Brooklyn Beckham’s caught in the Harry trap – but did he fall or was he pushed?

Remember when Posh and Becks got married? Remember that deeply 90s photoshoot, sold exclusively to OK! magazine, with the happy couple dressed in regal purple robes and seated on golden thrones, with their toddler, prince Brooklyn, dressed to match? They positioned themselves as a celebrity version of the royal family – and it worked.

For millions of their fans, that is exactly what they became, going on to have four children, amass piles of wealth, and use trusted counsel (publicists, the press, Instagram and, most recently, Netflix documentaries that they made themselves) to help defeat their enemies.

So perhaps nobody warned them that what royal families also attract is rebellion in the ranks.

It has happened throughout history, most recently to our good King Charles, when his son Prince Harry decided that up with this royal life he would not put, and scarpered to Montecito. Now, it has happened to the Beckhams, whose son Brooklyn has done almost exactly the same.

But falling out with your nearest and dearest, and then writing a tell-all memoir about it – as Beckham Jr is now rumoured to be doing – wasn’t supposed to be a blueprint for other nepo babies.

The parallels between Harry and Brooklyn are uncanny. A son from a deeply British family falls in love with a glamorous American woman, but soon the family become suspicious of the interloper. So the son falls out with his parents, as his loyalties now lie with his wife, with whom he goes to America for a better life, while publicly decrying the media machine his family have started running against him back home.

Harry’s grievances have long been clear to all – the media glare in which he had lived his entire life being part of the problem. But there was something petulant in his tone when he went on his rampage against The Firm, demanding he and his wife, Meghan, become “semi-detached” members of the royal family, free to make their own fortunes on the side and on their own terms. After this was ultimately turned down, at the so-called Sandringham summit in January 2020, off they went to compile their hitlist of perceived injustices.

I initially found Spare, his 2023 memoir, fascinating, but even I couldn’t get past the 12th hour of the audiobook as it turned into a laundry list of complaints – one of which was that nobody hugged him or held him after telling him his mother was dead (completely, heartbreakingly valid, oh my God, that poor boy). Another was that his bedroom in Buckingham Palace was not only smaller than his brother’s, but also overlooked the car park.

One might say that Brooklyn’s complaint about his mother not supporting a charity for displaced dogs was in the same comic zone. As arguably the first nepo baby of the digital era, he had to perform as the eldest child of four in all the Instagram photo line-ups. He also appeared to have been hit by the classic curse of the wealthy son of a man who grew up poor: self-made, successful parents can give their children everything apart from the burning ambition that got them there in the first place.

Brooklyn’s attempts at photography or cookery received mass coverage before he had chance to master his art. People laughed. I was one of them. No wonder he’s fed up – and no wonder he married into a family that can make money from business investments without having to demean yourself creating online content to ensure success.

Considering how many women write to agony aunts or complain on Mumsnet that their husbands don’t stick up for them when the in-laws get involved, both Harry and Brooklyn are to be commended for sticking up for their partners. There is something particularly unattractive about a man who still seems under his parents’ thumb after starting a family of his own.

This week, David Beckham was booked to speak at Davos, somewhat hilariously, to speak about children and social media. Given that his own child had just blown up the family brand by posting on social media, complaining about his life as a pawn for his parents’ social media, it was a bit rich for David to say that “children make mistakes” online.

Maybe it’s time to look at the fact that parents like him have made mistakes, too?