Six years on from their dramatic exit as senior working royals, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are facing what can only be described as the ultimate royal cold shoulder — with Buckingham Palace reportedly planning to erase every last trace of the couple from their former UK home, Frogmore Cottage.
According to insiders, the Firm intends to revert the Windsor property to a pre-Harry-and-Meghan state, stripping out the couple's personal touches and renovations in what sources describe as a move to effectively wipe them from the royal fold for good.
"The Palace plan to effectively decimate the changes Harry and Meghan had previously made to their former UK home of Frogmore Cottage and revert the house back to a 'pre-Meghan and Harry era'," a source has revealed.
The timing is particularly stinging. Harry is due to return to the UK in July and had reportedly been hoping to use the trip to edge closer to a reconciliation with King Charles — the pair are said to have taken tentative steps towards a reunion, including a meeting last September. The Frogmore news, landing just weeks before his return, will hardly have warmed the atmosphere.
Meanwhile, Harry and Meghan remain settled in Montecito, California, where they live with their children Archie, seven, and Lilibet, five, in a stunning $29 million mansion complete with nine bedrooms, 16 bathrooms, a guest house, a pool and — rather endearingly — a chicken coop.
The Seesaw That Never Stopped
As the Palace effectively moves to write the Sussexes out of royal history, a new book is asking an uncomfortable question: was Meghan ever given a fair chance in the first place?
In Divide and Rule: Royal Women and Their Battles, author Catherine Mayer argues that Kate and Meghan were victims of what she calls a "patrimonarchy" — a system that deliberately pits royal women against each other to maintain control.
"A trick patriarchy pulls is to set women against each other, placing them at opposite ends of an infernal seesaw, where, for one to rise, the other must fall, as has happened with Kate and Meghan," Mayer writes. "Irreproachable Kate is held up in contrast to flawed Meghan, an outcome damaging for both women."
The book, out on 17 June, traces this pattern all the way back through royal history — from Henry VIII's wives to Diana and Camilla, and Princess Margaret's famously wry observation about her own relationship with Queen Elizabeth II: 'When there are two sisters and one is the queen, who must be the source of honour and all that is good, the other must be the focus of the most creative malice, the evil sister.'
Mayer argues that Kate and Meghan — briefly celebrated as part of the so-called "Fab Four" alongside William and Harry between 2017 and mid-2018 — never really stood a chance once the media machine decided it needed a heroine and a villain. Meghan herself told Oprah as much: 'They really seem to want a narrative of a hero and a villain.'
The Yorks: Another Royal Headache
Harry and Meghan aren't the only ones giving King Charles cause for a royal headache. A National Audit Office report last week revealed that the Crown has long been subsidising rent for Princess Beatrice's four-bedroom apartment at St James's Palace and Princess Eugenie's three-bedroom Ivy Cottage in the grounds of Kensington Palace.
The King's approach to his two nieces has been decidedly inconsistent of late. Beatrice and Eugenie joined the family at Sandringham last Christmas — their first appearance there since their father Prince Andrew was stripped of his royal titles — yet they were notably absent from Ascot last month following an apparent Palace decision to keep them at arm's length.
Both princesses did, however, appear together at the weekend wedding of Peter Phillips and Harriet Sperling in the Cotswolds, where the Princess of Wales also turned heads in a cream Roland Mouret dress and wide-brimmed hat.
It all paints a picture of a monarchy still very much in flux — navigating estrangements, reputations, and who gets to belong. Whether Harry's July visit brings any thaw with his father, or whether the gutting of Frogmore signals the door is well and truly closing, one thing is clear: the Palace rarely does anything by accident.
