Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were kept apart from Prince William and Kate Middleton to avoid the couple being pictured with the royals during the Jubilee thanksgiving service, a royal expert has claimed.
Harry and Meghan made their only public appearance during the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee weekend at a thanksgiving service at St Paul’s Cathedral.
The couple arrived in a private car alone, and sat on the opposite side of the aisle to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.
And, after reports that Harry attempted to meet William during the Jubilee but was refused, royal expert Richard Eden told the Palace Confidential podcast that the St Paul’s seating plan had been engineered to avoid the brothers coming face to face.
“It was genuinely fascinating because even though the Royal Family were very keen to make sure that Harry and Meghan were mentioned in the court circular directly after the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, so they kept with the order of precedence, that went out of the window in the service,” Richard suggested.
“What we saw in the service was that they were relegated to the second row. So even though he’s the brother of the future [King], he had to sit behind the Queen’s cousins who come far down the line of precedence.”
Richard went on to note that Harry and Meghan had arrived separately from the bus carrying the minor royals, and entering the church, had needed to shuffle awkwardly past Princess Eugenie and Beatrice to find their seats.
“That’s because when they left, there was a procession to leave the cathedral, and it meant that Harry and Meghan were far behind, they had to wait for everyone else in their row to leave first,” he claimed.
“So they couldn’t be photographed, they weren’t in the same shots as Prince Charles or the Cambridges, they were nowhere near them and that was very much deliberate.”
Also speaking on the panel, royal correspondent Victoria Murphy agreed with Richard’s take, adding: “The seating I’m sure was decided in advance, and I think it’s hard not to look at it as a symbol of the distance between the brothers.
“And it also meant that there was no picture that could be taken that showed them all in the same frame, that showed the Sussexes directly behind the Cambridges and Charles and Camilla.
“This whole weekend we haven’t had a photograph of William and Harry in the same picture, apart from those wide shots in the cathedral.”
This comes after another royal expert claimed there is “still a lot of bad atmosphere” between the princes, and alleged that William had refused to make eye contact with Harry during the service.
To get more royal stories from Daily Star delivered straight to your inbox sign up to one of our free newsletters here.
Source: Read Full Article