The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have thrown themselves into the spotlight this year with the launch of several new business endeavours and a shake-up to their image; Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s ‘bitterness’ caused ‘severe rifts’ with Royal Family

Royal commentator Richard Fitzwilliams has described these new endeavours as not “that significant” when you “exclude the royals or issues dealing with the Royal Family.”

In February, the couple launched their new website, Sussex.com as a platform to view the duke and duchess’s work including their media productions and charity work. Later that month, Meghan made another surprise announcement with a new podcast deal with Lemonada Media after the couple’s split with Spotify. Fast forward to March and the duchess revealed a new Instagram page and website for her luxury lifestyle brand called American Riviera Orchard where it has since been found that Meghan will be selling a range of products.

Finally, the couple announced they are releasing two new series on Netflix as part of their deal with the major streaming platform. So far there has been no indication that any of these endeavours will mention the Royal Family like in their previous Netflix series, Harry’s memoir Spare and their interview with Oprah. Fitzwilliams said: “They weren’t doing anything significant before that didn’t involve trashing the Royal Family.

“They were bitter and they showed it, but that wasn’t helpful and of course that leads to rifts and severe rifts.” Harry made several claims against the royals in his tell-all memoir which caused tensions between the prince and the rest of his family. Fitzwilliams continued: “The pull of their brand when you exclude the royals or issues dealing with the Royal Family isn’t that significant so far as we can judge now.” On Monday it was reported that Meghan’s podcast has been “pushed back” due to “scheduling conflicts” between the launch of the podcast and Harry and Meghan’s two Netflix series.

Meghan’s spokesperson denied to comment, however, sources have claimed that Meghan had a list of “very high-profile guests” scheduled for her new podcast. Fitzwilliams disputed these reasonings stating: “Lemonada media are putting future podcasts on ice for a while. “The excuse is it might conflict with what’s happening with Netflix but in reality, when someone’s really big you couldn’t get enough of them.”