In June, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry returned to the UK as a couple for the first time since they stepped down as senior royals in January of 2020.
The trip did not going according to plan.
Many royal watchers were hopeful that the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebration would offer an occasion for the two dueling factions of the Windsor clan to bury the hatchet.
Instead, by all accounts, the Jubilee only made things worse — both in terms of relations among the royals, and the Sussexes reputation among Brits.
Perhaps in the interest of doing damage control, Meghan and Harry have already planned a return trip to the UK and the European mainland.
In September, the couple will visit England and Germany in support of various humanitarian causes.
The British tabloid media has described the trip as Harry and Meghan’s “royal tour,” with some alarmists going so far as to allege that the Sussexes are attempting to establish their own royal family.
We highly doubt that the couple is plotting anything quite so extreme.
But it’s worth noting that there are no plans for Harry and Meghan to visit the royals during their time in the UK.
The couple announced their plans through a spokesperson earlier this month.
“Prince Harry and Meghan, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are delighted to visit with several charities close to their hearts in early September,” the statement read.
Immediately, the British media began digging for greater detail, and they were presumably delighted when insiders indicated that the Queen likely would not be making time to visit with Harry and Meghan during their trip.
One reason alleged reason is the ongoing concern surrounding Harry’s upcoming memoir.
A source tells the Daily Beast that the royals are “treating Harry with caution until his memoir, due out later this year, is published.”
Another reason that the rest of the Windsor clan is keeping the Sussexes at arm’s length is the fact that the couple’s unsanctioned tour is considered by some to be a violation of earlier agreements regarding royal duties.
As you may recall, when they announced their departure from the UK, Harry and Meghan expressed a desire to stay on as part-time senior royals, but the Queen wasn’t having it.
Some believe this trip is tantamount to the Sussexes simply going ahead and resuming royal duties regardless.
“The chutzpah of those two is unreal,” a former Buckingham Palace staffer told The Daily Beast.
“Their proposal for being hybrid working royals was comprehensively rejected [at the Sandringham Summit], but it looks like they are just going ahead and doing it anyway.”
It’s hard to imagine that the Queen and company could be so upset about a humanitarian tour.
But apparently, some believe the affront is so major that it could lead to Harry and Meghan being stripped of their duke and duchess titles.
The Beast notes that the “notion of stripping them of their “Duke/Duchess” titles remains a popular one in the UK,” and many royal traditionalists believe it should have happened years ago.
If the Queen is as furious about the upcoming tour as insiders claim, it’s not hard to see why so many believe that she might finally take such drastic action.
But as many outlets have noted, the move would be virtually unprecedented, and disgraced royals such as Prince Andrew and his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson have been permitted to retain their titles.
So it seems unlikely that Buckingham Palace will take any sort of official action that would signal their disapproval over Harry and Meghan’s upcoming trip.
But that doesn’t mean that the Queen is happy with the rebellious American branch of her family.
