Palace’s stealthy Sussex take down

Could things get any worse between the palace and Harry and Meghan? The palace’s latest move shows relations at an all-time low.

The royal family has removed a landmark document concerning the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, and it’s part of a much bigger puzzle.

There is something strange going on inside Buckingham Palace; and it seems someone has been leaning on the official royal website’s delete key.

In the immortally ignorant words of Australia’s most famous fish and chip slinger: Please explain?

Why has a landmark part of the long and often torturous tale of Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex been mysteriously removed from royal.uk?

The item in question is a nearly eight-year-old statement, the most important bit of paper that Harry probably had held in his hands since he filled in his Boujis membership application.

The year: 2016.

The pants: Low.

Prince Harry: Had a new girlfriend.

Specifically on October 31, Britain’s Daily Express broke the exclusive story that the former army captain was dating Suits star Meghan Markle.

At which point the entire UK went ‘huh!’, very pleasantly surprised to discover that Harry had the nous and taste to look beyond the predictable roster of upper crust blondes to find his new paramour.

The world was stunned to learn of the relationship. Picture: Chris Jackson/Getty Images

Here was a woman with a good degree, a successful career and a world view that extended further than Battersea Bridge. Huzzah!

Then barely a week later, the fizz and excitement that the prince had found himself a girlfriend curdled, with Harry putting out an extraordinary and unprecedented statement, calling out the “wave of abuse and harassment” Meghan had faced along with the “sexism and racism” of the reaction to news of their relationship.

On the day it came out – November 8 – it was posted online in the ‘Press release’ section of the official royal website, royal.uk.

Now, it’s gone.

The couple, who were recently in Abuja, Nigeria, raised eyebrows. Picture: Andrew Esiebo/Getty Images for The Archewell Foundation

And not just that, but a variety of other press releases from that time, concerning the Duke, seem to have been deleted.

While a search of the section still throws up a lengthy list of entries, clicking on the headline only takes users to a generic page with items tagged with the generic ‘Sussex’ including, say,

Queen Camilla visiting an East Sussex literary festival recently.

Where have the Harry statements gone? And why has his famous, barnstorming line-in-the- sand, gauntlet-laying-down declaration about Meghan, amongst other items, been removed by the palace?

Where did the press releases go? Picture: Chris Jackson/Getty Images

This would not seem to be a recent bit of tweaking with, say, that 2016 statement most

likely pulled in December last year, according to sleuthing done by Newsweek’s Jack Royston.

And this deletion of the November 2016 statement comes after the royal family has already repeatedly trimmed, if not downright lopped, the Sussexes’ presence on the royal website.

Last August, Harry and Meghan’s HRHs were removed from their official entries and in March this year, the duke and duchess’ individual and detailed bios, which totalled more than 4000 words, were combined and cut back dramatically to a sparse 577 words.

The palace has yet to comment on this latest curious website change however, really and truly, I ask you: Could their treatment of the Sussexes, long since having skedaddled to California to escape the clutches of Crown Inc, be any frostier?

There might not be a Gorbachev-like character lurking in the wings or the threat of a nuclear winter, but are we facing a new cold war here?

Are we facing a new cold war? Picture: Kola Sulaimon/AFP

When Harry arrived on his father King Charles’ doorstep, reportedly unbidden, in February after His Majesty’s cancer announcement it was to receive a miserly 30 minutes with him and with no invitation proffered to head north to Sandringham for some mano-a-mano alone time.

In early May, Harry arrived back in the UK for a St Paul’s service to mark 10 years of his hugely successful Invictus Games, and was offered the use of a royal residence by the King.

While we don’t know which property was made available to the prince-turned-TV producer it was one that, according to the Telegraph, has “public entrance and exit points and no police protection” which sounds rather like some lesser grace-and-favour joint rather than Kensington Palace, Clarence House or St James’s Palace.

Nor are he and Meghan likely to be bundling up their young children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet any time soon to teach them about the, err, ‘delights’ of a Highland summer, with a friend of the King and Queen’s telling the Daily Beast, “The idea that Harry and the kids are going to descend on Balmoral this summer is wishful thinking. It’s all just very sad.”

That’s exactly the word that keeps running through my head. This is all so bloody sad.

Last January, when Harry headed out for his whirligig of stony blue jumpered-sit down TV interviews to promote Spare last January, he made clear what he wanted to achieve.

“I would like to get my father back, I would like to have my brother back,” he told ITV’s Tom Bradby.

When Harry arrived on his father King Charles’ doorstep after His Majesty’s cancer announcement it was to receive a miserly 30 minutes with him. Picture: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

Disappointment, thy name is Sussex, on the familial front at least.

The Duke of Sussex has not only decidedly not gotten his family back but they seem to keep finding news ways to push him even further to the farthest fringes of the royal universe.

Nearly 18 months on since that “back” comment, The King’s reaction to his son’s truth-telling forays has been cutting in the extreme.

The keys to Frogmore Cottage all but yanked out of his hands.

A third row seat at his coronation.

His February offer to return to the UK to help out while the King and Kate, the Princess of Wales, battle cancer was bluntly and immediately rejected.

(Was there some mirthless laughter down the phone line when the offer was made? I'll leave that up to you to decide.)

Now we have this situation with the Sussexes and the royal website. As Sherlock Holmes might have said, the game’s afoot – only could someone please work out precisely what the game might be?

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.

Originally published as Palace’s stealthy Sussex take down