British TV host and provocateur Piers Morgan has claimed that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's reunion with the royal family on the sidelines of Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee was “frosty” and “tense”.
Piers cited royal sources as telling him that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex had disappeared behind the scenes at the Trooping of the Colour parade on 2 June.
“The rest of the family went into the garden and were milling around and they just disappeared. So there is already a lot of tension there and the only glue it seems in this whole tension is the Queen and she’s not going to be there”, Piers said on Fox News.
The 96-year-old monarch appeared at Buckingham Palace on Thursday during the festivities and participated in a beacon lighting ceremony from Windsor Castle. However, it was later announced that the Queen would miss a thanksgiving service at St Paul's Cathedral on Friday after experiencing "some discomfort" during the first day of her Platinum Jubilee celebration.
Piers could not resist fanning the flames of his now-notorious feud with Meghan Markle. He went on Twitter to suggest to his 7.9 million followers that the reaction of Prince Louis – the three-year-old son of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge – to the royal flypast was a reaction to his aunt Meghan.
The youngster stole the show after pulling faces and blocking his ears as he stood on the Buckingham Palace balcony at Thursday's Trooping the Colour with his great-grandmother, the Queen.
Not satisfied with this one dig at Meghan Markle, Piers Morgan, who was covering events for Fox News, said:
“Meghan and Harry, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, have flown in from California. They're not allowed on the balcony either because they're not deemed to be working royals in the sense of doing any work for duty. They do it all for money from Netflix, so they've been shoved out the back, that sort of little outhouse at the back of the palace”.
Piers Morgan, who left Good Morning Britain after lashing out at Meghan Markle and her husband Prince Harry following their tell-all sit-down with Oprah Winfrey in March 2021, appears not to have buried the proverbial hatchet.
At the time, the couple’s hints at racism in the UK royal family and other claims set them on a collision course with the TV host, who almost got cancelled for his views of the Sussexes.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, who stepped down as working royals in 2020, flew in from California to attend the Platinum Jubilee celebrations. The appearance is their first official engagement in more than two years. The couple were reportedly bringing their three-year-old son, Archie, and almost one-year-old daughter, Lilibet, for the public family reunion.
The Queen met her great-granddaughter for the first time after the Duke and Duchess of Sussex had lunch with the monarch and senior royals behind closed doors at Windsor on Thursday, UK media outlets reported.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are expected to remain mostly low-profile over the four-day jubilee weekend.
The Sussexes were not allowed on the Buckingham Palace balcony yesterday, but had to watch proceedings from the Major General’s Office with other non-working members of the British royal family.