Fun-loving, popular and living the life Harry and Meghan turned their backs on: Inside story of royal couple who are model of what Sussexes could have been – and the revealing details that show just what they have lost: ANGELA MOLLARD

This week marks five years since Megxit, the infamous moment when the Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced they were leaving the royal family behind for a life of freedom.

They planned to pursue exciting new work opportunities, find fans further afield and enjoy a happiness that had eluded them as senior members of The Firm.

So it must be somewhat hurtful for Harry and Meghan, as they continue to struggle to make their mark in America, to see another royal couple living the life that continues to elude them.

Mike and Zara Tindall, daughter of Princess Anne and granddaughter of Queen Elizabeth II, are an example of what the couple could have been: fun-loving, easy-going and immensely popular.

And as they dive into their annual summer season Down Under, the Tindalls make combining purposeful effort with a good time seem effortless.

They are worshiped in both hemispheres for their warmth and down-to-earth attitude. They are not quite what we expect from royalty, but exactly what the institution needs.

In Australia for the annual equestrian event, the Magic Millions Carnival, where both are ambassadors – Zara joins in and Mike helps judge karaoke and compering – they are a couple who have cleverly designed a life that spans palaces and beaches , monarchy and friends .

The Tindalls are proof that you can be both royal and ‘normal’. Taking carefree selfies with admirers at the Pacific Fair Magic Millions Polo event, Zara, 43, and her husband, 46, are a cheerful antidote to the Sussexes.

It’s worth noting that Zara has also become something of a fashion icon on this journey, combining style with a neat royal nod to her hosts by stepping out on Sunday in a summer midi dress from Australian designer Leo Lin, and a design with black lace with flowers. also from the Sydney-based label, during the Racing Women Awards evening on Friday.

While Meghan, 43, returns to her role as a lifestyle influencer with carefully curated Instagram posts promoting With Love, Meghan – her new Netflix show straight out of the traditional women’s playbook – Harry, 40, appears to be filling his days with lawsuits and surfing.

How much easier their lives would have been if they had chosen a quiet, yet royal-adjacent life like that of the Tindalls.

Before their trip to Oz, the Tindalls spent Christmas Day at church in Sandringham with the King, Queen, William and Kate. This week they’re hanging out on the Gold Coast with the likes of Thor actor Chris Hemsworth and his wife, Spanish model and actress Elsa Pataky, who are also Magic Millions ambassadors, plus rugby league legend Billy Slater and his wife Nicola.

The friendships are genuine; Pataky told me recently that they had enjoyed family meals together at the Hemsworth home in Byron Bay, in addition to trips to Sea World and Wet’n’Wild, a water-themed park where fellow visitors were no doubt in attendance. amused to see a Hollywood actor and King Charles’ eldest niece, who is 21st in line to the throne, together in the slides.

It undoubtedly helps strengthen friendships that the couple’s children are the same age: Hemsworth and Pataky have 10-year-old twins and a 12-year-old daughter.

Pataky, who has visited the Tindalls at their home in the Cotswolds, revealed that the friends’ WhatsApp group pings regularly, long after their Magic Millions ambassador duties have been fulfilled.

The Tindalls enjoy perhaps the best life of anyone in the royal family and it is exactly the model Harry and Meghan could have come up with if they had negotiated Megxit with more care and diplomacy.

Unlike the Tindalls, who have a happy relationship with Princess Anne, Harry and Meghan have little or no relationship with their respective fathers. Their children are denied the company of some of their cousins, they are unable to retain several staff members for extended periods of time, and the new year begins with yet another lawsuit over the Duke.

Even Meghan’s new Netflix series, due out on January 15, seems to many to be a highly contrived facsimile of territory already covered by Gwyneth Paltrow and Martha Stewart.

If the goal isn’t perfection, as Meghan’s voiceover in the With Love, Meghan trailer proclaims, why did she have to do a second take of her first Instagram post, in which she humorously showed herself writing “2025” in the sand wrote?

Conversely, the easy-going Tindalls could prove to be the ideal Commonwealth ambassadors for a future King William. Ironically, the Sussexes were offered the roles of president and vice-president of The Queen’s Commonwealth Trust before stepping away from their roles as working members of the royal family.

But if they had dealt with their apparent unhappiness with a more considered and collegial approach, there is a good chance that the wise late monarch could have found a way for them to enjoy a life like the Tindalls – something that the half-in, half -out-role approximated. they had initially proposed.

However, their sensitivity and urgency did not allow room or time to tailor a new arrangement that could have combined their desire for privacy and independent work with a warm relationship with the royal family.

Of course, the Tindalls have no official royal titles, nor do they officially represent Britain in Australia. Yet they have created a role for themselves that makes good use of their public popularity for the benefit of the monarchy, while maintaining their status as a private family.

Last year they came to support Prince William at a garden party at Buckingham Palace, when the Princess of Wales was unable to attend due to her cancer treatment.

Meanwhile, their children, Mia, ten, Lena, six, and Lucas, three, clearly have a close and easy relationship with their cousins ​​George, 11, Charlotte, nine, and Louis, six.

Furthermore, the Tindalls enjoy a fun family life, great friends and a portfolio career that allows them to work on everything from podcasts to assignments abroad.

As Zara told the Australian Financial Review last month, they love their annual visits to Australia and the country is particularly meaningful to the couple as it is where they met in 2003 following rugby union star Mike’s victorious entry at the World Cup.

She revealed the couple have a photo of the Manly Wharf Bar where they met on the wall of their Gloucestershire home and said: ‘Australia is a very special place to us. We love the lifestyle and the weather is obviously incredible. It’s very relaxed. We have a lot of friends there.’

Pataky confirms that the Magic Millions ambassadors are like a ‘big family’.

As she told me, ‘We eat and have the best time. Zara and Mike brought their children to our home. We have so many pets and their daughter Lena fell in love with our bearded dragon lizard. When they got back to England they had to buy her one.”

With his keen interest in polo, there’s a good chance that Prince Harry could have been a contender for a Magic Millions ambassadorship of his own. Instead, he may be watching with envy as his cousin and her husband have fun times with his old friend, Argentinian model and polo player Nacho Figueras, who was also on the Gold Coast this weekend.

The fact is that Harry, a rugby enthusiast with a keen sense of humour, always shared a natural camaraderie with Mike Tindall, who took the nation by storm when he appeared on I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here in his budgie smugglers in 2022. Tindall later launched his own line of the famous swimwear, with profits donated to Cure Parkinson (his father Philip was diagnosed with the disease in 2003).

Zara, meanwhile, combines her equestrian ambitions – she hasn’t ruled out competing in the 2032 Brisbane Olympics – with motherhood and causes close to her heart, including racehorse retraining and Magic Millions Racing Women Initiative, designed to get more women into the industry. .

Katie Page, who owns the equestrian carnival with her husband Gerry Harvey, is a big fan of the King’s niece, having hired her as an ambassador in 2012. Mike joined as an ambassador in 2016. As Page says, Zara is a dream to work with.

“I’ve watched her with people and nothing is too much trouble,” she says. “She’s so generous with her time, and when she’s there, everyone wants to say hi.”

In fact, exactly the kind of easy-going popularity that Harry and Meghan long for.