When Prince Harry and Meghan Markle stepped down as senior members of the British royal family, it came with a price. For the Duke of Sussex – who has relocated to Los Angeles with his wife and their 11-month-old son Archie – that involved giving up a role that was very dear to him, being Captain General of the Royal Marines. It’s something that author Robert Jobson believes the 35-year-old prince will “look back” and “regret.” The dad, who served in the British Army for 10 years, gave up the role after just two years, as part of the terms of his so-called Megxit deal.
“I think it’s very disappointing,” Robert tells HollywoodLife EXCLUSIVELY, before noting that Harry’s grandfather, Prince Philip, “did it for 60 odd years” after the Queen’s father, King George VI, held the position for 15 years until his 1952 death. “I think he will look back at that and regret that.” The expert believes that the duke will struggle with being away from the world that he was born into. “He has now been separated from his entire family in a degree of acrimony,” the author of The Royal Family Operations Manual says. “He [has] none of his friends over there. He’s basically isolated and the things that he loved, the military side of things… that’s been taken away from him.” “I’ve known, well enough, Harry since he was a little boy,” the Good Morning America royal contributor goes on to say, “and he loved the military since he was a little boy… I feel that he’s gonna regret this has happened.”
Prince Harry, Meghan, 38, and their son Archie relocated to Los Angeles in March (after an extended stay on Canada’s Vancouver Island) two months after announcing their decision to step back as senior royals. While returning to her hometown puts the former Suits star on more familiar territory, Robert thinks she has missed a huge opportunity to make a difference. “It was a great role that she got,” he says, “and she gave up on it too soon. The biggest role of her life and she gave up on that… She could have asked for more help, a little more time, and it would have been given to her.”
Meghan has been very candid about the difficulties she faced adjusting to royal life and press scrutiny, especially as a newlywed and a new mom. “It’s a very real thing to be going through behind the scenes,” she said during the doc, Harry & Meghan: An African Journey, which aired on ABC in October 2019. But Robert believes Meghan should have stuck it out, by taking on the role that she agreed to when she accepted Prince Harry’s marriage proposal in 2017. “It’s not a normal marriage,” he says. “It’s not like you’re marrying a bank manager. You’re marrying a prince of the realm. He’s got a job to do, which is to serve Queen and country. She knew that and she took it all on.”
“I think she’s wasted a great opportunity,” he adds. “Because I saw them in South Africa and she spoke brilliantly. She was very eloquent. She…has a sort of quality about her that I thought she could have really made a big difference in terms of diversity [and] the world stage. Much bigger impact than just being in Hollywood making money.”
