Meghan, Harry and the Queen due to reunite for dysfunctional Jubilee
The countdown is on for the most significant royal event since Princess Diana’s funeral. And things are set to get very juicy.
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The date is set, the flights would be booked and right now, I’m guessing, there are tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars of designer clothes strewn across a vast, off-white bedroom full of Diptyque candles waiting to be packed.
It all can only mean one thing: The Sussexes are coming.
The countdown is now on for Harry and Meghan, Duke and Duchess of Sussex, to fly out of the US to head to London for their first proper visit since 2020 when they chucked over royal life to try to copy the Obamas’ payday playbook.
Earlier this month it was revealed that the family would indeed be helping Harry’s grandmother the Queen celebrate her Platinum Jubilee. But it was only on Thursday when we got the first concrete details of exactly when and where we might be seeing the Sussexes.
Day one of the Jubilee, on Thursday, will see lots of horses and hats but no official sighting of the TV producing compassion-spruikers with a sideline in the vegan latte business.
The gilt-edged knees-up will kick off with Trooping the Colour, Her Majesty’s official birthday bash, a big, horsey military spectacular that culminates with a Royal Airforce flyover, which usually sees the royal family en masse, gather on the Buckingham Palace balcony.
This year, Buckingham Palace is playing things differently, having announced earlier this month that only working members of the royal family will take part in the photo moment this year (and very likely, forevermore), thus immediately barring, among others, the Sussexes and the permanently disgraced Prince Andrew from taking part.
But day two of the Jubilee, on the Friday? That’s when things will get decidedly juicy with it being confirmed that Harry and Meghan will be attending the service of thanksgiving for the Queen at Westminster Abbey.
Imagine the Jaws theme tune playing right about here.
This service looks set to be the biggest gathering of the extended royal family, working, non-working and downright sponging, since Harry and Meghan’s 2018 wedding.
It will see the Sussexes reunite in full public view with not only the family’s 96-year-old CEO but also Prince Charles and William and Kate, Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
After more than two years away, after labelling the palace as racist and callously indifferent to the couple’s suffering, after alleging that Charles ‘cut them off’ financially and arguing he was “trapped,” after Meghan told a global audience of a reported 50 million people that Kate made her cry, after making the royal family out to be dismal parents and after Harry went to court with his grandmother’s government when his taxpayer-funded security was yanked, after all that, we are going to get the family reunion to end all family reunions.
You would have to rewind to September 1997 and the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales as the world reeled and public anger at the Queen and the palace had fomented to a dangerous and unprecedented degree to find a single day with so much riding on it for the house of Windsor.
The stakes here are not so much high as somewhere in the upper reaches of the stratosphere.
The last time the palace tried sending out the Cambridges, the Sussexes and Charles together in 2020, things not so much veered off course as shot off the tracks and careened over a cliff. There are probably communications staffers and Palace aides still on stress leave after the Commonwealth Day service held at the Abbey in March of that year, with things turning so epically frigid it would not be a surprise if they are still chipping icicles off pews.
In the years since then, the royal family’s fortunes, PR-wise, have been a decidedly mixed bag.
While William and Kate earnt applause all around for their ‘keep calm and carry on Zooming’ pep through the pandemic, and while the Queen’s “We’ll meet again” speech will be one for future high school history textbooks, the royal ship has taken hit after painful hit.
No matter how many flags they can string up and down the Mall or commemorative tins of shortbread are jam-packed on supermarket shelves, the monarchy is not in a great way.
In February, Andrew paid a reported $22 million to settle Virginia Giuffre’s lawsuit after she alleged that he had sexually assaulted her on three occasions when she was a teenager. (He has always vehemently denied her claims.)
The fact that there is a chance that the Queen has used millions of dollars of her own money to pay the civil legal settlement for a royal prince accused of sexual assault is a previously unthinkable low.
Over the last few years, and thanks in part to the Sussexes, the palace has come to symbolise dysfunction, acrimony and intra-family civil war while simultaneously, issues of Britain’s violent colonial past, slavery, and its treatment of women have uncomfortably risen the fore. (All of which, it must be noted, are issues that the royal house has not even begun to remotely engage with.)
The palace must surely hope that the Jubilee will serve as some sort of all-in-one palate cleanser and that a handful of lager-fuelled sunny public holidays and a Red Arrows flyover will wash away the sour taste of the last few years in the public’s mouths.
With the most recent polling showing that support for the monarchy is eroding among younger Brits, Brand Windsor urgently needs the Jubilee to be a smash hit and to generate a fresh infusion of royalist support ahead of the once-in-a-lifetime passing of the regal baton.
But the chances of that triumph coming effortlessly to pass are slim at best.
With Harry and Meghan having reportedly agreed to an ‘at-home docuseries’, the question of whether a film crew will also be making the trip to the UK has yet to be answered. Earlier this month, The Sun reported that “a team of palace aides will be on standby” and can “act as minders if needs be” if a possible Sussex Netflix crew is part of the mix.
Then there is the issue of putting William, Kate, Harry and Meghan all within arm’s length of one another. While the first three might have made it through a couple of minutes of what looked like stage-managed chitchat after Prince Philip’s funeral last year, that is a far cry from having to make nice for a more drawn out period of time, in the midst of dozens of other Windsors and with a horde of press watching on.
Even the vaguest hint of a repeat of the Sussex vs Cambridge grudge match of 2020 – a furrowed brow, a wintry thin-lipped rebuffing – could derail the day and drag things into soap opera territory. (The Real Housewives franchise could only dream of such drama.)
There is also of course every chance that Andrew will also use his appearance at the Abbey for the service of thanksgiving to stage another self-serving attempt to revive his public image, the PR equivalent of trying to raise the Titanic.
All of this is before we have even touched on the Jubilee girl herself. With the Queen suffering what the Palace is terming “episodic mobility problems” her appearance at any point during the four days of events is far from guaranteed. (Only two weeks ago, she missed the State Opening of Parliament for the first time in nearly 60 years.)
The Times has revealed that for the first time since taking the throne, Her Majesty will likely not take the salute during Trooping the Colour, with Princes Charles and William along with Princess Anne set to represent the Queen during the centuries-old event.
One Trooping option reportedly being considered is for her to make the short trip from Buckingham Palace to the nearby Horse Guards Parade via Range Rover, possibly with a full Sovereign’s Escort of Household Cavalry, to inspect the troops before later appearing on the Palace balcony. Another option being considered would see her only join her family for the balcony moment.
Either way, the Queen’s participation in the first Trooping to be held since 2019 will be markedly reduced in comparison to previous years.
Looking down the barrel of the week to come, especially the service on Friday, if the Palace can somehow pull this off – and that is a mighty big ‘if’ – then that would surely have to go down in history as one of the most unlikely success stories.
And if things fall apart? If tempers and egos flare, if Netflix cameras roll, if Andrew is, well, Andrew? Then maybe it’s a good thing the Queen might be staying home.
The die is cast. The bunting has gone up. The horses brushed. There are just so many ways this week can go spectacularly wrong and really only one way it can go right.
Daniela Elser is a royal expert and a writer with more than 15 years experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
Originally published as Meghan, Harry and the Queen due to reunite for dysfunctional Jubilee
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