Reports of the strings Prince William may or may not be pulling as the future king of England can’t be trusted with certainty, but it’s even trickier to question the recollections of those who witnessed exactly what drove Prince Harry and Meghan Markle away — especially since these anecdotes establish that the couple’s feelings of powerlessness within the palace walls resulted from a gradual process, and didn’t just happen overnight.
So far, we have heard many instances of the alienating circumstances Meghan and Harry faced as a newlywed couple, and how King Charles and Prince William refused to do the bare minimum to lessen their suffering at the hands of the relentless paparazzi, or to help them ease into palace politics. From heartlessly shooting down the Duchess of Sussex’s plea for professional mental health help, to using Harry to save William from a scandal, those within the palace parameters gave the duo enough reasons not to stick around in hopes of things ever getting better.
Sadly, even Harry and Meghan’s wedding day couldn’t escape this chaos.
Whether you believe Princess Diana’s youngest, or make the numerous palace insider reports your primary source, William’s disdain and dislike for Meghan before Harry married her has been recounted way too many times. But as we know, his brother did not heed the Prince of Wales’s words of warning, and not only proceeded with the wedding, but (gasp!) continued to take Meghan’s needs and emotions into account. Meghan and Harry favored following the American tradition of seating couples together at the wedding ceremony — something that irked William and Kate to the point that they blatantly changed the arrangement, going against the then-about-to-be-married couple’s decision, as shared by Harry in his memoir, Spare.
The real kicker? The Windsors point blank denied it was they who made the change, and tried to blame it all on an unknown “someone else,” and then tried to bait-and-switch by doubling down on a lie whereby Harry and Meghan supposedly pulled the same seating switcheroo at Pippa Middleton’s wedding, in 2017. In Harry’s words,
“For our part, we chipped in that we weren’t too pleased when Willy and Kate switched place cards and changed seats at our wedding. We’d followed the American tradition, placing couples next to each other, but Willy and Kate didn’t like that tradition, so their table was the only one where spouses were apart.
They insisted it wasn’t them, it was someone else. And they said we’d done the same thing at Pippa’s wedding. We hadn’t. Much as we’d wanted to. We’d been separated by a huge flower arrangement between us, and though we’d desperately wanted to sit together, we hadn’t done a thing about it. None of this airing of grievances was doing us any good, I felt. We weren’t getting anywhere.”
It came down to William’s word against Harry’s, and it doesn’t take a genius to figure out who was believed over whom. This was when Charles wasn’t yet crowned, and his reign as regent was expected to last as long as his mother’s had. But could Harry be presenting an exaggerated account of that day’s events? Maybe, but if he is not, any chances of his future royal return look slim now that an impending “Willy and Kate” -dominated, glittery, crown-adorned future is expected to be here sooner than initially predicted, given Charles’ battle with cancer.
Published: Oct 10, 2024 05:00 pm