Where Do Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Stand With the Royal Family?

Jessica Sager

August 5, 2023 at 10:37 PM·7 min read

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle began their marriage as "rock star royals," but following their infamous "Sussexit," a royal family feud brewed, stoked by the Sussexes' interview with Oprah Winfrey, their Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan and most recently with Harry's memoir Spare.

While Harry has been open about his beefs with his brother and father, King Charles, Prince William and their wives, Queen Camilla and Kate Middleton, have remained, at least publicly, quite mum.

Find out where Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's relationship with the royal family is now.

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry remain mostly estranged from King Charles

While Prince Harry attended his father's coronation in May 2023 (on his son Prince Archie's fourth birthday, no less), the pair reportedly still aren't on great terms, with Harry not spending any "meaningful time" with his father during, before or since the ceremonies. He also was conspicuously missing from the royal family portrait taken at the coronation.

Harry famously, in Harry & Meghan, claimed that men in the royal family married for duty, not for love, insinuating that his father never loved his mother, the late Princess Diana. Harry also said that Charles cut him off financially when he and Markle left their senior royal role and moved to California, refusing to pay for the family's security despite threats against them and their children.

For her part, Markle didn't attend the coronation at all, and a report in The Telegraph suggested that she sent her father-in-law a letter about unconscious bias within the royal family. However, a rep for the Duchess shot down claims that she skipped out on the coronation because of Charles' alleged response to said letters.

"The Duchess of Sussex is going about her life in the present, not thinking about correspondence from two years ago related to conversations from four years ago," her rep told The Los Angeles Times. "Any suggestion otherwise is false and frankly ridiculous. We encourage tabloid media and various royal correspondents to stop the exhausting circus that they alone are creating."

Of course, the insistence of Markle living in the present came about six months after she and Harry rehashed their royal wedding and exit in their own docuseries, but maybe that's the amount of time they needed to move forward.

There's no love lost between Prince Harry and Queen Camilla

Prince Harry holds a bit of a grudge for Camilla being The Other Woman in his parents' marriage.

"I have a huge amount of compassion for her, you know, being the third person within my parents' marriage," Harry said on Good Morning America, alluding to his mother's Panorama interview, in which she famously said, "There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded."

He also lamented in Spare about how quickly she turned his room in the palace into a walk-in closet when he moved out—and blamed her for the royal family and "The Firm" allegedly planting stories about him in the media in an effort to somehow rehabilitate her image.

Of their current relationship, he said on GMA, "We haven't spoken for a long time. I love every member of my family, despite the differences. So when I see her, we're perfectly pleasant with each other. She's my stepmother. I don't look at her as an evil stepmother. I see someone who married into this institution, and done everything she can to improve her own reputation and her own image, for her own sake."

Prince William and Prince Harry still aren't speaking

Prince William reportedly hasn't spoken to Prince Harry since Sussexit, outside of their staged walkabout when Queen Elizabeth II died in September 2022. The pair didn't speak at King Charles' coronation, nor at an unveiling of a statue of their late mother, Princess Diana.

The brothers' reluctance to quash the beef is at least somewhat understandable, because it got heated. Harry referred to William as his "archenemy" in Spare, alleging that William physically attacked him in an argument over Markle. Elsewhere in the book, Harry said it was William and Kate who urged him to wear a Nazi costume to a party. In the Harry & Meghan docuseries, the Sussexes accused William's wing of The Firm of planting negative stories about Markle and Harry in the press.

As for Markle's relationship with Charles and William, a source told PEOPLE in August 2023, "The situation with his father and brother is still very difficult for him. Meghan is always supportive of it though. She used to be negative about it. It seems she has kind of moved on now."

Meghan Markle and Kate Middleton mended fences at one point, but that's likely over

During Markle and Harry's sitdown with Winfrey, Markle detailed the argument over bridesmaid dresses for Princess Charlotte that ended up with at least one of the adult women in tears. Early reports said Markle made Middleton cry, but Markle insisted that Middleton made her cry, but that Middleton then sent Markle flowers and note apologizing. Markle also made sure to say on air that Middleton was "a good person."

However, in Harry & Meghan, Markle said her first meeting with Middleton was "jarring" because of how formal the now-Princess of Wales was. Further, in Spare, Harry detailed how miffed Middleton got when Markle asked her to borrow some lip gloss.

The royal wives reunited after the Queen's death for a royal walkabout, and a source close to Middleton told PEOPLE that it was the Princess who encouraged the mini-reunion, explaining, "She didn't want her or William to have any regrets."

That said, it wasn't pleasant: She and Markle appeared to have never even made eye contact during the excursion, and in the book Our King: Charles III, author Robert Jobson claimed that Middleton later called the brief stroll "one of the hardest things [she's] ever had to do." (She's had a pretty privileged life.)

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are close with Princess Eugenie

At least one member of the royal family is still in the Sussexes' good graces: Prince Harry's cousin Princess Eugenie. Eugenie actually was friendly with Markle before she and Harry began dating, and Eugenie and her husband Jack Brooksbank have long remained close with Harry and Markle. The pair even temporarily lived in Harry and Markle's former residence, Frogmore House.

Prince Harry compared his treatment to that of sexual predator-adjacent Prince Andrew

In Spare, when Harry complained about the royal family cutting off his security, he put his uncle, Jeffrey Epstein pal Prince Andrew—who was accused of sexually abusing then-teenager Virginia Giuffre—on blast. Prince Andrew was stripped of his royal titles, but somehow still maintained his security paid for by the crown.

"Despite being involved in an embarrassing scandal, accused of having sexually abused a young woman, nobody had suggested removing his security," Harry wrote in his memoir, adding, "People may have a lot of grievances towards us, but sexual offenses weren't one of them."

Shots fired! To date, he hasn't spoken publicly about his (allegedly) creepy uncle otherwise, even though reports keep coming out about Andrew and Epstein's relationship years after Epstein's death.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle aren't interested in abolishing the monarchy

Despite complaints about the racism Markle faced personally, as well as the institutional racism, colonization and imperialism that made the British royal family so wealthy, the Sussexes don't want to abolish the monarchy (and gave their children royal titles after the Queen's death, making them Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet).

In fact, Harry has said the reason he and Markle have been so vocal about unconscious bias in the British royal family is to prevent the next generation of the family from repeating the mistakes of their predecessors—and Harry and Markle would potentially return to the royal fold under certain conditions. Those conditions mainly involve the royal family's relationship with the British media.

"Even if there was an agreement or an arrangement between me and my family, there is that third party that is going to do everything they can to make sure that that isn't possible," Harry told ABC News. "Not stopping us from necessarily going back, but making it unsurvivable [sic], and that's really sad because that is essentially breaking the relationship between us."

He added, "If there was something in the future where we can continue to support the Commonwealth, then that's of course on the table, but there's so much that needs to happen between now and then, and so much that can happen."

Next, Find Out How Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Make Money Now

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