Sussex marriage: Vague comments about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's new dynamic spark big questions

It seems the ex-Duke and Duchess of Sussex are all about dividing and conquering these days, with the new tactic of separating to follow their endeavours raising eyebrows among royal watchers.

While one royal insider claims worries about the marriage are “highly exaggerated”, their remarks have done nothing but raise fresh questions.

Just this month, while Prince Harry mingled with the folks working at his charity Sentebale in Lesotho, Africa, Meghan Markle was busy across the Atlantic in California launching a new Netflix show and a lifestyle brand, and caring for their children Archie, five, and Lilibet, three.

It is a noticeable shift from the double-act the couple have performed since they stepped down from royal duties for a more ‘normal’ life in 2020.

Harry and Meghan have been practically attached at the hip touring and launching endeavour after endeavour from their Montecito manor.

Until recent weeks, when the pair seemed to take a different approach that has royal watchers scratching their heads.

A friend recently told PEOPLE magazine the world was seeing Harry and Meghan shift their public lives to pursue their own interests.

Harry is digging deep into his array of charitable patronages, many of which he can now jaunt around the globe for in-person events after Covid restrictions were lifted. Just in the last month, he has jetted off to New York, London, and Lesotho for on-stage talks and meetings for his myriad of causes.

Meanwhile, Meghan is in her entrepreneurial era, gearing up to launch her Goop-but-for-homewares lifestyle brand American Riviera Orchard and release a new undisclosed Netflix program.

It is a far cry from Meghan’s claim to The Cut in 2022 that “We always move together”. But the aforementioned friend as well as other royal insiders have told reporters there’s nothing to see here.

“It’s clear that a twin-track approach is evolving,” that friend told PEOPLE magazine

But that does not mean the couple has forgotten their “cause-driven” joint projects, the friend insists.

Archewell Foundation is still going strong, despite a momentary administrative hiccup earlier this year. Harry and Megs also recently launched The Parents Network, an initiative to support families impacted by online harm, and attended the opening of a local bookstore in Montecito.

And need we forget the rapturous success of their recent tours of Colombia and Nigeria.

A royal insider told PEOPLE the ex-royals had simply “hit their stride as individuals — not just as a couple”.

“What we are seeing is a functional and healthy relationship with two working partners, not the contrary,” the insider added.

Another royal insider, reportedly close to Harry and Meghan told the Daily Mail’s Alison Boshoff any rumours about trouble in the couple’s marriage is “highly exaggerated”.

However, the two words haven’t set the record straight and have instead raised more questions about what is going on with their marriage.

News.com.au’s Daniele Elser says one insider claiming the rumours are “highly exaggerated” hardly wafts away the smoke royal watchers are smelling from the motley Montecito crew.

“Why such an oddly ambiguous bit of word-shaped PRing? Why not take the opportunity to, once and for all, really quash the rumours and put to bed all the speculation?” Elser wrote.

“Instead, we are left to guess and to stab about in the dark about what ‘highly exaggerated’ might mean.”

While many will groan and say Harry and Megs are damned if they do and damned if they don’t — the insider who spoke to PEOPLE magazine said as much — the questions are hard to avoid when they’ve made their fairytale love story such a core to their brand.

They could not have been more literal about their mutual ‘we saved each other’ story arc. She fell in love with a literal prince. This refreshingly normal American freed the privileged prince from his ivory tower.

Meghan even likened her struggle within the royal ‘Firm’ to that of The Little Mermaid in the couple’s infamous interview with Oprah in 2021: “She [Ariel, the fictional mermaid] falls in love with the prince and because of that she loses her voice ...But in the end, she gets her voice back.”

Now, like any other influencer couple whose coupledom is the crux of their stardom, the public feels a right to know the details of the product they’ve bought. As stakeholders, we’re only human to pick at the perceived cracks.

Call it what you want: tall poppy syndrome, a sick, wishful sense of schadenfreude.

And yet, the more anonymous friends insist “what we are seeing is a functional and healthy relationship with two working partners, not the contrary,” the less we are likely to believe it.

But if fictional characters are the best way to get a point across to these royals, maybe they’d appreciate the words of a fictional Shakespearean leading lady: The lady doth protest too much, methinks.