Meghan and Harry: is something unravelling behind the scenes?

So Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, is reportedly attending the Met Gala in May. Because where better to celebrate your newfound privacy and "space" than at "the Oscars of the east coast", "the Super Bowl of red-carpet events"?

What could be more perfectly suited to anyone fleeing "intense scrutiny" and "commoditisation" than a mega-bash to which anti-commodification activist Kim Kardashian once turned up dressed in a nude-effect wet-look dress?

According to sources at the weekend, Meghan is to leave Prince Harry at home for the night, so "she can establish herself once more in Hollywood", apparently attending the Met Gala with British Vogue editor Edward Enninful. This makes about as much sense as a woman who craves the quiet life asking her LA agent to find her a leading role in a superhero film, "something that pays big" - which is exactly what one newspaper claims Meghan has done.

As the Sussexes fly back to Britain to complete their final engagements as working members of the Firm – and face the royal family for the first time since The Statement, the petulant Instagram post in which they whined about being made to drop the "SussexRoyal" brand despite there being nothing legal to stop them using it – the pair may have no choice but to brazen it out.

I'm not sure the Sussexes will understand just how colossal a miscalculation that statement was. After all, you have a young man and his wife turning on a 93-year-old grandmother at one of the toughest moments of her life. You have them disregarding the pain and sadness prompted by Prince Philip's ill health, Prince Andrew's involvement with a paedophile and her beloved grandsons falling out – all because they have a brand to promote. Is there any way back from that?

Had you asked me a month ago, I would have said yes. Despite the acts of clumsiness and the missteps we've witnessed over the past two years, I would still have said yes. So they invited a bunch of A-listers they had met only once to their wedding. How many of us would do the same if we knew George and Amal would actually come? Was their dispensing of certain royal traditions really so bad? The insistence on Archie's christening remaining private and the setting up of their own "breakaway" website?

Harry has always been his own person. At this point, one could still push a convincing narrative that these two were "breathing new life" into an outdated institution.

But the precise moment the couple began to lose the public's sympathy wasn't when they chose the hospitality of a billionaire in Vancouver Island over that of the Queen at Christmas, or indeed when they decided to make the desired "break from royal duties" permanent. No – that moment can be charted back to a lament the misty-eyed Duchess of Sussex made in the ITV documentary charting the couple's African tour last year: "Not many people have asked if I'm OK."