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Prince Harry has long been critical of the way his disgraced uncle Prince Andrew has been treated in comparison to himself and Meghan Markle.
Andrew, for example, kept some publicly-funded security, while Harry was stripped of it completely. The issue even came up in his memoir, Spare, in which Harry pointedly wrote that Andrew “was embroiled in a shameful scandal, accused of the sexual assault of a young woman and no one had so much suggested that he lose his security. Whatever grievances people had against us, sex crimes weren’t on the list.”
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Doubtless compounding the sense of a double standard, therefore, must be the clear signs from the palace that Andrew is being rehabilitated, and welcomed back into the family. The most recent public example of this was when Prince William and Kate drove Andrew to church in their car a few weekends ago.
Now, however, comes a report that Harry was made even more furious after learning that Andrew was invited to attend a private service of remembrance for the late Queen Elizabeth II from which he was excluded.
The Daily Mail reports on this latest step on what looks very much like a path to redemption for Andrew, who was kicked out of the ranks of working royals in January 2022, weeks before he reached an out-of-court settlement with Jeffrey Epstein trafficking victim Virginia Giuffre.
Andrew was invited to attend the “special service” alongside his brother Prince Edward, the report says.
One of the paper’s gossip columns reports that Harry only found out about the cozy arrangement when he made a whistle stop detour to St George’s Chapel, where the late queen is entombed, on the anniversary of her death.
The surprise visit by Harry to Her Majesty’s final resting place in the grounds of Windsor Castle overshadowed an official engagement by William and Kate that started just minutes after images of an emotional looking Harry, taken by a tourist, exploded over social media.
The Mail says that a source told them Harry left the chapel “wearing his finest scowl” after having “discovered that a special service attended by Prince Edward and Prince Andrew was scheduled a few hours later.”
The paper adds, “Apparently, Harry wasn’t impressed at confirmation that fellow exile Andrew … is being brought in from the cold.”