Prince Harry and Meghan Markle snubbed by royal family at Queen’s funeral
What could have been a moment of redemption and unity for the royal family, has once again been trumped by grudges and pettiness.
It is done. Her Majesty The Queen last left Westminster Abbey for the final time.
Over the course of her 96-year-long life, the Abbey has borne witness to some of her most joyful days, like her wedding to Prince Philip and some of her most heart-rending, such as the funeral of her father George VI in 1952.
The Abbey, quite simply, represents beginnings and endings.
Yesterday should have been both for the royal family.
And instead there sat Harry and Meghan, Duke and Duchess of Sussex in the second row, behind King Charles and his wife Camilla, the Queen Consort in what we have come to know as Cousin Purgatory. If there had been a single solitary soul unaware of the Sussexes’ ostracisation and exile from the frontline ranks of the royal family, then the service we have witnessed has put blunt paid to that.
While the Princess Royal’s son Peter Phillips (17th in line to the throne) and her daughter Zara Tindall (20th in line) plus her husband Mike all occupied plum front row positions, next to the Prince and Princess of Wales, Harry, now number five in the order of succession, and Meghan were humiliatingly shoved in literal second string territory.
This is a nearly unthinkably blatant humiliation of the unruly Sussexes.
Why for the love of god, WHY?
After 10 days of mourning, 10 days of Harry and Meghan propelled back into the ranks of the royal family, all I can think is: what a waste. What a waste of an extraordinary opportunity to build a jot of something positive out of something so sad.
Somewhere inside Buckingham Palace, if smarter or cooler or cannier heads had prevailed behind the scenes, the last 10 days could have been an inflection point in the sorry Sussex saga.
Call it fate or destiny or plain old coincidence, but on September 8, the Queen’s final day, the couple was not 8500km away in California but ensconced in the royal milieu, at home at Frogmore Cottage on the Windsor estate.
It feels like a lifetime ago (or maybe just for me) but cast your mind back: They had been in the UK for several days and would be for at least one more; they had booked in charity events and the entire trip resembled a DIY pseudo-official tour.
Was the goal to bolster their charitable bonafides? To get more footage for Netflix? To top up their royal stardust ahead of their first major commercial push? Who knows?
The bottom line: On the day history came calling, the Sussexes were firmly on UK soil, putting them smack bang back in the centre stage of the biggest news story in the world and pitched back into Palace life.
Even though the Sussexes had, reportedly, not been planning on seeing any of his family while they were in the UK, in a heartbeat, they were forced into close and repeated proximity with tout les Windsors.
What could and should have happened next is some sort of real outreach on behalf of the Palace here, both out of cold-eyed pragmatism and family love, to try and kick start even the most infinitesimal thaw in the Sussex-Windsor Ice Age.
And yet what followed has been an undignified, chaotic series of flip-flops (the question of Harry wearing his military uniform versus morning dress), U-turns (being accidentally invited then uninvited from a State reception at the Palace) and what looks a lot like fairly obvious PR warfare (the Wales team making sure it was known just which brother had instigated the joint walkabout) on the royal family’s part.
William and Charles might be busy with their new jobs, titles and duchies but as the Sussexes prepare to jet back to the US, what is frustratingly clear is how miserably the royal family failed to capitalise on the hand that circumstance dealt them when it comes to Harry and Meghan.
Yes, we all know the long list of hurt that the Sussexes have aired – the charges of racism and cruelty; the allegations of being left in tears and of having their suffering abjectly ignored – none of which could ever be rendered null and void by an awkward English hug and a catch up over a slice of Battenberg cake.
But the last 10 days were a previously unthinkable opportunity for the most tentative first steps of bridge-building.
Sure, Harry’s book is still in the offing; Meghan’s podcast series and The Cut interview have shown she is still more-than-willing to litigate the wounds of the past; and they still have that Netflix documentary ticking along but here was a chance that might never come again.
Let’s ignore here who should be apologising to who; of who was in the wrong. If there was ever going to be a moment in a practical and emotional sense when the Palace might be able to bring the Sussexes back in from the cold, even a teeny, tiny smidgen, this was it.
Instead? The Sussexes have been humiliated, again, as a global audience that may have been in the billions watched on.
For the monarchy, having lost Her Majesty, the font of so much public goodwill, Charles now faces the Herculean task of maintaining, somehow, the steady flow of support for the Crown against a backdrop of the biggest cost of living crisis in a generation and a post-Brexit Britain that increasingly feels like it’s teetering on the brink.
If that was not enough to contend with, Charles is also responsible for a family that has come apart at the seams in recent years. The drama of the 90s, those years of sweet nothings about tampons and toe-sucking, now seem comparatively quaint in the face of accusations of sexual assault, racism and cruelty.
The King, if he wants to make his reign meaningful and not a short-lived William warm-up act, a reign perpetually overtaken by a burbling series of family crises, he must get his house in order. Having his second son and daughter-in-law on home soil presented a precious chance to try and do just that.
A chance that looks to have been squandered over a matter of days and when an HRH or two sat down to tweak the seating chart.
Factor in too, at a time when public attitudes in the UK and around the Commonwealth are being recalibrated in terms of the monarchy, here was a golden opportunity for Charles to define himself and his reign straight out of the gate as proactive and peaceable.
I’m not naive enough to think that a kind gesture or two would have seen Harry and Meghan suddenly decide to issue a retraction of their Oprah claims and would see them singing Kumbaya around the fireplace with Queen Consort Camilla.
Slates were never going to be wiped clean or wholesale forgiveness, in either direction, was ever going to be on the table.
But what must have surely been vaguely possible was an attempt on the part of the royal family to reopen lines of communication or to try and forge some skerrick of connection or to find common ground.
There was, as far as we know, not even the most limp of attempts in this direction and the royal response has been wholly wanting. (As far as anyone knows, poor Harry didn’t even get a Waitrose Chocolate Indulgence cake dropped round by a hastily dispatched footman on his birthday last week.)
The monarchy is meant to embody stability and a reassuring constancy. Charles should have seized this moment to cast himself as the new national paterfamilias by extending some, any, sort of hand to Harry and Meghan. It would have shown leadership and grace and humanised him as the UK tries to come to grips with him as king.
Such a play could also have potentially taken some of the searing heat out of the Sussexes’ anger. Practically, a Harry and Meghan that are even one per cent less aggrieved or one per cent more mollified is all the better for the future of the monarchy and Charles.
How must it have felt for Harry, a man who dearly loved his grandmother and former Commander-in-Chief, to sit through the hour-long service, staring at the back of his father’s head? It is impossible to ignore the overriding sour taste of pettiness in the decision to put the duke and duchess where they were seated.
If only today we could say that one small, good thing had come out of the Queen’s passing.
For the final time: Vivat Regina.
Daniela Elser is a writer and a royal expert with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles
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