Prince Harry’s 39th Birthday
No message has arrived this year from the accounts of Buckingham Palace and the Princes of Wales, as it had happened so far, even in 2020 and 2021, after the Megxit earthquake. Understandably, silence in 2022: Queen Elizabeth had died just a week ago and the royal family was taken by something else, with Twitter, Instagram and Facebook pages entirely monopolized by her memory. This year’s silence, however, has quite different reasons.
The Megxit Earthquake
On the one hand, it reflects the abyssal distance that currently exists between Harry and his original family. The Netflix documentary Harry & Meghan has upset more than balance, but it was Spare, the prince’s memoir, that gave the coup de grace to an already compromised relationship. On the other hand, it seems more than obvious: Harry is no longer a senior royal, that is, he no longer works actively for the Windsor House, so he has been equated with all the other “minor” royals of the family, from Prince Andrew of York, forced to retire to private life after the Epstein scandal, to his daughters, Beatrice and Eugenie, never entered the circle of the elect because of their distance from the succession line, up to the cousin Zara Phillips, who basically leads a private citizen’s life, as well as her family.
The Royal Family’s Silence
The only ones remembered on their birthday are the king and queen, the royal princess Anne, and the Duke of Edinburgh with his wife Duchess Sophie. There are then the Princes of Wales and their three children, George, 10, Charlotte, 8, and Louis, 5. The silence of the royal family, in short, would be a matter of mere protocol, even considering the latest gossip about Charles III and his second son. The king is reportedly working to rebuild a relationship with Harry, but away from gossip. And the much talked about meeting on September 17 that was talked about a few weeks ago will probably not happen. Harry and Meghan at the Invictus Games 2023 ©Getty Images. Charles III is about to leave for an official trip to France and it seems unlikely that he will be able to have a face-to-face with his son, who will return to California with Meghan Markle after closing the Invictus Games in Düsseldorf. Without passing through London.
