You are of course absolutely right. The late count of Paris (Henri sr) only took his own dynasty -the Capets/Bourbons- and the house of Habsburg seriously. In a way he may have had a point
.
That is an interesting issue you are raising here.
In the Netherlands the RF tended to have veiled complaints for decades in the sporadic interviews they gave. Prince Claus, Queen Beatrix, WA and even Bernhard and Juliana at various points said that it was a difficult function. Queen Juliana even mentioned it during her enthronement speech. They made it clear that it was of course a duty but also a personal burden. IIRC Prince Claus even called it 'almost inhumane' in an interview with Hella Haasse. The complaints stopped somewhere in the early 2000s. They must have made a decision not to mention it again to the press, which IMO was a correct decision.
I suppose that expectation management of newcomers is important too.
I am not sure what happened with the Duchess of Sussex but perhaps more attention could have been given to that. The late Prince Claus was shocked when he started to realize what his life was like after his marriage. He had expected that he could continue as a diplomat. A short attempt to work in the gov. department for Development Aid was stopped after a right-wing newspaper started a press campaign against it. Even in the old days there were complaints: Prince Hendrik -husband of Wilhelmina- once described himself as 'only the luggage', which perhaps counts as much for secondary royals as it does for prince consorts.
But how difficult it may be for some in the continental reigning families, in the UK it must be
much harder. And that is mainly due to the gutter press indeed. Although it was difficult in the 80s and 90s recently it must have become even more difficult due to the dazzling speed of online media and the pressure to create new online content every few minutes.
Some criticism on the Duke and Duchess of Sussex was certainly deserved [complaining about their hard life while visiting Africa, the rogue public announcement, etc.].But in the media hysteria of the last weeks it seems the press was really scratching the barrel to find something to write about so people visit their websites. A large range of articles were overblown and some were quite frankly absurd. Absurd is also the Kremlin-watching where every word, look and gesture is weighed and over-interpreted to suit whatever the narrative of the day is.
I have read that paparazzi photos of the Sussexes are expected to bring in 1 million dollars for the photographer, which is a large incentive to intrude on the privacy of the couple. As was noted earlier in this thread: the tabloids are not a neutral entity. They make money from the royal family, they make money from creating hypes and they are sued by the duke and duchess while they have already settled legal claims worth nearly a billion (?) pounds.