Cracks begin to show for Meghan Markle and Prince Harry

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have taken a step that’s highly unusual from the norm and it shows a crack in their usual united front.

COMMENT

It has been a bad week for salt and pepper shakers. And palm trees. And Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

On Thursday, the news broke via a sparing Buckingham Palace statement, all 36 words of it, that while Harry will be attending his father’s coronation next month, the duchess will not, and instead will be staying home with the couple’s two children.

This revelation has now put an end to a good six months of speculation about whether the Sussexes would front up for His Majesty’s big day, a serious question mark over their attendance given that relations between the royal family and the California-based duo are about one step away from some Jerry Springer-esque hair-pulling on the Palace forecourt.

However, while reports suggest that the King is dead pleased his younger son and number one source of stress-related dermatitis will be in the crowd for the biggest day of his life, what has largely been overlooked is one particularly unusual detail.

Harry and Meghan are not doing this together.

Harry will be attending his father’s coronation next month. Picture: Oli Scarff – WPA Pool/Getty Images

Since their engagement interview in November 2017, the Sussexes have physically held onto each other in public like they are forever worried the other might be blown away by a strong gust of wind. Inside Westminster Abbey, the United Nations General Assembly, the 9/11 Memorial, Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace; on red carpets, London streets and even delivering food to the underprivileged in LA, the duo has remained quite literally attached to one another.

And yet come coronation day, they will be 8500km apart.

The decision for them to divide and conquer, so to speak here, is a highly atypical one for the pair who normally do everything as royal twofer.

Both Harry and Meghan have been unerringly, nauseatingly ready to gush about their connectedness.

Last year in the duchess’ first major solo interview since relinquishing her keys to the Buckingham Palace stationery cupboard, Meghan told The Cut that she and her husband were “like salt and pepper. We always move together.”

Elsewhere in the same piece she ‘cooed’: “One of the first things my husband saw when we walked around the house was those two palm trees. See how they’re connected at the bottom? He goes, ‘My love, it’s us.’  And now every day when Archie goes by us, he says, ‘Hi, Momma. Hi, Papa.’ ”

So why are ‘salt and pepper’ not moving together this time? What has happened to their relentlessly united front?

Harry and Meghan have gushed about their connectedness. Picture: Daniel Leal-Olivas/AFP

One explanation that has bubbled up is that May 6 also happens to be their son Archie’s fourth birthday. Therefore, Meghan is staying home to do parent duty while Harry tootles off to London to incur the chilliest of cold shoulders from his family.

Except, there is a very obvious rejoinder to this argument. Last year both the duke and duchess, along with Archie and his sister Princess Lilibet, flew back to the UK for only four days for the late Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebration and managed to fit Lili’s first birthday party in during such a brief trip.

Given that both children are obviously now older, thus making them less of a liability on a lengthy trans-Atlantic flight, and that the Sussexes seemed to easily combine both duty and parenting during the Jubilee, why couldn’t they have just done the same thing this time around?

It is thought that the coronation will finish by about 1pm meaning that they could be back at Frogmore around 2pm, leaving plenty of time for Archie to be suitably feted by his adoring parents and to consume his body weight in chocolate cake.

Meghan has decided to remain with their children in the US. Mike Coppola/Getty Images for 2022 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Ripple of Hope Gala

Still is another theory about this curious ‘salt and pepper’ move. Maybe Meghan simply didn’t wanna …

Maybe she didn’t want to have to stomach purse-lipped in-laws, being given decidedly B-list seats and having to watch the Prince and Princess of Wales and their children positively showered in adoration.

Maybe, the duchess simply could not stomach what going back would involve – emotionally, psychologically and sartorially.

All indications suggest that the reception that would have greeted the 41-year-old would have been a decidedly unpleasant one, both inside and outside the Abbey.

Kara Kennedy, writing in the Spectator, reported that “a source close to the family, who will attend the coronation” had told her that Meghan’s “presence may not have been entirely welcome. It’s more likely she would have been booed.” (By the public, I’m assuming.)

That’s a view backed up by the BBC’s royal correspondent Jonny Dymond who said during a radio interview: “There was genuine concern in the palace that if Meghan turned up she would be booed on the streets – a palace official said exactly that to me.”

“I think this is probably what they [the Royal Family] want – which is Prince Harry’s in the fold.”

Meanwhile, Daily Mail’s Dan Wootton popped up on Twitter to post, “Huge relief today from William and Kate in particular.”

Clearly Meghan’s presence will not be missed. (What’s that? Someone has reported hearing champagne corks popping in the vicinity of Clarence House? Huh.)

Meghan’s “presence may not have been entirely welcome”. Picture: Dominic Lipinski – Pool /Getty Images

Still, no matter why Harry and Meghan’s have made this coronation decision, that does not change the fact that he now faces having to get through what could end up being one of the hardest days of his adult life solo.

Aside from Prince Philip’s funeral in April 2021, when Meghan was heavily pregnant with Lili, Meghan has been by Harry’s side for the other two major gatherings of Windsors post-Megxit, namely the Jubilee and Her late Majesty’s funeral last September.

This time though, he’s set to be a one-duke band. No man is an island, or so John Donne scribbled, but Harry could be about to come very close when he finds himself adrift in a sea of unsmiling faces. (Only a year after Donne jotted down that famous line, the very first King Charles acceded the throne.)

Come May 6, salt and pepper will be, ever so briefly, moving in different directions. Still, they have a lifetime of hand-holding ahead of them. Just them, their private security team, and the West Coast paparazzi.

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