Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's Vanity Fair Cover

by the numbers

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle unwittingly graced the cover of Vanity Fair’s 92-page February 2025 issue, a thin magazine by any standard that has sold more and been searched more online than the publication’s “Hollywood” issue, the magazine’s best-selling issue every year. While the Murdoch-owned New York Post was quick to label it a hit piece, and the Daily Mail called it a “fall from grace,” with an article titled “How America turned their backs on Prince Harry and Meghan Markle,” the numbers may reveal something different.

Has Vanity Fair found its new Princess Diana? Was the article written by Anna Peele a report or a hit piece meant to mold the public’s perception? As Harry and Meghan get ready to embark on one of the most important events on their calendar, The Invictus Games, you be the judge.

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The 12-page piece, or approximately 14% of the issue, opens describing their Montecito home $14.65 M price tag included ( have you ever seen the price of a real estate asset reported on so adamantly as this one ?) and the Sandringham Summit or what the author calls the “failed parley”.

“Over many months, Vanity Fair spoke to dozens of people who have worked with or lived alongside the couple to understand the impact that they’ve had on their new coastal Community ( Champagne Problems), the challenges of enacting the ambitions ( not aspirations? not goals?) of two first-time CEO’s, and how their experience with the monarchy foreshadowed some of their current difficulties”

Out of the dozens of people or approximately 32, only three (3) are mentioned by name. The article has three named sources. Some of the unnamed sources are labeled as follows :

1- “ A Montecitan” - the article then states that the Montecitan has never seen or met the couple.

2- “says someone inside the couple’s circle” - this “person” is mentioned five times

3- “says one person that worked in media projects” - this unnamed source is mentioned seven times

4- “one former Spotify employee” - mentioned six times

5-” other sources”

6-”one of the people who spoke to Vanity Fair for the article”

7 - “the source who is also a person of color”