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<\/figure>\n\n\n\nThey were supposed to be beloved. When Meghan Markle and Prince Harry touched down in Australia on their 2018 royal tour, the crowds were enormous \u2014 thousands lining the streets of Sydney, cheering, weeping, holding hand-painted signs. Australia had fallen for them. Or so it seemed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Years later, everything had changed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It started with a petition. Not unusual in the age of online outrage \u2014 petitions come and go, spark briefly, and fade. But this one didn’t fade. It grew. Within 72 hours of being posted on a popular Australian political forum, the “We oppose Meghan Markle’s influence on the Royal Family” petition \u2014 quickly dubbed the “We HATE Her” petition by tabloids \u2014 had crossed 40,000 signatures. The signatories weren’t fringe provocateurs. They were everyday Australians: mothers, retirees, former monarchists, people who had once cheered at that Sydney harbour walkabout.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The reasons were layered and complicated. Many cited the Oprah interview \u2014 the claims about a royal family member questioning Archie’s skin colour, the assertion that Meghan had been denied mental health support. To some Australians, those claims felt unverifiable and incendiary. Others pointed to the Netflix documentary, the memoir Spare, the relentless drip of revelations that seemed \u2014 to critics \u2014 less like truth-telling and more like a calculated brand-building exercise. “She turned grief into a content strategy,” one commenter wrote, and the line got shared thousands of times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Harry, meanwhile, found himself in an impossible position. He had left his family, his country, his title in all but name \u2014 for her, for this life, for what he described as survival. But the backlash in Australia stung differently. This wasn’t Britain, where royalists and republicans had been fighting for decades. Australia was supposed to be different \u2014 warmer, more relaxed, more forgiving. The petition felt like a door slamming shut on a continent he’d once considered an escape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sources close to the couple described Harry as “quietly devastated.” He had hoped Australia might be a future base \u2014 a place to build something new, far from the toxicity of the British press. Those conversations, reportedly ongoing between their team and Australian cultural organisations, were quietly shelved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Legal options were briefly discussed. Could a defamation case be made around the petition’s language? Lawyers advised against it \u2014 suing 40,000 people is not a strategy, it’s a spectacle. And spectacles, their team knew, had a way of turning against Meghan in particular.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Palace watched. Quietly. Without comment. Which, in royal terms, is its own kind of statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What happens next is anyone’s guess. Exile feels too dramatic a word \u2014 they already live in Montecito, already exist outside the institution. But the dream of a soft landing in the Southern Hemisphere now looks remote. The 40,000 signatures have become a symbol: not just of Australian frustration, but of a narrative that has slipped entirely out of Meghan’s control. She came to the world as a story of hope. Somewhere between the wedding and the podcast, the story changed \u2014 and not everyone followed her version of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Harry holds her hand. The cameras still come. The petitions keep climbing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
40,000 Australians signed a petition saying they hate her \u2014 and Harry watched it happen in silence… But when the numbers kept climbing, even the Palace couldn’t look away. They were supposed to be beloved. When Meghan Markle and Prince Harry touched down in Australia on their 2018 royal tour, the crowds were enormous \u2014 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":672,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n