The following is a quick story I wrote and read out to my kids after the Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced they were stepping away from their role as senior British royals.

Once upon a time, there was a little girl named Meghan, who dreamt of becoming famous.

Meghan was barely 2 years old when her parents divorced. She lived sometimes with her mom and sometimes with her dad.

They were not rich, but one day, her dad won a lottery! He did not always make smart decisions with the money, and he sent her to a school for rich kids. Luckily, it was a good school and Meghan did well there. Her life had been unstable from moving all the time. One way she tried to feel better about it was by keeping her closet very neat and tidy. She also worked hard and tried to become the president of every school club. Through it all she kept her mind focused on one thing — becoming famous.

And she did!

Meghan worked hard and became an actress. She lived in Toronto and even became a millionaire.

Other fun things were to come her way.

Meghan met a man and they fell in love. The man, Harry, was a prince. He was no ordinary prince. He came from an old, old family of very rich kings and queens who looked nice and shiny on the outside but were gloomy on the inside; you see, they were rich but some of their gold and silver and diamonds and ivory and money had been stolen from around the world.

Meghan didn’t really care. It was Harry she loved, and he loved her. They decided to get married.

Meghan was so happy she thought she would burst. Suddenly, she spotted a smiling magic-dust fairy floating above her. She was about to shout her thanks when the fairy’s smile twisted. “Be warned!” she said in a deep, hollow voice and floated away. Meghan frowned but was undaunted. She knew how to deal with challenges, she thought to herself.

And so it was that Meghan and Harry got married in a huge ceremony that made millions of people around the world go ooh and aah, and the couple lived happily ever …

Nah, not yet.

Real stories don’t end with marriage, silly.

Also, good stories need bad people.

There were plenty of those to be found in Meghan and Harry’s story. Meghan would find that Buckingham Palace — the name of Harry’s family house in England — was a place where a small number of people lived in a large number of rooms and their doors were always closed.

When Meghan entered the palace doors, she was whisked into one of those rooms and covered in the finest clothes and jewelry and hats and watches and bags, but she lost her most important treasure: freedom.

That meant things were about to get very, very bad.

She learned that every time someone from Harry’s family went out of the palace doors, the courtiers put them in a bottle made of such thin glass that it was barely visible. When they were in the bottle, they had to walk gingerly, talk delicately, smile small, and wave occasionally. If they moved too quickly or did anything other than what the courtiers said, the glass would break. “If the glass breaks,” the courtiers said unsmilingly, “the whole palace will come crumbling down. Your majesty.”

Everyone — the queen, the prince, all the people who would be future kings and queens — dutifully obeyed the courtiers. And every time they walked out of the palace, a crowd gathered and cheered and clapped and went home to their own free lives, wishing they were princes and princesses instead.

Meghan was given the smallest bottle. She tried not to notice how while others had more room to move, she hardly had room to breathe. But there were people watching and she kept up the smiles. She smiles too much, said a few people. She closed her own car door, gasped others. She put her hand in her pocket, cried someone else. She’s not like us, hissed a fourth voice.

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So the courtiers put her in an even smaller bottle. Still she smiled.

“Smaller,” shrieked a smarmy voice.

The crowd turned their heads to see who had spoken. It was a grotesque little man named Piers Morgan. Behind him was another Piers Morgan and soon they saw a whole crowd of Piers Morgans. There were tall Piers Morgans and short Piers Morgans and skinny Piers Morgans, and Piers Morgans with hair. They all carried microphones and cameras and they were all uniformly creepy.

“She’s not one of us,” they yelled. “Smaller still.”

The courtiers put Meghan in ever-smaller bottles. And each time they did that, the Piers Morgans laughed in merriment, eyes wild with excitement. Soon she had a baby in her belly, and the bottles grew tighter. Watch us squeeze her, the Piers Morgans said.

When the baby was born, Meghan had had enough. “We’re going to throw the bottles out, Harry,” she said. He looked at her. “I agree” he said, “but won’t the palace crumble?”

“What a load of codswallop,” she said. “I’ll show you how we can be free.”

To the utter shock of everyone and the various Piers Morgans, Meghan, Harry and the baby crushed the bottles and marched out of the palace. Just like that. And the palace did not crumble.

“Stop them,” the Piers Morgans howled. “Meghan is bad, she’s unfit. And she’s NOT ONE OF US,” they yelled.

But Meghan didn’t care. Harry didn’t care. The baby certainly didn’t care.

And that was how they all flew into a Canadian sunset and lived happily ever after.

The End.