RICHARD EDEN: Sussexes’ Portugal pad may assist set up rival courtroom
When she left Britain in 2020, the Duchess of Sussex welled up during a ‘bittersweet’ farewell to royal staff.
My colleague Bryony Gordon, who was with Meghan and Prince Harry that day, said the former actress appeared to be ‘quietly devastated’ and had tears in her eyes at her last private function at Buckingham Palace.
At the time, I wondered if we would ever see Meghan again in this country. Now, it would appear that she has found a way of keeping a foothold in Europe without actually having to set foot in Britain, where she is becoming increasingly disliked with every bitter utterance she makes against the Royal Family.
As I revealed in today’s Daily Mail, the Duke and Duchess have bought a property on the coast in Portugal. The purchase may have allowed the couple to acquire a so-called Golden Visa, under which they would have visa-free access to the European Union’s Schengen area.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, pictured in Colombia in August, have bought a property on the coast in Portugal
This could have been a major attraction to Meghan, who is a US citizen, where the property is concerned. When the couple got engaged in November 2017, Kensington Palace said Meghan would apply for British citizenship in due course, with a spokesman confirming that ‘she will go through the process [which] takes a number of years’.
However, she eventually abandoned her bid to become a British citizen after she and her husband left the country in March 2020, less than two years after their wedding.
Acquiring a Golden Visa would help Meghan as she and her husband develop their plans to become the ‘rival royals’ across the water, enabling them to travel easily through European countries. We have already seen them undertake ‘quasi royal’ tours of Nigeria and Colombia, with more overseas trips planned.
And it may be that Harry’s cousin Princess Eugenie and her husband, Jack Brooksbank, who also own a Portuguese property, join their rival-royal court. The Brooksbanks live in the CostaTerra Golf and Ocean Club, a luxury development of 300 properties by the sea in Melides, south of the Portuguese capital, Lisbon.
Brooksbank, 38, works in marketing and sales for CostaTerra. He, Eugenie, 34, and their two sons, August, three, and Ernest, 16 months, split their time between Portugal and London.
The couple have remained remarkably close to Harry and Meghan. After the Sussexes moved to North America and quit royal duties in 2020, their British home, Frogmore Cottage was leased to Eugenie and Brooksbank until 2022.
Portugal fans Eugenie with husband Jack Brooksbank and sons August and baby Ernest
The golden sands stretch for miles along Portugal’s unspoilt coastline
Prince Andrew’s daughter and her husband also visited them at their home in Montecito, California, and featured in their 2022 Netflix ‘docu-series’ Harry & Meghan.
Despite being born five years apart, Harry and Eugenie often spent time together as children thanks to the friendship between their mothers, Princess Diana and Sarah Ferguson, who would pack up the children for joint family holidays.
Eugenie was the only royal to appear in Meghan’s personal collection of photos which were displayed in the Netflix documentary.
In that series, the Sussexes explained how they partied with Eugenie and Brooksbank the night before their romance was made public.
Harry received a call in October 2016 from his communications secretary Jason Knauf, who informed him that news of his new relationship had reached the Press.
Frogmore Cottage was leased to Eugenie and Brooksbank until 2022
Meghan recalled saying: ‘Well, if it’s going to come out tomorrow, let’s go and have fun tonight.’
Harry told viewers: ‘We went to this Halloween party together, where we could be completely dressed up and no one would know. I had a bandana and goggles on.’
Sharing photos from their night out, Meghan said: ‘His cousin Eugenie and her boyfriend of the time, Jack, and my friend Markus [Anderson] were there, too. It was so great. Just silly fun.’
Meghan later told chat show host Ellen DeGeneres: ‘It was a post-apocalypse theme, so we had all this very bizarre costuming on, and we were able to just have one fun final night out.’
With the Sussexes now owning a home in Portugal, too, they can look forward to more amusing nights out with Eugenie and Jack, the only members of the Royal Family to whom they remain close.
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