The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been caught out in a “toxic” situation entirely of their own making.

Timing might be everything but sometimes it is also just too entertainingly delicious for words.

Hands up who can remember in August 2019 when Prince Harry and Meghan the Duke and Duchess of Sussex got something of a press kicking for their new-found love of private jetting? (Four flights in 11 days, in fact.)

Then, in what may or may not have been a coincidence, the same week, Prince William and Kate the Prince and Princess of Wales and their children flew on a budget airline to Scotland. The blurry shots of two future Kings and a future Queen deplaning and ferrying their own hand luggage across the tarmac looking like absolute normies off on an all-inclusive Benidorm break could not have been a sharper-clawed rejoinder to the Sussexes’ Mediterranean jetsetting.

Youch.

Prince William, Prince George and Princess Charlotte departing a FlyBe flight in Scotland in 2019. Picture: Instagram
Today we’re back with another round of the ‘oh brother …’ stakes with some fresh accidental tit-for-tattery going on.

Of the two princes, one of whom bailed on Blighty because of his and his wife’s treatment at the hands of the swinish UK press, guess which one has been trailed all over Palm Beach Florida by photographers? And guess which one just managed to do something decidedly unroyal in full public view and for not a single image to appear anywhere?

I know. Such a riddle.

Specifically, Harry has been in Florida shooting his new polo series for Netflix, like a sort of Drive to Survive, I’m imagining, but with far more hay. (There’s a joke to be made here about neigh-sayers …)

On Saturday, the duke played in a charity game which was dutifully filmed by the dozen-strong crew though, per reports, he won’t actually star in the show. On the sidelines was Meghan who continues to defy the space/time/style continuum managing to look even chic-er still each time she steps out.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle being followed by a camera crew for his new Netflix documenrat on polo. Picture: MiamiPIXX/Vaem
Beyond this glam outing, the duke and duchess were papped on multiple occasions, including the couple at the Four Seasons Palm Beach, a linen-clad duchess chatting with and hugging Delfina Blaquier, wife of horsey bit of alright Nacho Figueras, and Harry doing some producing on the sidelines of another match. (You can tell because he was photographed looking intently at a playback monitor.)

The Sussexes also featured on Figueras’ Instagram account showing them at a polo dinner.

Bottom line, it’s been an all-you-can-click Harry and Meghan pic-buffet!

Meanwhile, back in the UK, the next King of Great Britain and Northern Ireland popped out for a pint.

According to Daily Mail diarist Richard Eden, William and curiously, his mother-in-law, were seen at a North Norfolk pub over the weekend. A patron told Eden: “It was all very low-key, with no great fanfare. He just walked in and through the pub. He appeared to be with Carole Middleton.”

(Kate, who is being treated for cancer, was not there so it’s sweet of the prince to spend time with his mother-in-law.)

The notable thing about this outing is not that two adults enjoyed (I’m guessing) a couple of half pints of bitter and a packet of cheese and onion chips but that not a single photo has emerged. Not a covertly snapped phone pic and not a single leering long-lensed-from-behind-a-bush shot.

Prince William enjoyed a pint in the pub over the weekend but wasn’t papped. Picture: Chris Jackson/Getty Images

He was joined by his mother-in-law Carole Middleton. Picture: Chris Jackson/Getty Images
The timing of Harry and Meghan, having left the UK to escape the fiendish clutches of the British media who had used them so ill, only to find themselves continued, relentless tabloid fodder, while at exactly the same time William has just proven he can go down his local and barely raise an eyebrow, is really something.

Sometimes the universe has a particularly wry sense of humour, no?

It has to be noted here that, contrary to popular opinion, Harry and Meghan never, ever said they escaped the UK because they wanted privacy, however the duke has repeatedly spoken about the part their relationship with the press did play in the decision.

Prince Harry filming scenes for his new Netflix show at the Royal Salute Polo Challenge in Palm Beach. Picture: MiamiPIXX/Vaem / BACKGRID
The 39-year-old duke has referred to the media as “the devil” and told Oprah Winfrey that “The clicking of cameras and the flashing of cameras makes my blood boil. It makes me angry and takes me back to what happened to my mum and my experience as a kid.”

In early 2021, Harry told James Corden that the British press “was destroying my mental health.

“I was like, this is so toxic,” he explained. “So I did what any husband and any father would do and be like I need to get my family out of here.”

But having got “out of there,” is the Sussexes’ newish ‘here’ in the United States that much better? Or peaceful?

In the last four years, Sussexes have been photographed on more occasions than can be readily counted, including at a Farmers’ Market, out to dinner, out to lunch, out to lunch, out to dinner, out to dinner, at an In and Out drive through, leaving a dentist’s office, shopping, shopping again, walking their dog at the beach, walking their dog, hiking, hiking again, walking in a car park, repeatedly getting in and out of big SUVs that would not look out of place leaving a CIA black site, at a Fourth of July parade, at another Fourth of July parade, trick-or-treating on Halloween with their kids, boarding and getting off private jets in Santa Barbara and New York, having drinks in a New York bar and leaving a New York restaurant,

There are more instances but pity my tired typing fingers.

Meghan Markle with Nacho Figueras surrounded by a film crew from Duke’s new Netflix show about the elitist sport of polo. Picture: VEM/Miamipixx / BACKGRID
There is no more acute example of what their new American lives look like in terms of the media than the chaotic scenes that unfolded in New York in May when the Sussexes said they were involved in what they called “a near catastrophic car chase at the hands of a ring of highly aggressive paparazzi”. (The New York Police Department and the city’s mayor characterised it all a bit differently.)

So too, ‘the clicking of cameras and the flashing of cameras’ makes Harry’s “blood boil” but he now has a job where … he is paid to have cameras follow him around at times?

Have Harry and Meghan really ‘found freedom’?

It all feels like a Gordian Knot of a thing. The Sussexes bailed on Blighty to escape the “toxic” media only to find themselves living in a country where the absolute freedom of the press is encoded in the national DNA and they are a valuable, saleable commodity who themselves now need to earn a crust.

And said crust cannot wholly be earned by them staying resolutely behind the high high walls of their home.

Meanwhile, a world away, a future monarch can have a quiet shandy and the world is none the wiser, aside from a four sentence diary item.

It’s all enough to drive a duke to need a drink.

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.