Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are facing down rumors of a divorce as they navigate their post-royal lives in California.
The couple stepped back from their public duties in 2020 but have struggled to find their professional footing since then. An 8,000-word article in Vanity Fair only added to their woes, with sources saying the pair found the claims in the story "distressing."
The story, titled "American Hustle," paints an unflattering picture of the Sussexes since they moved to Los Angeles.
"I still think they're the most entitled, disingenuous people on the planet," one Montecito neighbor said of the couple.
"They moved away from England to get away from the scrutiny of the press, and all they do is try and get in the press in the United States."
While Harry and Megham might desire publicity, the reports in Vanity Fair's article have reportedly troubled the couple.
Perhaps the most shocking claim is that Markle's team gauged interest in a "post-divorce" book to a publisher a few years ago. Markle was previously married, but the hypothetical book would have been about a split from Harry.
"This book—this notion of a book, really—might center on a post-Harry divorce. Not that there was actually one in the works! Just...if this a priori divorce ever came to be, would this publisher theoretically be interested in a book that took place in its aftermath?"
The divorce claim was just one part of the bruising story, which paints Markle as a demanding boss and second mother to her husband, who lost his mother Princess Diana in a car crash.
Harry and Meghan find the claims in the story "distressing," the Times reported, although they have not publicly said anything. A source close to Markle dismissed the divorce rumors as unfounded, saying, "If that's true to any degree, she would have been approached and not vice versa."
Harry and Meghan have pursued increasingly separate professional lives, driving speculation of a divorce that has dogged them for some time.
Prince Harry had a sarcastic response to the speculation in a New York Times interview last month.
"Apparently we've bought or moved house maybe 10 or 12 times and we've apparently divorced maybe 10 or 12 times as well," he said, dismissing the tabloid reports.
"So, it's just like 'what?' So, it's hard to keep up with but that's why you just sort of ignore it."
