THE royal snub was brutal. After flying for 22 hours from London to Sydney at Prince Harry’s request, David Beckham was puzzled why the prince had not met him.

“Where is he?” David asked officials as he waited for Harry. “When will I meet him?” he kept asking.

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But the prince had had no plans to see the former England football captain, nor even of being pictured with him.

It was October 2018, and Harry was hosting the Invictus Games.

Over previous years, Harry had met David at celebrity functions and also socially.

The laddish prince enjoyed joshing with the world’s most famous footballer in a restaurant or a pub.

Since David had played a prominent role bringing the 2012 Olympics to Britain and an important part in the 2010 unsuccessful bid for the football World Cup, it seemed natural for the prince to ask David to join him at the celebrated competition for injured servicemen.

Harry’s invitation had originally been offered during his sunlit wedding in Windsor five months earlier.

As a man who loved the royals, David would never refuse such an important request.

But having flown half-way around the world, he was perplexed why officials after he arrived at the sporting venue were playing a dance to keep him happy, but away from Harry.

The reason for the distance was Meghan, the newly married Duchess of Sussex.

She wanted no competition in the media from David, and especially not from his wife, Victoria.

Meghan shouted at her staff

Meghan’s visit to Australia was her first foreign royal tour and appeared to be a huge success.

Meeting cheering crowds of admirers convinced Meghan that she was the Royal Family’s new Diana.

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The added excitement was Meghan’s announcement of her pregnancy.

But inside the Sussexes’ headquarters in Sydney, the atmosphere was miserable.

Meghan shouted at her staff and allegedly threw a cup of tea into the air.

Accused in London of bullying her staff — an accusation she has denied — both she and Harry were constantly searching the internet for hateful comments about themselves.

In her bad mood, it seemed she was not prepared to tolerate anything flattering regarding the Beckhams and the Games to appear in the media.

At the house the Beckham family had rented in North Shore, Harry’s snub was barely mentioned between David and Victoria.

David didn’t want to dwell on it. “A bit strange,” he said, but he did not call Harry.

Nevertheless, the Beckhams were perplexed by Meghan.

Ever since she had first moved into Harry’s cottage in Kensington Palace in 2017, the Beckhams had been generous towards her.

Unknown to the public, when she privately returned to Los Angeles before her marriage, she stayed in the Beckhams’ six-bedroom luxurious house in Beverly Hills.

Her excuse was to avoid the paparazzi. At no cost, all her needs were provided by the Beckhams’ staff.

If there was any suspicion that Meghan was taking advantage of her new status, the Beckhams pushed their gripe aside.

To build their relationship, Victoria had also given Meghan make-up advice soon after she moved into Kensington Palace.

In her growing fashion business, she was also marketing cosmetics and a member of her staff gave Harry’s fiancée help on facials and hairdressing.

Within weeks, The Sun reported Victoria’s help. Sensitive to the media’s probing of her turbulent past, Meghan was outraged.

Contact was made with the Beckhams.

David was embarrassed but after speaking to his wife, denied that she had leaked any information.

But Meghan still felt deeply hurt.

TV pictures of the couple arriving at St George’s Chapel for the Sussexes’ wedding showed Victoria stoney faced and David chewing gum.

They had not been invited to the wedding dinner.

A near-unforgivable insult considering all the Hollywood stars invited — and many were not friends.

But regardless of that slight, David accepted Harry’s request that he appear at the Invictus Games in Sydney.

By then, a new complaint had arisen.

Meghan wanted Victoria to supply free clothes and accessories from her expensive range.

But such requests were against the Palace’s rules.

That was the beginning of a bigger problem for both Meghan, and later Victoria.

Some years previously, as an unknown actress in Canada, Meghan had invented a successful lifestyle website called The Tig.

Among the benefits she eked from The Tig were free products from luxury brands such as Hermes in exchange for promoting their handbags on her website.

As a blatant celebrity hunter, Meghan found it tough to get freebies and fame.

But once she became a member of the Royal Family, luxury brands were expected to fall over themselves to be associated with herself, a fashionista, including Victoria.

At that stage in her business in 2017, Victoria was losing millions of pounds.

Giving expensive clothes away free was generally disallowed, and she would not want to annoy the Palace.

A frisson developed between the two women.

Yet during the ten months before the Sydney snub there was every reason for Meghan and Victoria to bond.

Both were ambitious, active professional women, and critically both were self-made.

As a fashionista, Meghan, 37, should have been fascinated by 44-year-old Victoria’s bold attempts to build a brand and a business.

They were also neighbours in Oxfordshire, close to the Soho Farmhouse retreat.

The Beckhams had bought a house while Harry rented a converted barn.

As celebrities, it would seem they had much in common.

However, while Harry and David did occasionally meet at weekends, Meghan had already, as an observer noticed, “put on airs”.

As a passionate Californian, she felt little in common with a girl from Essex.

Foolishly, she failed to see the advantage of forging a partnership with a universally admired couple.

Even before she married Harry, Meghan had little sympathy for Britain and after arriving made no concessions to bridge the cultural chasm.

Victoria’s self-mocking English humour made no sense to a woman keen to keep her past skeletons deeply buried and already planning her return to the Californian sunshine.

Another irritation was David’s friendship with Prince William.

Ever since the World Cup bid in 2010, the two had formed a good relationship, which annoyed the Sussexes, already complaining about their unequal status and wealth with the Cambridges.

Meghan appeared to comfort herself that as a future member of the Royal Family she would be superior to Victoria.

But in a celebrity world all about money, life-style and showing off, the Beckhams had so much more — private jets, invitations to yachts and much more money — than herself, the future duchess.

However, in the wake of the snubs in Sydney when relations between the Sussexes and Beckhams dramatically cooled, Victoria’s clothing sales were at that point not good and she was anxious to promote her outfits.

In the run-up to Christmas 2018, she agreed to lend Meghan a navy blue coat.

The duchess wore it on Christmas day on the walk with the Royal Family to church at Sandringham in Norfolk.

To Victoria’s dismay, it had no effect on sales.

During 2019, as the Sussexes dissatisfaction increased and the first steps to Megxit — the Sussexes’ move to California in January 2020 — were manifested in bitter allegations and arguments with the Cambridges, the Beckhams preferred not to take sides.

Nevertheless, Victoria produced a custom-made white coat and dress for Meghan, then pregnant, to wear in her last appearance in Westminster Abbey in March 2020.

By then, Meghan’s popularity was falling.

Unsurprisingly, her endorsement of Victoria’s label failed to improve sales.

Victoria’s only consolation was a £1,400 bag used by Meghan “sold out” after being linked in an Instagram video.

But the number of bags was small.

Over the following year, as the Sussexes’ poisoned their own image in the Oprah Winfrey interview, the Netflix series and Harry’s imminent memoir, the royalist Beckhams decisively shunned the exiles in Montecito.

David’s Kate kiss eclipsed Sussexes

Finally, in December 2022 David Beckham delivered a devastating riposte.

In the middle of the World Cup, he flew 6,600 miles from Qatar to Boston to help Kate and William celebrate the Earthshot prize.

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To the Cambridges’ delight, President Biden was also present, endorsing the couple’s philanthropic work.

On that very day, Harry and Meghan were in New York.

For months they had planned a publicity-seeking visit to boost their own philanthropy.

To their dismay, in the American and world media David’s kiss on Kate’s cheek eclipsed the Sussexes’ junket in New York.

Worse, Kate was wowing the American crowds.

It is the British couple who have decisively come out on top.

Two weeks ago, Lionel Messi, the great Argentinian footballer, scored a stunning last-minute goal playing for Beckham’s team in Miami.

Eruptions of joy could be heard across the globe.

The Beckhams’ celebrations continued for hours. “Goldenballs” clasped many famous celebrities during the party.

One couple was noticeably absent — the Sussexes.

The terrible truth Meghan and Harry ignore is that Brand Sussex, unlike Brand Beckham, is faltering.

Meghan would have done much better had she copied Victoria rather than push her away.

• Tom Bower is author of Revenge and is currently writing The Beckhams, to be published next year.