Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were reportedly pushed over the edge into stepping down as senior royals in 2020’s Megxit over the late Queen Elizabeth allegedly snubbing them during her 2019 Christmas speech.
As per the authors of the biography Finding Freedom, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were convinced that the royal firm was against them when the Queen sat down for her annual Christmas speech in 2019 with photos of family, except Harry and Meghan, surrounding her.
According to royal experts and authors Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand, Prince Harry and Meghan and their baby son Archie seemed to be deliberately left out of the lineup of photos on the Queen’s desk and was the ‘final straw’ for the couple.
They wrote: “One didn’t have to look further than the family photos displayed during the Queen’s Speech on Christmas Day.”
“In the Green Drawing Room at Buckingham Palace, where the Queen delivered her address, viewers glimpsed photos of the Cambridges and their children, Charles and Camilla, Prince Philip, and a black-and-white image of George VI. Noticeably absent was a photo of Harry, Meghan, and their new baby, Archie,” continued Durand and Scobie.
They added: “Palace sources insisted that the photos were chosen to represent the direct line of succession, but for Harry and Meghan, it had been yet another sign that they needed to consider their own path.”
Scobie and Durand also added that by that time, Prince Harry and Meghan “felt they had long been sidelined by the institution and were not a fundamental part of its future.”
Just about a month later, Prince Harry and Meghan announced their departure from the royal family, and have since resided in the US with their kids Archie and Lilibet.
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