It’s unlikely that Marshall McLuhan was thinking of the British press’s deranged relationship with the royal family when he made his famous declaration that the medium is the message, but the response to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s announcement certainly bore out his theory. “What lies behind Harry and Meghan’s SHOCK decision? We turn to our 18 columnists who have spent the past three years slagging them off every week,” was, in spirit, the headline on most rightwing British newspapers today.

For truly exclusive insight into Harry and Meghan’s thinking, the Daily Mail need not have looked any further than its website’s front page on Thursday morning: the site ran no fewer than 14 stories tearing into the couple. The same commentators who sneered at Meghan for being dazzled by royalty now condemn her for wanting to leave it. Anyone who has been lucky enough to avoid being in an abusive relationship can, excitingly, experience that dynamic for themselves via the media’s reaction to Harry and Meghan. Thursday’s front pages were the newspaper equivalent of an abusive husband expressing shock that his wife has finally left him.

And, speaking of abusive relationships, there was the inevitable input from Meghan’s eternally available father, Thomas, who has truly shown his capacity for paternal love by regularly denigrating his daughter to the international press. When Meghan sent him a letter in August 2018 telling him he had “broken her heart into a million pieces” by flogging stories about her to the media, the loving father responded by promptly handing said letter, along with other cards and baby photos of his daughter, over to the Mail.

The Mail’s columnist Piers Morgan maintained the completely sane and normal tone for which he has become known when it comes to Meghan: “Who the f**k do they think they are?” he began and escalated from there. “Nobody tells the Queen what to do,” he huffed, only to decree, sentences later: “Get rid of these whining, ego-crazed, deluded leeches, Ma’am.” Of course, Morgan’s column makes reference to the seismic, nay, legendary time he met Meghan for half a drink, an encounter that in Morgan’s mind has achieved mythic proportions, only to become symbolic to him when afterwards she, bafflingly, decided against continuing their friendship. “She’s an unsavoury, manipulative, social-climbing piece of work,” Morgan raged, displaying his usual capacity for self-awareness. Stats: Morgan has written precisely two columns on Prince Andrew’s friendship with the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. He has written so many on Meghan – who, lest we forget, committed the worse-than-paedophilia crime of not inviting Morgan to her wedding – that my browser crashed.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The front pages of British newspapers on 9 January. Photograph: Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA

The Sussexes’ problems with the British media are as well known as they are long-term, dating back to 2016 when Harry complained about the “racial undertones” in the coverage of his then new relationship with Meghan, to Meghan herself launching a legal action against the Mail last October. But it is not just the British media the Sussexes might want to keep at a distance. Let’s turn to the Windsors, shall we? As satisfying as it might be for some commentators to style Meghan as Princess Yoko who broke up the band, is it really a mystery why Harry, who, at the age of 12, was made to walk behind his mother’s coffin while watched by millions, not even allowed to hold his father’s hand, might decide, as a father now himself, that his family is a bit, well, lacking? And let’s get back to Prince Andrew. There is no doubt that Harry and Meghan’s decision has been in the pipeline for some time, but it feels significant that it comes so soon after his downfall. If Meghan felt she could do without spending her Christmasses alongside a friend of a convicted sex offender, it would take a more pie-eyed royalist than me to condemn her. Then there is Harry, watching what was ostensibly his future unfold right in front of him. Because what options are there, really, for the royal spare, other than to become an irrelevant, embarrassing bore?

The awkward irony for royalists is that, with this bid for (semi) independence, Harry and Meghan will seem to a younger generation like more appealing royal icons than a million photos of William and Kate mutely waving from a balcony. The Queen is often applauded by royalists for evolving the monarchy – well, welcome to evolution, buttercup. Some are transferring their rage at the Sussexes for not behaving as they would like into huffing about their titles, money and security. It’s quite something to see the same people who believe so deeply in the divine right of the monarch and all her descendants then express outrage at the thought of Harry and Meghan capitalising on their name in the US. Because it is absolutely fine to monetise your apparent God-given divinity, as long as it is done in a Mail-approved context? Because royalty is a totally sensible setup – but celebrity? Outrageous. If you think it is unfair that a pair of Windsors will enjoy the fruits of outrageous wealth simply because of who they are, well, allow me to introduce you to the royal family. And imagine someone in America enjoying the blessings of fame just because of their surname – who can fathom such a concept? (Surely not Morgan, who once married Paris Hilton as a stunt in Las Vegas and, when he interviewed the Kardashians on his CNN show, asked them for advice on how to bump up his Twitter followers.) Harry and Meghan won’t escape scrutiny, let alone criticism, no matter where they go, and they must know that. But that they have chosen this option, one that will result in decades of media bile being dumped on their heads, is not a reflection on them. It is a reflection on everyone else.