THE Duke and Duchess of Sussex are the subject of a new biography called Finding Freedom (the couple deny cooperation, yet BetFred wouldn’t give odds against that claim carrying weight).

However, the contents of the book are hugely important. The loud and very clear, critical voice which is so supportive of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle almost amounts to a de facto claim for the end of the monarchy.

The Sussexes have set themselves up as dissident voices, complaining from the side of their Los Angeles' mansion’s swimming pool about how forces within the Palace have failed to move with the times. The book takes shots at the Palace Old Guard, describing them as untrustworthy ‘vipers’.

It talks of the alienation of Prince Harry and his wife. And it underlines the difference in approaches to ruling the princes have, a great divide between William and Harry that looks irreparable.

One Palace source said yesterday in a broadsheet newspaper: “As long as it remains like this it does not bode well for the institution.”

The series of complaints made on behalf of H&M may seem trivial; it argues courtiers at the Palace to be little sniffy and fixed on protocol. (What did the couple expect to be moving into –the Iona Community?)

It suggests Prince Harry and the Duchess of Sussex were upset their photograph was not on the Queen’s desk for the Christmas TV address. What did they expect from a woman unburdened by sentimentality, who frowned upon Princess Diana’s keenness to look after her own children? Why would she not be upset when her grandson gave up on the Firm and took off to Tinseltown?

It points out that Prince Charles, too, appears to put the House of Windsor first. He was said to be "crushed" when Harry confirmed Meghan was his girlfriend, because it overshadowed an official tour of the Middle East in 2016.

But in ‘cooperating?’ with the contentions in the book, the Sussexes are not only saying we don’t like the Monarchy – but that the Monarchy doesn’t hold up any longer.

As a result, the Royal Family is being spotlighted in the way it was when Princess Diana used writer Andrew Morton to mump her gums. The public are again faced with reassessing an organisation that can’t keep a civil tongue its head.

At the beginning of the year a new poll commissioned by a newspaper highly supportive of the monarchy revealed that just 48 per cent of young people believed in a future royal family.

What will that figure be now that the brother princes aren’t even on nodding terms?

There are also strong hints of racism at work behind the Buck Palace walls. Now, this may be a nonsense. It could very well be that the Palace officials, staff, certain members of the Royal Family didn’t take to Meghan Markle because they figured her to be a power-hungry actress determined to play a starring role – yet found herself cast in the supporting role to Kate Middleton. (Constitutionally, that is her fate.)

But if there is racism, that suggests the monarchy to be truly part of an era which the modern world has no time for. And the future looks at least shaky. When the Queen dies (she is now 94 and her steadying hand is losing its grip), it’s odds-on William will be king and Prince Harry will continue to stand outside his window figuratively flicking V signs. And we’ll see it all played out, thanks to the Sussexes talent/need for media coverage.

There is also the Prince Andrew factor, a man whom the FBI are desperate to speak to about his connection with Jeffrey Epstein, a story that’s to set to run longer than the box set of The Crown.

But all this negative publicity is especially dangerous right now in a country headed for financial destitution with an expected 3.5m unemployed.

Prince Philip had a tough old time of it when his wife became Queen in 1952 from the Palace Old Guard. As his cousin put it, “They were beastly to him.”

But this isn’t 1952. This is a time of freelancers on Universal Credit and care workers working for buttons and soul-destroying foodbanks and young people desperate to land work of any type.

We shouldn’t be at all surprised therefore if the public become rather more angry than "beastly" and wonder why we continue to tolerate the Royal Family, (H&M are said to be worth £25m) who have come to represent bitterness, arrogance and ingratitude.

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