The jam jar was meant to be charming.
InMeghan Markle's soft‑focus videos, the Duchess of Sussex glides intoPrince Harry's office with a bar of chocolate from her lifestyle brand, As Ever, or slow‑dances with him in their sun‑drenched Montecito garden. It is carefully curated domestic bliss: cosy, romantic, polished within an inch of its life. Yet, according to people around the couple, the real drama is not in the content but on the shelves — in the rows of As Ever jam jars that have quietly become a new front line in the long, exhausting war over Harry's relationship with his family.
Because those jars, however rustic the label, now sit uncomfortably close to the ones branded 'Highgrove'.
People close to the Sussexes insist the issue is not that Harry begrudges his wife a business. By most accounts, he has been her loudest cheerleader as As Ever tries to carve out a slice of the 'domestic goddess' market. The battleground is narrower and stickier: Meghan's collection of 'home‑made' jams and preserves.
Jam has been baked into As Ever from the beginning and, unlike some of the brand's other experiments, has stubbornly stayed at the centre. On Emily Chang's The Circuit podcast last August, Meghan spoke breezily about global expansion, making it clear this was not a hobby in cute packaging but a serious commercial ambition.
Meghan confirmed that the plan is absolutely to go global with#AsEver.🎉pic.twitter.com/G0F4kcj977
That is where royal politics intrude. King Charles's Highgrove line — with its own elegant range of preserves, floral packaging and gift boxes — already occupies that space. Profits from Highgrove feed directly into the King's Foundation. So when Meghan dropped a Valentine's collection featuring jam, chocolate and a keepsake box, styled in similarly bucolic fashion, eyebrows in certain palaces reportedly shot upwards.
From Harry's vantage point, the optics are dire. He has already accepted, at least informally, that his public appearances should not clash with or overshadow royal engagements. To then watch his wife roll out a jam range that looks, to many, like a rival to his father's charity brand feels to him less like entrepreneurial pluck and more like lobbing a grenade into delicate peace talks.
One insider does not sugar‑coat his frustration. 'Harry wishes she would just step back and look at this realistically, because from where he's standing the jam is never going to be the goldmine she thinks it is,' they say. 'He doesn't understand why it has to be such a defining part of her brand when there are so many more profitable ventures she could lean into.'
He is no longer simply grumbling, either. According to several sources, Harry has urged Meghan to 'reassess' jam as a core product, warning that a full‑blown 'jam war' with Highgrove — on British shelves, in British shops — would be seen within royal circles as a direct shot at the family coffers, and by extension at the Crown.
Source: International Business Times UK
