There was widespread astonishment in royal circles Monday after it was confirmed that Meghan and Harry left Britain by private jet before the platinum jubilee celebrations were finished, delivering a snub to the queen and organizers of the event.
A friend of the royals expressed the irritation felt by many at what was perceived by some to be a churlish and attention-grabbing departure, telling The Daily Beast on Monday, “So much for not overshadowing the queen. Would it have killed them to wait a few hours?”
As The Daily Beast reported Sunday, the couple boarded a private jet an hour before the big jubilee pageant in central London began, landing back in Los Angeles at 6 p.m. local time Sunday.
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A source told The Sun, “They just left.”
While there had been suspicions that the couple perhaps didn’t have the best experience of the jubilee, spending much of the celebrations hidden away behind closed doors, and not invited to many of the weekend’s most significant events, their decision to flee the country while the queen’s life was being celebrated by 6,000 military and civilian performers in central London looks distinctly churlish.
They were in the air, crossing the Atlantic, when the queen emerged on the Buckingham Palace balcony at 5 p.m. for her surprise balcony appearance with Prince Charles and Prince William, both of whom Harry has publicly criticized.
Given that many planes now have access to live TV and internet, there is no reason to think that the Sussexes were not able to watch proceedings on board just as well as they might have watched them at Frogmore Cottage.
And yet one somehow supposes that, after a weekend in which it seemed they were being deliberately treated as unimportant and distracting appendages to royal life, it wouldn’t be entirely surprising if they chose to catch up on the last few episodes of Ozark instead.
Their very deliberate travel plans speak clearly about the tensions in the British royal family and are likely to irritate the queen, who had let all family members know she expected them to maintain a united front for the duration of the weekend.
Indeed, Prince Charles raised eyebrows when he told attendees at a lunch party he attended that he hoped people wouldn’t go back to “bickering” with each other after the unifying experience of the jubilee.
Defenders of the Sussexes will say that as they were meticulously excluded from almost all events, except for the queen’s official birthday celebrations on Thursday and a church service on Friday, they were more than justified in making an exit on their own terms—even if it looks bad-tempered.
And given that they have a reputation for not exactly being bashful when it comes to expressing their own irritation with the family, some might say it is hardly surprising that they left early with a metaphorical slam of the door, and the fault lies with the palace for not making more of a fuss of them.
They arrived back in California at 6 p.m. local time Sunday, looking suitably shattered, before getting into an SUV to be driven home.
