Why Prince Harry Is Lashing Out About This Popular Media Pun

When Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announced that were stepping down from their royal duties in 2020, the press was anything but kind. Many blamed Markle for her husband's retreat from the British royal family, as well as his strained relationship with his father, Prince Charles, and his brother, Prince William. "Is it Meghan's fault? It's hard to escape the conclusion that having grown up in a country that considers the Kennedys to be aristocracy, Meghan didn't understand that being a Windsor is not like being a celebrity," wrote Virginia Blackburn in the Express.

As a result, the term "Megxit" started being used to describe the couple's decision to leave the Great Britain for the United States. The slang word is a play on the term "Brexit," which is a play on Britain and exit to refer to the United Kingdom's departure from the European Union (per Investopedia). While the Sun was the first to use the term, "Megxit" quickly gained popularity with the mainstream media, who splashed it on the covers of their magazines and newspapers as they covered the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's every move. But as Vanity Fair pointed out in 2020, the term was actually "hatched by online trolls who have long used #Megxit as a rallying cry for a campaign of hate against the duchess." 

Unfortunately, that revelation didn't do much to stop the use of the term, and now Prince Harry is speaking up about it.

Prince Harry has had enough with the term "Megxit," which he explained is "a misogynistic term that was created by a troll, amplified by world correspondents, and it grew and grew and grew onto mainstream media. But it began with a troll" (per People). The Duke of Sussex also once again compare the treatment his wife, Meghan Markle, has received from the British press to how his late mother, Princess Diana, was constantly hounded, especially in the last years of her life. "I know the story all too well. I lost my mother to this self-manufactured rabidness, and obviously I'm determined not to lose the mother to my children to the same thing," he said at Wired magazine's RE:WIRED virtual summit.

As a result, Prince Harry is lashing out at the "terrifying" spread of misinformation in the media, even going so far as saying tabloids should have a warning sticker on them, similar to the labels placed on nicotine products. "I felt it personally over the years, and I'm now watching it happen globally affecting everyone, not just America, literally everyone around the world," he said. "I learned from a very early age that the incentives of publishing are not necessarily aligned with the incentives of the truth."