Prince Harry and Meghan Markle 'see the Queen regularly' now they're neighbours
They have been dogged by rumours of a rift between other members of the royal family all year, but Prince Harry and Meghan Markle actually see the Queen regularly now they’re neighbours, one royal expert has revealed.
Omid Scobie said now the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are neighbours with the Queen, they see her far more than most people realise.
That means that rumours that they and baby Archie won’t spend Christmas with her aren’t actually as significant as they may seem, he suggested.
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Speaking on Yahoo UK’s The Royal Special, he said: “We have to remember the Sussexes are practically neighbours with the Queen anyway.
“I was told by an aide at Buckingham palace that they do see her probably more often than they used to when they were based in London.
“So while we don’t hear about it, they’re in and out of each other’s lives more than we think.”
Every year, the royal family gathers at Sandringham, the Queen’s Norfolk estate, for the festive period.
But reports have claimed that Harry and Meghan, who are currently on a six-week break from royal duties, are considering joining her mother Doria Ragland in the US to celebrate Archie's first Christmas there.
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Fellow royal commentator Victoria Murphy said while much had been made of the decision by the Sussexes not to join the family at Sandringham for Christmas, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge had done the same thing twice, in 2012 and 2016.
“It’s not unprecedented - William and Kate have spent Christmas with the Middletons so we have seen this before,” she said.
“There was a sort of inevitability about the fact that, coming at the end of a year where we’ve had so many discussions of feuds, so many discussions of the issue of doing things their own way, that that narrative was then attached to their decision to not go to Sandringham at Christmas, when actually it also is a normal thing to do, there is precedent for it.”
Duncan Larcombe, former royal editor at The Sun, agreed, adding: “The Queen is not a dictator within the family and as Victoria says, it’s not unprecedented that members of the family who have got married will spend Christmas with the in-laws.”
