Links to the personal profiles of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have been moved to the bottom of the royal family’s website, alongside disgraced Prince Andrew, in the latest demonstration of King Charles’ intention to sideline the California-based couple from the family’s core operations.
According to the Daily Telegraph, which first reported on the change, the couple’s profiles and pictures used to be midway down the page that lists the members of the royal family, “ahead of minor royals such as the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, the Duke of Kent, Princess Alexandra and Prince and Princess Michael of Kent.”
Now, however, the couple find themselves on the bottom two rows of the “The Role of the Royal Family” page, with Harry sharing the penultimate vertical with the Duke of Kent—and Meghan on the bottom line with Prince Andrew.
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A royal source told The Daily Beast that there was “no significance” to the Sussex’s new location other than that they were no longer working members of the royal family, and the website had undergone a periodic update.
Clicking through on Harry’s picture reveals that he still has a lengthy biography touting his achievements, in particular with the Invictus Games, but Meghan has just a few lines, which summarize how she and Harry stepped back from royal roles and add that she continues “to support a number of charitable causes and organizations.”
Andrew’s entry is even briefer, repeating the statement which expelled him from the family and saying, “Prior to stepping back from public life, The Duke of York undertook a wide range of public work, with a strong economic and business focus.”
The changes to the website, which have also seen minor non-working royals cut completely, will be seen as reflecting King Charles’ widely reported desire for a less bloated, more cost-efficient royal family.
However, the demotion of Harry and Meghan to such a lowly position is also likely to increase speculation that Charles is seeking to reduce the public perception of their importance.
The Daily Beast recently reported that Harry faces a life of permanent “exile,” with the royal treatment of Harry likely to be modeled on the fate of Edward VIII, the king who abdicated in 1936 and lived the rest of his life outside the U.K.
A friend of the king’s previously told The Daily Beast: “The royals handled the abdication crisis by exiling Edward which meant he and Wallis ultimately came to seem like unimportant, misguided, disloyal, and even treacherous individuals to almost the entirety of the British people. It was a masterful operation in the service of which the Queen Mother, in particular, worked tirelessly.
“The same thing is already happening with Harry and Meghan, and will only gather pace over the next few years under the rule of King Charles. And of course a wayward second son is far less of an existential threat to the fabric of the monarchy than a wayward king.”
Another source, a former Buckingham Palace staffer, told The Daily Beast that King Charles’ accession statement, in which he encouraged his son and Meghan to “continue to build their lives overseas,” was an undisguised message to them to not disrupt his reign by making frequent trips to the U.K.
“Harry and Meghan will get an invite to the coronation but they will be firmly seated in the cheap seats along with Beatrice and Eugenie, as they were at the funeral. That will be it. Charles will be ruthless when it comes to protecting the Crown, and that means keeping Harry and Meghan as far from the center of gravity as possible,” the former staffer told The Daily Beast.
