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The Queen: Harry, Meghan, and Archie are “much loved”
After the tumult come olive branches—for now, anyway. The queen has invited Harry, Meghan and baby Archie to her summer vacation home at Balmoral in Scotland—and the family has accepted, according to the U.K.’s Sunday Times.
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The paper also reports that Harry, Meghan, and Archie will also spend time with Prince Charles and Camilla at their holiday home. It is not known if their visit will coincide with the vacation plans of Prince William and Kate Middleton.
News of the invite emerged as The Sun reported late Saturday that the coronavirus pandemic had forced the queen to leave Buckingham Palace. She has relocated to Windsor Castle, and there are plans to move her and Prince Philip to Sandringham in Norfolk if the situation in Britain worsens.
Just as she did when the negotiations around their exit from the royal family were being negotiated, the queen is seeking to assure Prince Harry and Meghan Markle they are still loved—especially after that very public, seriously awkward encounter with Prince William and Kate Middleton at their last big public appearance as working royals at the Commonwealth Service at Westminster Abbey on Monday.
The attempts to rebuild bridges comes after Harry told Russian pranksters that he and Meghan “are completely separate from the majority of my family.”
The queen, according to People, has stressed that Meghan, Harry and Archie are “much loved members of the family,” a friend of the couple tells the magazine. “That stuff runs deep. There is an element of working things through.”
The negotiations and agreement left the couple “hurt,” a source told the magazine, but “the family has really tried to make this as collaborative and kind and as loving as possible as they start this new trajectory.”
We can only assume that this is a very American “friend,” because no posh English person would talk like that.
“There is a lot of goodwill,” when it comes to the various charities and organizations they are patrons of, the source told People. “Everybody’s really reassured, as the couple have gone out of their way to let everyone know that they aren’t abandoning anyone.”
However, the Mail on Sunday reports that Harry and William remain severely estranged. “I’m sure they will be reconciled eventually, but at the moment it’s raw,” a source said. “It will take a long time to heal. I can’t see a way forward now.”
“Big smiles,” Meghan is said to have urged her husband—according to a lip-reader—as the couple entered Westminster Abbey on Monday.
The Mail on Sunday reports: “William feels his brother has ‘disrespected’ the institution of the monarchy and—most woundingly of all—their grandmother the queen.
“Harry, too, is profoundly unhappy, believing he has been cut adrift by his own relatives, convinced that his wife was not made sufficiently welcome, and feeling that his own work has been seen as less important than that of his elder brother. Harry is even said to believe that his infant son Archie has been abandoned by The Firm.”
Harry and Meghan and William and Kate initially worked well together on their mental health campaigning. But problems soon emerged. The Mail said of Harry, “It didn’t help that whenever he asked the shared staff at Kensington Palace to do something, they were often busy with ‘more important’ work for the Duke of Cambridge, who, after all, will one day be King.”
The brothers also reportedly disagreed on conservation, a cause close to both their hearts. Meghan’s way of working, which disrupted old Palace ways, and William's unease about Harry marrying her—William felt too quickly—worsened fraternal relations.
A source added, “It didn’t help that William never let Harry forget which of them was going to be King.”
Meghan and Harry’s “unnecessarily cruel ending to their royal lives”
Meghan is back in Canada with baby Archie. She and Harry will officially exit the Royal Family on March 31, and they do so—it emerged at the end of this week—with the same number of Instagram followers as William and Kate: 11.3 million.
To say that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were “crushed” after they were forced to leave the royal family “would be an understatement,” according to a reporter who has become close to the couple, and privy to their private feelings of frustration with the royal family.
Writing a dispatch for Harper’s Bazaar from Meghan’s final royal engagement at Buckingham Palace, as patron of the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU), Omid Scobie said her and Harry’s hopes to become part-time royals “were quickly dashed by an institution seemingly unable to accept change as a viable option.” Harry and Meghan’s aim was to bring “privacy and safety” to their family life with baby Archie.
Scobie also said Meghan cried as she bid farewell to staff—“tears that the duchess had been bravely holding back are free to flow among familiar faces.”
Leaving the royal family was “a decision that the couple still feel wasn’t necessary,” wrote Scobie, “but also wasn’t a surprise, given the lack of support they received as they were relentlessly attacked by sections of the British press with almost daily mistruths and hateful commentary.”
Scobie wasn’t alone in his extremely sympathetic observations. Bryony Gordon from the Telegraph was also invited to the event. (Valentine Low of The Times of London, noting that the royal press pack had been left off the invite list, called the three journalists present “hand-picked…who have been noted for the supportive nature of their coverage.”)
Gordon noted the “tears glistening” in Meghan’s eyes, and said that Meghan “appears to be quietly devastated” in private. The pervading emotion was not rancor, said Gordon, but “profound sadness. Sadness that it had come to this; sadness that they could not make it work and sadness that less than two years since that glittering fairy tale wedding, the first person of color to join the British royal family was off.”
Scobie claimed that far from the Sussexes wanting “half-in half-out” and “wanting it all,” “the reality was a couple who were left with no other choice but to create their own change after being left to fend for themselves against impossible circumstances—even during her pregnancy.”
Meghan and Harry “didn’t want to stop supporting the queen.” Things might have been different “if a family member or two had stood up for them during the darkest times.” As it is, their exit seems an “unnecessarily cruel ending to their royal lives.”
However, Us Weekly reported that Meghan’s smiles for the cameras at Westminster Abbey were genuine. A source told the publication that “that look of joy on her face is real. She’s gotten exactly what she wanted.”
“Harry misses his brother and Kate, but there’s too much mud under the bridge at this point for any meaningful communication,” the source told Us Weekly. “They’re cordial, but that’s about as far as it goes.”
Meghan has “huge sadness” when it comes to Harry
In her piece, the Telegraph’s Gordon, whom Harry opened up to about his mental health in 2017, said of Meghan: “This was a woman whose passion for the work she does had never, ever been in doubt, despite reports in some sections of the media that ‘Megxit’ is about a yearning for a glitzier, more Hollywood life.”
“Sources close to the couple” told Gordon that Harry and Meghan’s story “needn’t ever have been more complicated than ‘two people fall in love, fly the flag, have a baby, and spend the rest of their lives doing charity work and representing the monarchy.’”
Meghan, Gordon was told, “took her role seriously, and was not just prepared but proud to deliver whatever was asked of her.” Meghan’s emotions were “tinged with huge sadness for Harry,” not herself—particularly around the ceremonial military appointments he has to give up.
Accentuating the positive in this laundry list of gripes, Meghan and Harry “genuinely feel a sense of excitement about what’s to come, which includes the freedom to work at a pace that suits them, no longer weighed down by protocol or threatened by toxic agendas,” wrote Scobie.
Clearly stung by the suggestion they’re out to make as many bucks as possible, we hear that Harry and Meghan’s work “will still revolve around their humanitarian efforts and helping amplify the voices of young people around the world on a wide gamut of issues.”
A “well-placed” source told Scobie, “Keeping the family, most importantly Archie, safe is what will make all of this worth it.” Their decision to leave the royal family, said Gordon, “is the right one for the mental health of their own little family.”
Meghan chats to locals in the woods
Us Weekly has very intimate sources close to Meghan and Harry to dish on this happy new life. “Meghan takes a walk with Archie every single day through the woods,” a source revealed to the publication about Meghan’s movements on Vancouver Island. “She either pushes him in a stroller through the paved trails through the public woods by their home or straps him on and walks the more rustic routes. The walks usually last around an hour or two, but she takes them daily.”
Meghan is also reportedly “very kind to the locals she meets while hiking,” chatting about parenting and the weather. “She’s all around pleasant to strangers. She is telling friends that she is so happy to be out in nature and [in] their secluded area.”
Kate takes Harry and Meghan’s departure “very badly”
Many have wondered about the weird, near total lack of communication between Harry and Meghan and William and Kate on Monday at the Commonwealth Service. Meghan smiled warm hellos, Harry said one hello, William (it is thought) grunted something, but Kate kept shtum. Her limited amount of in-Abbey communication seemed reserved for Sophie Wessex, wife of Prince Edward, who for those few precious moments were the best kind of diplomats, speaking separately to both couples. Like a royal Switzerland.
“Possibly she was tired but she didn’t look overjoyed,” one royal source said of Kate’s perceived froideur to Vanity Fair. “To be honest I think Kate has taken it all badly. She Harry and William were once such a happy trio, she thinks what has happened is all very sad.”
Charles de Gaulle was the queen’s favorite French president
At a 1960 state banquet held by the queen for then-French President Charles de Gaulle, his wife Yvonne was asked what she was most looking forward to in retirement. “A penis,” she replied.
Her husband interjected: “Yes, we are looking forward to happiness.”
However, the queen felt that de Gaulle’s support of separatists in Montreal—she is also queen of Canada, after all—was “treason.”
A new book by Marc Roche, a former London correspondent for Le Monde, reveals some fascinating tidbits of the queen’s relationship with the five presidents of France’s Fifth Republic.
As reported in the Times of London, Roche—in the book, Elle Ne Voulait Pas Être Reine—reveals that de Gaulle was the queen’s favorite French president.
The queen found Jacques Chirac’s blowing of kisses to London crowds “peculiar,” felt François Hollande’s standoffish behavior was a “slur,” and charmed Nicolas Sarkozy by taking him around Windsor Castle, turning on a bath tap. “The water,” his wife Carla Bruni told Roche, “was not very clear.”
This week in royal fashion
Kate now has one camera-friendly arena mostly all to herself. Meghan’s fashion career as a “senior royal” came to an end with a flurry of powerful looks, including a final, show-stopper green dress by Emilia Wickstead and hat with netting detail for the Commonwealth Service. Kate was in burgundy, Sophie Wessex in white (and a smidge of black) and the Queen in light blue. But it was Meghan who stood out on this momentous, final ceremonial day of duties for her and Harry.
… But Kate overtakes Meghan as biggest fashion influencer
As the world heads to a date with oblivion, LoveTheSales.com emails The Daily Beast to reveal that Kate Middleton has overtaken Meghan Markle as the biggest fashion influencer.
The website analyzed the public demand for every outfit Meghan & Kate have worn so far in 2020, and discovered—are you ready?—that Meghan’s reign as 2019’s biggest fashion influencer is over. I know, too much.
Since “Megxit,” the website says, Meghan’s influence on fashion searches has dropped from 216% to 31%. In comparison, Kate’s influence has increased in 2020, from 119% to 159%.
In the equivalent of a fashion death match, when Meghan and Kate both wore a Massimo Dutti coat in January, Kate's coat was searched online eight times more than Meghan’s. Onwards to Kate’s equally triumphant casual-wear. “The Marks & Spencer trainers she wore in February sold out in hours and was searched for over 2,000 times,” LoveTheSales.com reported.
This week in royal history
On March 18, 1986, the engagement of Prince Andrew to Sarah Ferguson was announced by Buckingham Palace. Their marriage lasted six years, but the couple have remained friends through scandal upon scandal.
This includes the latest, extremely unresolved mystery of the precise nature of the friendship between Andrew and disgraced sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Andrew now says he’s not going to help the US authorities with their Epstein-related inquiries, after previously saying he would.
Unanswered questions
How will coronavirus affect royal life? We have seen the queen shaking hands with and without gloves, and now she has left Buckingham Palace. She has canceled engagements in Crewe and Macclesfield in Cheshire, scheduled for March 19, and Camden, North London, on March 26. Buckingham Palace described the cancelations as “a sensible precaution.”
Prince Charles and Camilla have also postponed their spring tour of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cyprus, and Jordan due to the coronavirus pandemic. We shall see if the palace issues any more coronavirus-related statements as Britain, and the world, endure this international crisis.
