Grazia recently published a piece from Emily Andrews, all about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s Colombian tour. It’s been abundantly clear to me that talking points were issued about this tour, but by whom? The talking points for the British media are: why did the Sussexes go to Colombia, what is the purpose of this visit, why are Harry and Meghan acting like “royals,” and why do they insist on being so successful and famous? As you can imagine, the source of these talking points is no big mystery. I can only imagine that the palace’s royal rota Whatsapp group was quite busy in the past week. But Emily Andrews comes pretty close to admitting just that, that “the question on everyone’s lips back at Buckingham Palace is ‘why are they going?’” Almost as if she’s quoting some palace flunky.

Certainly their four-day trip, which includes tourist attractions in Cartagena, a cultural festival in Cali and social initiatives in Bogota, will offer colourful pictures and the opportunity for Meghan to use her fluent Spanish. But the question on everyone’s lips back at Buckingham Palace is ‘why are they going?’

The Sussexes and their spotlight will not be there on behalf of the British Government. They are not working members of the Royal family, they are not understood to be representing a particular charity (aside from their own non-profit The Archewell Foundation), nor do they have any public history or heritage in the country.

When they visited Nigeria in May, the focus was the Invictus Games, Harry’s tournament for service personnel and veterans which is about to celebrate its tenth year. Although they will meet the Colombian Invictus team, the reasoning for visiting Colombia is more opaque, aside from that they were invited by the country’s vice president Francia Marquez.

For the Colombian government, the incentive for a high-profile, high-impact visit from international celebrities is clear. The country will gain a whole new audience of potential tourists from photographs of ex-royals smiling at government-organised engagements, dancing at music festivals, and banging the drum for the vice president’s key causes.

Yet for the Sussexes, it is also somewhat risky. They don’t have the guard rails of Foreign Office advisers, whose briefings and guidance underpin all royal tours, nor diplomatic protection. And Harry has just lost his chief of staff Josh Kettler, who was expected to be an instrumental strategic ‘guide’ for the tour and for the much touted ‘next phase’ of the prince’s career, but suddenly quit after just three months (Team Sussex maintain he left by ‘mutual consent’ after a ‘trial phase’).

For many Colombians, this ‘royal visit’ is viewed as little more than a cynical attempt by a failing government to use the glamorous couple as ‘political pawns’ to divert attention from a series of corruption scandals.

These tours offer Harry and Meghan another initiative to highlight: themselves. Earlier this year Harry suggested to his father that he could ‘help out’ with royal duties while Charles and the Princess of Wales were undergoing treatment for cancer. This was rejected by Buckingham Palace, and subsequently Windsor eyebrows were somewhat raised to see Harry and Meghan effectively carving out an international platform for themselves with these royal-type tours.

With Harry celebrating his 40th birthday next month and ongoing courtroom battles in the UK, it does feel like a pivotal time for the Sussexes in their attempts to ‘look forward’. The question, then, is what happens next? As the invitations from other countries in need of a little Sussex sparkle roll in, how will Harry and Meghan manage the risks of being ‘rogue royals’ without the safeguards of royal life? Only time will tell.

[From Grazia]

“Why are they going?” And then lists all of the stuff on the Sussexes’ agenda. This answered some of my questions, about why the BBC, Daily Mail and Telegraph were all mimicking the same criticism of “what is the purpose/why are they going” even as they all covered the multiple purposes of the tour: Invictus, Archewell, tourism, social media accountability, anti-racism work, centering Black women’s voices in society. Besides those purposes, they were literally invited by VP Francia Marquez. The Sussexes’ tour had more purpose than literally any royal tours in the past seven years. Which is why Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace were telling the rota to repeatedly claim that the Sussexes didn’t have an agenda or any business in the country.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images.