Prince Harry and his wife Meghan made a low-key public return to the parade on Thursday launching Elizabeth II’s Jubilee, two years after their sensational departure from California.
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Excluded from the balcony of Buckingham Palace as now ‘non-working’ royals, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex remained invisible to broadcasts of the ‘Hail to the Colours’ parade, watching from the former office of the Duke of Wellington.
The tabloids, however, showed photos of Meghan, in a dark dress and a large white hat, smilingly waving at children to be quiet and chatting with Harry, whose dark suit contrasted with the traditional military uniform worn by his father Charles and his older brother William in the parade.
The couple is however expected Friday morning at Saint Paul’s Cathedral for a mass in honor of the sovereign, where they will this time rub shoulders with family members with whom relations are very degraded.
The youngest son of Prince Charles, 37, has returned to the UK several times since the “Megxit”, which marked the couple’s divorce from the monarchy: for the funeral of the Queen’s husband, Philip, in April 2021 then shortly after for the inauguration of a statue of his mother Diana. With Meghan, he also paid a brief visit to the queen, before the Invictus Games in the Netherlands in mid-April. But the couple remained invisible.
For Prince Philip’s funeral, Meghan stayed in Montecito, California’s coastal town where they reside, on the grounds that she was seven months pregnant with their daughter, Lilibet. The latter, named in honor of the queen, has never met the monarch or her grandfather Charles. She will be one year old on Saturday, during the Jubilee weekend.
The couple have also explained that they feel unsafe in the UK, where they have been denied royal police protection – which they are challenging in court.
Since their departure, relations between the “Sussex” and “the Firm”, a pejorative nickname for the royal family, have turned even more sour when the couple confided in Oprah Winfrey, on American television.
Meghan Markle claimed to have received no psychological support despite suicidal thoughts. The ex-American actress of mixed race also accused a member of the family (not the queen) of having wondered about the skin color of their son Archie, now 3 years old.
In the United Kingdom, the couple is extremely unpopular with the public (63% unfavorable opinions according to the YouGov institute) and for the tabloids, which do not miss an opportunity to criticize them. They have been accused of wanting to spoil the jubilee by drawing attention to themselves.
