King Charles Can Put His Painting on a £1,350 Burberry Jumper, but Meghan Is Accused of “Cashing In”

The British press has spent years treating Prince Harry and Meghan Sussex’s commercial work as something suspect, even though the couple are no longer working royals and are expected to support themselves.

Then along comes King Charles with a £1,350 Burberry jumper and £375 silk scarf featuring his own watercolour, and the tone suddenly becomes light, stylish and celebratory.

That contrast is the point. Royal identity has long helped sell products. The difference is that when Charles does it, the coverage frames it as heritage, craftsmanship and collaboration. When Harry and Meghan do it, the language shifts to “cashing in,” exploiting titles and commercialising the monarchy.

The products may differ. The charitable structures may differ. But the press framing is remarkably consistent in one respect: royal commerce is respectable until the Sussexes are the ones doing it.

Charles Has Been Selling Royal-Adjacent Products for Years

The Burberry partnership is not even new territory. This is the fifth Highgrove x Burberry collection, and the latest range features Charles’s own watercolour of Birkhall, his Scottish home.

You can currently buy the Birkhall wool sweater for £1,350 or the silk scarf for £375. Burberry explicitly markets the collection around “His Majesty The King” and his artwork.  

And yet the mainstream coverage has been notably free of the moral panic that so often accompanies Harry and Meghan’s commercial ventures.

This double standard was being called out years ago. Royal commentator Clive Irving described the treatment of Harry and Meghan as an “atrocious act of hypocrisy,” noting that Charles had already built a serious commercial operation through the Duchy brand long before Sussex Royal became controversial.  

[I]t’s been an atrocious act of hypocrisy … to [take the view] that it wasn’t right for them to use a brand, Sussex Royal, to monetise the royal name, because [Prince] Charles was the first person ever to do that in a serious way, with the Duchy brand of grocery items. … It never seemed to strike him or anybody else in the Royal Family that it was hypocritical to attack Meghan and Harry for wanting to do their own brand, and in their case not to sell groceries but to do good work”

Clive Irving, speaking to Vanity Fair, January 2021.

That is the part people keep pretending not to understand. The issue was never really that royals should not be associated with products. Charles has been doing that for decades. It only becomes grubby when Harry and Meghan do it.

Meghan’s Products Get Put on Trial

Meghan launches jam, tea or chocolate and suddenly we need a national debate about greed, class and whether she is exploiting royal connections.

Her £112 As Ever chocolate advent calendar became a moral crisis for some commentators and even attracted criticism from clergy.

Meanwhile, Charles’s £1,350 jumper inspired headlines about his “collab” with Burberry. People who thought Meghan putting her Montecito home on an advent calendar was tacky might also want to explain why Birkhall on a luxury sweater is apparently tasteful heritage branding.

You cannot really have it both ways. Either using a famous residence and a famous name to sell products is inherently vulgar, or it is not. And if Harry and Meghan are no longer working royals and are expected to fund their own lives independently, what exactly are they supposed to do? Not make money because people know who they are? That is not financial independence. That is a trap.

Even Meghan’s Charity Gets Audited

The double standard becomes even more obvious when money is going out, not coming in. Earlier this month, Meghan announced that net proceeds from a day of As Ever jam and tea sales would support the Malala Fund and its work for girls’ education.  

The exact amount was not publicly disclosed.

So what did the Daily Mail do?

It ran: “How much Meghan REALLY gave Malala Yousafzai… ALISON BOSHOFF estimates modest amount donated — and it’s less than her trousers and top!”

The newspaper did not know how much the one-day contribution ultimately amounted to. It estimated the figure itself, called that estimate ‘modest’ and compared it with the cost of Meghan’s outfit.

Now look at how working royals are treated. LBC ran the school’s description of William and Kate’s undisclosed gift as an ‘incredibly generous’ donation. The amount was not given. The school called it generous, and the coverage accepted that description.   Charles likewise regularly receives warm coverage for charitable gestures where no exact personal sum appears in the headline.

Meghan apparently does not get that benefit of the doubt. Her contribution has to be reverse-engineered, priced up and judged against her trousers. And when people point out the misogynoir in that pattern, the response is often to accuse them of “race-baiting” rather than engage with the difference in treatment.

The contradiction becomes even harder to ignore when members of the extended Royal Family have long used their royal titles while pursuing commercial work. Princess Michael of Kent has published books and undertaken paid professional work under her royal title without anything like the sustained outrage directed at Harry and Meghan.

The Sussexes do not use their HRH styles commercially, yet they are repeatedly pilloried for supposedly exploiting royal status simply because the public knows who they are. The rules are not just inconsistent; they appear to tighten considerably when Meghan is the one earning money.

The Rules Keep Moving

No one needs to attack Charles for the Burberry collaboration. If a £1,350 jumper helps fund The King’s Foundation, fine. Buy three.

The hypocrisy lies in pretending there is some consistent principle at work. Charles can attach his artwork, his home and his royal identity to commercial products and receive cheerful lifestyle coverage. William and Kate can make an undisclosed donation and be called “incredibly generous.”

Meghan can run the private business she is expected to support herself with and get accused of “cashing in.” Then she can donate from that business and still be accused of not giving enough.

The press did not suddenly discover a principled objection to royal branding when Harry and Meghan stepped back. It had spent years treating commercial ventures by Charles and other royals as perfectly respectable. The hostility arrived when Meghan became the person doing it outside palace control.

Since then, the same basic activities such as selling products, using a famous name, publishing books, doing paid work, and making charitable donations have been framed as tasteful, dutiful or entrepreneurial when working and fringe royals do them, but as “cashing in” when Harry and Meghan do. Whatever the reason, the pattern is hard to miss: the rules did not change for royalty in general. They changed for the Sussexes.