Although it was devastating to be laid off from the daily newspaper where I worked for nearly 30 years, it led to a five-year stint in public relations, where I learned an important lesson: With expert assistance, people, companies, governments and especially celebrities can carefully curate who they seem to be.

It’s not who they are, necessarily, but it’s the image that they attempt to portray — a picture of who they believe they are, and who they want you to believe that they are. They also understand the adage that all publicity is good. (“Say whatever you want,” the old saw goes, “as long as you spell my name right.”)

Take Prince Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, who have crafted a very well-thought-out and detailed image of who they are. He, the sad little boy who walked behind his mother’s casket. He, the British soldier in the 19th century uniform as they left their wedding in an elegant, open-top Ascot Landau carriage

She, the exotic beauty from an uber-modern world of image and make-believe who married into the world’s best-known monarchy.

The obvious, unsaid angle both of them have been mining since their conflicts with the royal house is just as well-thought-out. He’s a brave young prince done wrong. He had the courage to stand up to his family, do what his heart dictated, and marry Meghan.

The royal family was cast in the role of bigoted, racist rich people who were secretly horrified at his marriage to a biracial American actress, no matter how pretty.

And so, the prince shucked his royal duties and moved with his wife and young son to California. Just leave me alone and let me be a private man, a prince no more. Woe, he seemed to say. My family has cast me out. I can’t believe they’ve done this to me.

The TV interview with Oprah came quickly, followed by his tell-all book and the celebrity and attention that go with writing a mega best-seller.

Now, in a glittering turn, Harry and Meghan tell of a horrifying car chase in which they were fleeing from — who else? — the paparazzi. The redheaded lad was forced to relive his mother’s death, in what Harry’s spokesman described as a relentless pursuit that went on for hours.

Sounds made for television, doesn’t it?

That’s because it was.

Turns out, the police didn’t see the pursuit quite the way the spokesman described it. Far from a terrifying car chase through Manhattan, they said no one was ever in any danger.

Photographers were scrambling to take pictures of celebrities. It’s what they do. And isn’t celebrity what Meghan and Harry wanted?

People who crave the public eye, and then complain bitterly about being chased by photographers, fall into two camps. In the first camp are those who don’t like the attention. They work hard to move around discreetly and try to avoid the limelight. In the second camp are those who ask for the attention and then have their public relations person tell a breathless tale of being chased in a “near-catastrophic” event in which they could have been killed, just like poor Princess Diana.

Far from trying to hide from the press that evening, Harry and Meghan posed happily at the well-publicized event where she was receiving an award. They then were pursued by photographers wanting to take pictures of them.

Call me cynical, but that’s not a near-catastrophe. That’s well-coordinated public relations.

There’s an old movie featuring Betty Davis — “Hush, Hush, Sweet Charlotte” — that alludes to the darker side of PR: “Now, let me see,” Davis says to her co-star, Olivia de Havilland. “What is it you call your job? Oh, yes. Public relations. Sounds like something pretty dirty to me.”

Fair enough. If beauty is truth, then PR is ugly — or some parts of it, anyway. Such as: Meghan and Harry asked for the attention and now pretend to resent it. That’s not the point. The point is, Meghan and Harry asked for the attention and now are spinning their tale of woe to get even more attention.

They feed the beast. They know how to play the game. It’s where their money comes from. If they weren’t good at the game, I wouldn’t be writing this, and you wouldn’t be reading it.

As I said, all publicity is good — even the bad.

Especially the bad.

Frances Coleman is a former editorial page editor of the Mobile Press-Register. Email her at [email protected] and “like” her on Facebook at www.facebook.com/prfrances.