She’s been accused of handing down genetic pain and suffering and her family disgraced by racism allegations, but the Queen clearly doesn’t hold a grudge against Prince Harry, and now apparently the monarch has invited her grandson to join her for lunch at Windsor Castle when he travels over from California for the unveiling of the Princess Diana statue next month.
It’s a typically kind display by Her Majesty, and the lunch will be a chance for them to talk things through, but the invitation is said to have been made before the birth of the Duke and Duchess’s daughter last Friday, and Harry and Meghan announced that they had named their daughter Lilibet after the Queen’s family nickname.
Meghan is expected to stay behind at the couple’s £11 million mansion in Montecito, California, with baby Lilibet and their two-year-old son, Archie.
It would be the first time that Harry has had a tete a tete with his grandmother since he and Meghan announced that they were leaving Britain more than a year ago.
After the rancour of the Sandringham summit and tense Megxit negotiations, she hosted an informal Sunday lunch for Harry in March 2020, a month before he and Meghan formally stepped down as serving members of the Royal Family.
They dined in the Queen’s dining room in her Windsor Castle apartment, and when Harry attended the funeral of his grandfather, Prince Philip, he talked to the Queen only outside with other members of the Royal Family.
They will certainly have much to talk about.
In his and Meghan’s now-infamous interview with Oprah Winfrey, they made a series of distressing allegations about the Royal Family and accused an unnamed royal of racism.
In a series of public appearances since Harry blamed his family for his mental distress and said just the idea of travelling back to London was enough to fill him with terror.
The Queen, by contrast, has made clear that Harry and Meghan will be much-loved family members, but a Buckingham Palace spokesperson refused to comment.
But the Queen is 95 years old and I would guess she’s just had enough of all the tension and wants to fix things before she leaves this mortal sphere, although I’m sure he will be offered a portion of Humble Pie when he gets here.
But the Queen has been angering her UK subjects by not taking away their titles despite the preponderance of the United Kingdom wanting this, and Harry and Meghan might have been untruthful and cruel to her and the family but this lady has loved her grandson all his life, and that won’t change because blood is thicker than water.
And the Queen has become a lot softer in her old age, and don’t forget she forbade her sister Margaret from marrying who she wanted, not that she wanted to, but because she had no other option, and Charles wasn’t permitted to be with Camilla before Diana as she wasn’t pure, but times have changed somewhat, and she’s a grandmother and grandmothers will forgive quite a bit.
At the end of the day, family is family, whether you’re from royal stock or not, and I hope that they both have a grand time together and that Harry brings her loads of photographs of the great-grandchildren with him.
But as far as the public are concerned, they don’t believe that some DNA overrides her UK subjects wishes and that the Queen needs to hear them and act accordingly, but she really doesn’t, she’s the Queen, but first and foremost she’s a grandmother and great grandmother.
THE MONTHLY MOSQUITO 