As the various working members
of the royal family swarmed across the country yesterday – the Duke and Duchess
of Cambridge in Wales, Princess Anne in Epsom, the Earl and Countess of Wessex
in Belfast – the Duke and Duchess of Sussex celebrated the wedding of their
daughter Lilibet. first birthday in Windsor.
Perhaps they went to the
castle to visit the queen? You can imagine Her Majesty – who had never met her
great-granddaughter until last week – would have been delighted.
Under normal circumstances, it
might even have become a greater opportunity, a chance for several generations
of the family to come together and create memories, as she herself recently put
it.
After all, the Queen is not
the only family member that Lilibet – or for that matter, her older brother
Archie – has not gotten to know much.
Uncles, aunts, cousins, their
grandfather Prince Charles – they all remain virtually strangers to the Sussex
children. That’s a shame, because as Prince Harry knows from his close
friendship with his own cousins, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, family ties
matter.
As for William and Kate
themselves, you clearly get the impression that they would rather attend the
opening of an envelope on Mars than face Harry and Meghan.
That was certainly the
impression made on Friday in St Paul’s Cathedral, where not a single glance
came between the two couples.
Fair enough they were on
opposite sides of the cathedral and arrived separately. But you would never
have known the brothers were even related, let alone ever so close that they
finished each other’s sentences.
