she had shared footage of six-year-old Archie on a ski slope with his father. In the span of two months, Markle has posted four times featuring her children — more than she had in the years prior, when faces were obscured by emojis or kept carefully out of frame.
A Californian source told The Daily Mail that Markle has been settling on her next direction, which centers on the one role she has long described as her most meaningful, that is, motherhood. "Nobody wants to pay for her kitchen tips," the source said, "but this is an area where she can find some credibility. It's not lost on anyone that she keeps posting videos of her with Lili — that's where she is going, and there is so much money in it."
It is, at the very least, slightly hypocritical, given the couple's long and vocal campaign against the harms of social media. When Australia banned social media for under-16s last year, the Sussexes released celebratory statements. When a US court recently found Meta and Google liable for one woman's social media addiction, they issued a joint response: "This verdict is a reckoning. For too long, families have paid the price for platforms built with total disregard for the children they reach."
"It's scattergun," one source said, "She is just trying anything to see what sticks." And this does not seem far-fetched. The evidence is not hard to find. In recent months alone, she has flown to Paris for a fashion show, appeared on the cover of Harper's Bazaar, made a brief return to acting, and undertaken what was widely described as a quasi-royal tour of Jordan. Her lifestyle brand, As Ever, meanwhile, has produced a near-daily stream of content — jams, teas, chocolates, and a notably expensive box of gardenia flowers.
Netflix, an early partner in the venture, has since walked away. It is against this backdrop that the couple's upcoming trip to Australia should be understood — not simply as a philanthropic visit, but as a financial one. Markle’s appearance at Her Best Life, a women-only retreat running from April 17 to 19 in Sydney, is billed as a "fireside chat." It is also, by any measure, extremely lucrative. All 300 tickets to the accompanying gala dinner at the InterContinental Sydney Hotel — priced between $2,699 and $3,199 — sold out within a week, generating roughly $750,000 for organizers.
Markle’s fee here is reported to be in the region of $250,000. Harry's engagement is relatively less impressive. He is scheduled to appear at the InterEdge Summit in Melbourne on April 15 and 16, a for-profit symposium on workplace wellbeing. Despite being on sale for nearly a month, the event has yet to sell out — prompting organizers to introduce a new, cheaper ticket tier. The Prince's negotiated fee is estimated at around $50,000, regardless of attendance. The Daily Mail wryly noted, he has gone from being Prince William's spare to, in commercial terms at least, something of a spare for his wife.
The financial reality of the trip is hard to separate from its stated purpose. A source close to the couple pushed back against what they called a tide of misinformation, insisting the visit was straightforwardly about work and charity. "They could just as easily get paid and head straight back to California," the source said. "It's an irrational reaction to criticize a couple who just want to support some of the charitable causes close to them. God forbid they try to do any good in a world that could, frankly, use a little more Harry and Meghan, and a little less sniping from royal commentators."
