Prince Harry’s Highgrove meet-up with King Charles is a step towards a father-son reconciliation, but his relationships with the rest of the Royal Family are another matter. He and Meghan didn’t attend Peter Phillip’s wedding in June and according to Woman’s royal correspondent, Duncan Larcombe, Harry and Zara Tindall’s “old close friendship” has reportedly “almost entirely evaporated”.
However, there’s still one cousin who seems to be keeping up communication with the Sussexes. The Duchess recently posted a holiday album and one picture of her, Harry and their children on the beach got me curious. If they’re all in the photo, who was behind the camera?
We can’t know for sure, but the snaps are thought to have been taken in Portugal and Princess Eugenie and her family split their time between there and the UK.
(Image credit: Meghan Markle/Instagram)
The beach picture is very personal and taken so that Archie and Lilibet’s faces aren’t visible. It’s always possible that Harry and Meghan set-up an automated photo-taking mechanism, though the framing looks like a person could’ve snapped it too.
Princess Eugenie and Harry have always been close and she’s the only royal known to have visited him and Meghan in the US since they moved. In his memoir, Spare, the Duke of Sussex wrote about how his cousin and wife got along “as if they were sisters” from the start.
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“If meeting the rest of my family goes like this, we’re home free,” he added.
However, the Princess and her sister Beatrice have been keeping a low profile in recent months amid the scandal that’s engulfed their father Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, who vehemently denies allegations of wrongdoing.
Last year, Duncan Larcombe suggested that the Duchess of Sussex will be “very aware of the sensitivities as she’s very media conscious”.
He claimed, “She won’t want to be seen to be too sympathetic towards them, so will keep her distance. I don’t think she could object to Harry privately supporting them, but they will be on very different pages.”
If it was Princess Eugenie who took the beach picture for Harry and Meghan, it suggests that privately they’re still close. The Princess is currently pregnant with her third baby, due this summer, and a meet-up would be a great time for her sons August and Ernest to bond more with Archie and Lilibet too.
(Image credit: Photo by Toby Melville – WPA Pool/Getty Images)
It’s also not like they would have to spend all their time together, as another Portugal picture showing just Meghan and Lili could easily have been taken by Prince Harry.
“[The Sussexes] love Portugal because Archie and Lilibet can simply be kids,” a source has claimed to PEOPLE. “It’s always very low-key with beach days, playing and spending time together as a family.”
Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank started partly living out there from 2022, but they still keep up their relationships with the other royals and attended Peter’s wedding. She could be a key link for Prince Harry and the rest of their cousins if he keeps working to achieve a wider royal “reconciliation”.
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Princess Eugenie
Prince Harry