‘Petty and vindictive’: Royal family’s dangerous Lilibet fail revealed
The royals made a grave mistake regarding Princess Lilibet this weekend – and for the Princess of Wales, it’s a “particularly rotten” look.
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Royal princesses have inadvertently caused more drama than you might imagine.
Princess Elizabeth’s arrival in 1533 was the beginning of the end of her mother Anne Boleyn, while the death of heir Princess Charlotte in 1817 sparked a succession crisis which saw five royal dukes race to father her replacement for the throne. (Gross, I know).
So welcome to this long, fraught tradition, Princess Lilibet of Sussex.
Sunday was the tot’s second birthday, a day so far curiously marked by no one having whispered into People’s ear about what sort of organic cake her mother Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, whipped up. (Her brother Prince Archie got a lemon cake for his birthday last month, which most four-year-old’s would want about as much as a subscription to The Economist or having Janet Yellen read them a bedtime story).
Still, let’s assume there was some sort of party involving the progeny of Montecito’s creme de la creme and a face painter who understood that unicorns can have pronouns too. Let’s assume that Lili was rightfully spoiled and adored by her two very famous, highly controversial parents.
But what’s that coming out of London? What has her grandfather King Charles done to celebrate his youngest grandchild’s birthday? What sweet public gesture has the House of Windsor?
Zilch. Zip. Zero.
For an unfathomable reason, the King & Co. have outwardly entirely snubbed the little girl.
Poor Lili looks like she has become the latest casualty in what is, in every sense, a battle royale.
Rewind to this time last year, and she and her family were in the UK, her first birthday coinciding with her namesake great-grandmother’s Platinum Jubilee. (It is also the only time that Lili, despite her parents’ claiming the title of British princess for her, has been to the country).
On the Saturday of that long weekend, while the UK woke from its Tesco-brand prosecco hangover and got ready for another day of celebrating the achievements of the near-deified Queen, outside the capital, at Frogmore Cottage, Lili and her family got down to the business of cake-eating and face-painting.
Conveniently, all of her British relatives were dead busy that day, but still, the social media accounts of the late Queen Elizabeth, her grandfather, now King Charles, and her uncle and aunt, William and Kate, now the Prince and Princess of Wales, all took breaks from briskly posting about the Jubilee to send her birthday wishes. (Let’s assume also that several large impeccably-wrapped gifts from famed toy shop Hamleys also found their way to Frogmore Cottage. That or at least some Apple stock).
🎈Wishing Lilibet a very Happy 1st Birthday!
— The Royal Family (@RoyalFamily) June 4, 2022
Wishing a very happy birthday to Lilibet, turning one today! 🎈
— The Prince and Princess of Wales (@KensingtonRoyal) June 4, 2022
Wishing Lilibet a very happy 1st birthday today! 🎂
— Clarence House (@ClarenceHouse) June 4, 2022
Sure, it was all a bit perfunctory, but at least the HRHs (or their social media managers) had remembered the kid.
But a hell of a lot can change in 12 months, like Lili’s parents launching a media offensive that has been something like the digital equivalent of the Jacobite Rebellion. (They have both involved aggrieved redheads wanting to take on the crown, though thank god Harry has never had a kilt phase).
There was the duke and duchess’ six-hour TV series, an overwrought, stretched out attempt to extort sympathy, and Harry memoir Spare, a book about as lacking in self-awareness as Ivanka Trump’s diary entries.
Over the last year, Harry has chucked much of his family under the bus in his never-ending palace mutiny. If the duke doesn’t get sent his usual £10 WH Smith gift voucher in the mail from Princess Anne this year, it would hardly be a shock.
However, Archie and Lili are another question entirely.
Last month, the young prince’s birthday fell on the same day as the King’s coronation, with Buckingham and Kensington Palaces entirely ignoring the boy’s big day. The same goes today for Lili, and there is only one word to describe this – inexcusable. (Scratch that – utterly
mean and inexcusable).
Charles, William and Kate have every right to be about as pissed off at the Sussexes right now as Queen Camilla when an aide tells her she is off to a four-hour Latvian folk-dancing engagement.
But, however they feel about the couple, that should not extend to Archie and Lili.
The King might want to send his youngest son off to the Tower of London where someone might lose the key and the Wi-Fi password, but he has two sets of grandchildren. The different standards now being applied to William and Harry’s children is exactly the sort of inequitable treatment that Harry wrote at length about.
Blanking Archie and Lili on their birthdays makes the remaining HRHs in London look like, what the late Queen Mother might have called, massive knobheads.
If William and Kate want to sit for a lengthy BBC interview in which they lay into the Sussexes like George III getting stuck into his usual partridge and champers breakfast tray, they can knock themselves out. (*Rubs hands in glee).
However, Archie and Lili should not be caught up in the crossfire here.
I am truly lost as to why Buckingham and Kensington Palace haven’t simply kept up with their thus far entirely predictable modus operandi of having some lowly social media aide bang out some anodyne Sussex birthday wishes with a balloon emoji slapped onto it.
It would cost them literally nothing in terms of time, money or the effort of having someone remember where they wrote down their Twitter login. (On the front page of a Keats first edition maybe? That Shakespeare folio that has fallen under the couch?)
However, the price the royal family could pay reputationally for these snubs is steep and rightly so. Publicly ignoring Archie and Lili just makes them look incredibly petty and vindictive.
Kate’s key work is her Early Years Foundation, which is focused on improving the emotional and psychological development of children between pregnancy and five years old.
I’m sure the reams of academics and spectacled specialists she has helping her would have something to say about what the emotional consequences of being ignored by half of her family might have on a two-year-old.
For the Princess of Wales especially, this Lili situation is a particularly rotten look, not to mention that it comes across as peculiarly stone-hearted given that her chosen cause is helping kids grow up happy and healthy.
This Sussex kid cold shoulder routine is not one that the late Queen would have held with for a second.
In January 2021, Harry appeared on James Corden’s Late Late Show in an interview so lacking in good judgment it would have given even Fergie pause. During that outing, as Harry and Corden careened around Los Angeles on an open-topped bus (adios dignity!) he revealed that, even after Megxit, his grandmother had sent them a waffle maker for Christmas. (‘Just what is a waffle Soames? And do you put marmalade on it? Right…’)
The message that was repeatedly hammered home in the years that followed the Sussex relocation to the US was that when it came to the late Queen, the Sussexes would always be “much-loved family members”.
That policy seems to have been chucked away along with her cheapo bar heaters and all those half-eaten boxes of supermarket mint chocolate she fancied.
This change in tack towards Archie and Lili comes at a time when things are looking positively febrile, with Harry set to take the stand this week in one of his three separate lawsuits over alleged historical phone hacking.
Here’s hoping that someone with a title and some blue blood has done the right thing for Lili’s birthday – here’s hoping that trapped in the economy mail somewhere between Gloucestershire and California, there is a £10 WH Smith gift voucher for Lili from her great-aunt Anne.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
Originally published as ‘Petty and vindictive’: Royal family’s dangerous Lilibet fail revealed
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