Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were quietly demoted on Buckingham Palace’s official website on Monday, with a photo of the couple now sitting at the bottom of a page that lists every member of the royal family—a far cry from their previous spot near the top.
The demotion comes more than four years after the couple announced they were stepping down as senior working members of the family and moved to the United States in search of privacy.
Instead of having lengthy individual biographies on the site, which they enjoyed until this week, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex now share only a joint profile topped with a statement about their decision to step down from family duties.
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Prince Harry and Meghan Markle now share a joint biography page on Buckingham Palace’s website.
Buckingham PalaceHarry and Meghan’s demotion was blamed on a “routine website update,” a palace source told The Telegraph, adding that the change is unrelated to the couple’s recent brand development.
Those looking for information about the couple will now have to scroll to the bottom of a biography page on the palace’s website—past even the scandal-scarred Prince Andrew, who has a biography page to himself.
The new, much shorter biographies for Harry and Meghan direct readers to their own website, Sussex.com, to learn more about them. The website was launched in February to criticism about their use of royal titles on it.
Buckingham Palace’s decision to demote the couple comes at a perilous time for the institution, as it faces ongoing speculation about Kate Middleton’s well-being after her abdominal surgery in January.
Conspiracy theories about the family have spread like wildfire, with a recent video of the princess taking a stroll at a farm shop with Prince William over the weekend doing little to quell gossip in the aftermath of her photoshop gaffe.
