Not just Indian techies, why the American dream died for Harry and Meghan | World News

When they moved to the US, it was the peak of the pandemic streaming boom that convinced Netflix and Spotify to part with huge amounts of dough for a side character in Suits and the Spare of British royalty. But a lot can change in six years, and most non-royal-related endeavours disappeared without a trace.Their production company crashed. Netflix refused to renew the deal. The Spotify deal failed to produce enough content. The not-for-profit focusing on online bullying had to close down.Perhaps that’s because the Sussexes forgot one tiny fact. Beyond the fact that Harry was born with a silver suppository, they had little to offer to the entertainment industry.Netflix, Spotify and all the other proud totems of modern capitalism are barely a decade or two old: the love children of autistic tech geniuses and the peculiar state of the global economy, where one doesn’t need to sail the seven seas with opium to colonise hearts and minds. It can be done via a simple screen, growing exponentially and without ever owning any actual product.The British monarchy, on the other hand, predates the Industrial Revolution. It’s older than Magna Carta, the UK Parliament and modern Britain itself.The English Crown is approximately 1,100 years old, barring an 11-year intervention that was so off-putting that the Brits immediately put a king in charge.It has survived peasant revolutions, plagues and Lord Protectors. Even as monarchs’ heads rolled across Europe for daring to suggest a breadless diet or for listening to a Siberian peasant who inspired a fantastic fast dance beat centuries later, the British monarchy adjusted to ensure that it would not fall by the wayside. Karl Marx might have written the bible of communism in the UK, but the Brits rejected that revolution as it co-opted the good bits. When their German-sounding name, Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, became a tad too uncomfortable during World War I, they switched to the more British-sounding Windsor.We are talking about a king who created an alternative church just because the Pope wouldn’t give him a divorce.For all the mockery and admonishment of Albion these days, the British remain a remarkable race, one that once ruled over an Empire so vast that the sun never set on it. The Crown led that Empire and somehow still has a PR game so good that everyone forgets the atrocities of said Empire. It was not going to be felled by a side actor from Suits who seemed to think that her star shone brighter when, in reality, it was just a smattering reflection of being associated with the Crown.The Sussexes’ fate is also a reflection of the changing times.When the Sussexes set off for the New World in 2021, America was absolutely peak Woke, having voted out MAGA. Five years later, that movement has as much appeal as a pork chop in a vegan household.But there’s something oddly satisfying about seeing erstwhile members of the royal family see their American Dream die in the same way as that of their formerly colonised peoples.Since Trump came to power, the various vacillations of American immigration policy have killed the American Dream for many Indians and Indian Americans, with the H-1B lottery becoming tougher, green-card queues becoming longer than ration lines in the Soviet Union and uncertainty about one’s future, where a routine trip home can leave one stranded outside the country and the life that one built. Even getting into American universities is a costlier affair. Give me your wretched masses only if they are willing to pay through their noses.Harry and Meghan found a grander version of the same discovery, where America once looked like the land of untold riches but now resembles a boulevard of broken Netflix and Spotify deals.The UK that awaits the Sussexes is hardly a triumphant restoration like the one that greeted Charles II post-Cromwell. The Sussexes will live privately and have to figure out how to pay their rent. The King won’t even give an allowance the way he does to the disgraced Prince Andrew, and their popularity is hitting rock bottom.The next in line, William, remains estranged, and Charles, while happy to spend time with his son and grandchildren, has no desire to bring them into the royal fold. The tabloid press remains hostile, and Harry, along with a few others, will have to cough up nearly £10 million to the Daily Mail’s publisher after losing a legal case. The late Queen Elizabeth II’s banishment of the “half-in, half-out” rule, under which Harry and Meghan wanted to divide their time between Britain and America, continue to retain their royal patronages and earn a private income from commercial ventures, remains in force.British history has previously seen rival courts, from Charles II’s court in exile during Cromwell’s rule to the Jacobites challenging the Hanoverians and Frederick, Prince of Wales, gathering the opposition at Leicester House. It’s unlikely that there will be a Sussex court to rival Windsor. Neither of them possesses a claim to the throne or a political faction that could sustain one.Their entire claim to fame was simply the institution Harry was born into.So the Indian techie, the British prodigal son and his American duchess must now come to terms with the same abject conclusion: their adventure to cross oceans, based on their surefooted belief that their talent, ambition and lucrative skills would purchase permanence, was ill-thought-out. Both discovered that America’s lure lasts only as long as the visa, employer or streaming deal that underwrites it. In fact, the Indian techie returning home might actually have a better deal, given that India is now a bigger economy than the UK and Indian parents don’t keep quite such a stiff upper lip about prodigal children returning.Netflix deals come and go. The British monarchy is forever. Probably.