Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex attend Christmas Day Church service at Church of St Mary Magdalene on the Sandringham estate in 2018. Photo / Getty Images
Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex attend Christmas Day Church service at Church of St Mary Magdalene on the Sandringham estate in 2018. Photo / Getty Images
OPINION:
Sing it with me now: On the first day of Christmas my true love brought to me … never-ending royal controversy!
This year, the Windsors will be marking the holiday season in a vastly differently fashion to their usual tradition.
Gone is the large gathering of the Queen's extended family at Sandringham, her 270-room Norfolk home that usually sees the entire extended clan descend on the estate for turkey, church and an endless round of costume changes. (Guests need a minimum of five outfits per day. Even just packing for the break would be exhausting.)
Rather, like vast swathes of the rest of the world, the royal family will be celebrating inside their individual homes as the Covid pandemic continues to wreak havoc.
However, while the Queen's annual festive get-together might have all the trappings of a postcard-worthy celebration, replete with a 6m Christmas tree cut from the estate, feast after decadent, extravagant feast, and opportunities to bust out one's favourite black-tie get-ups, in recent years the holiday season has instead been the backdrop for a series of PR crises.
And the stars of these contretemps? The House of Windsor's two most glamorous members – Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.
While some of this far-from-festive story had been reported previously, this year, a series of bombshell biographies have painted a far more detailed picture of just how fraught things really were underneath the mistletoe and far away from the public glare.
Prince William, Catherine, Meghan and Prince Harry attend Christmas Day Church service at Church of St Mary Magdalene in 2017. Photo / Getty Images
The woman formerly known as Meghan Markle got her first taste of what a royal Christmas is like in 2017, less than two months after she and Prince Harry announced their engagement.
In what would prove to be a portent of future Christmases, her very presence at Sandringham caused a stir.
Until that point, the tradition had been that only married partners were brought along for the festive gathering. For example, in 2010 Kate Middleton was reportedly not invited to join in the family celebration despite being engaged to Prince William and already having the famous sapphire and diamond sparkler on her left hand.
Instead, Kate was left to spend the day with her family at their home in Bucklebury, albeit arriving in a Range Rover chock full of bodyguards in a taste of what her future life would look like.
When Kate finally made the coveted guest list the next year in 2012, now the Duchess of Cambridge, more than 3000 people came out to spot the newbie HRH during the royal family's annual walk to church at the nearby St Mary Magdalene. No pressure or anything.
When Meghan made her Sandringham debut in 2017 all eyes were on the newly-engaged woman and her first appearance alongside The Boss – aka Her Majesty – with much made of her public curtsy.
However, what really made that year a red letter occasion was it saw the inauguration of the so-called royal "Fab Four" which set off positively Beatlemania-esque levels of global frenzy. Shots of Princes William and Harry with their significant others striding towards the church presented a thrilling new image of the royal family, helping to energise the global brand.
Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex attend Christmas Day Church service at Church of St Mary Magdalene on the Sandringham estate in 2018. Photo / Getty Images
We now know that behind-the-scenes, things were not quite so jolly. By this stage, Harry and William's relationship was already strained after the elder Wales had questioned his brother's speedy romance, seriously offending and upsetting the younger Wales.
"'Don't feel like you need to rush this,' William told Harry, according to Finding Freedom. 'Take as much time as you need to get to know this girl.'"
"In those last two words, 'this girl,' Harry heard the tone of snobbishness that was anathema to his approach to the world," authors Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand wrote.
Likewise, Kate and Meghan's relationship had never really taken off. In Freedom, Scobie and Durand write: "The truth was Meghan and Kate just didn't know each other that well … Though it was not necessarily her responsibility, Kate did little to bridge the divide."
While on Christmas Day 2017 the world saw the "Fab Four", privately things were already reportedly coming apart at the seams.
Despite all of this, the two couples still spent the festive season together.
A friend told the Daily Mail earlier this year of that time: "How can you say [the Cambridges] weren't warm or welcoming when they hosted Meghan for Christmas, invited her into their totally private inner sanctum at Anmer Hall and did everything they could to make her feel at home?
"They personally cooked her favourite vegan food, they couldn't have been more welcoming."
Fast forward to the very same event in 2018 and the cracks in this fabled foursome started to become public during that Christmas. As the big day approached, the UK press reported that the Sussexes would be staying at Sandringham this year, and not the Cambridges' home Anmer Hall, a decision that raised eyebrows.
By that point, the Fab Four was being buffeted by story after story that argued all was not well between the two couples.
Allegations that Kate and Meghan were on the outs had been swirling in the British press since November, not helped by the fact news that the Sussexes had decided they wanted out of Kensington Palace and were moving to Windsor. (It's never a great sign when someone chooses to voluntarily live under the Heathrow flight path.)
Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge and Prince William with Prince George and Princess Charlotte attend the Christmas Day Church service at Church of St Mary Magdalene in 2019. Photo / Getty Images
The stakes of that year's public Christmas walk to Church were stratospherically high – would the couples dispel all this nasty noise by being seen to be the bestest of best chums? Or would they arrive at a frosty distance, thus confirming the reported rift?
When the Sussexes and the Cambridges stepped out to make their way from Sandringham to St Mary Magdalene, the world – and a vast bank of cameras – was watching.
While Kate and Meghan put on a good show, chatting amiably, it did not go unnoticed that the Princes failed to address one word to each other.
However, that was not Christmas 2018's only controversy. On Boxing Day each year, the menfolk of the Windsor clan troop out into the estate's 20,000-acres and enjoy an annual pheasant shoot – because nothing says joy and goodwill to all like the wholesale slaughter of birds.
Reports soon started to circulate that – gasp! – Harry would not be taking part in this tradition this year "under pressure from his pregnant wife", as the Telegraph reported at the time. So the narrative went in the British press at the time: Devoted animal-lover Meghan had forced her husband's hand and was making him miss an event he had been partaking in since he was 12 years old.
The unspoken implication here was plain – that Meghan was foisting her Californian notions on her new husband, forcing him to abandon this royal tradition. What a shrewish meanie!
Nevermind that there was absolutely no truth in this spurious storyline. At the time, a well-placed Kensington Palace source told the Telegraph that the reports were "completely untrue".
Rather, in Freedom, the book's authors argue that the reason Harry and Meghan left Sandringham before the annual shoot was because he was about to guest edit for the BBC's flagship radio show Today and had work to do.
Fast forward a year and Christmas 2019 was far from plain sailing for the Sussexes, despite the fact they were already thousands of kilometres away from Sandringham, ensconced in a borrowed Vancouver Island mansion of dubious taste.
That year had been the most bruising 12 months yet for the couple, who had faced a barrage of bad press and had had to contend with a never-ending series of PR crises.
In November, it was announced that they were off for a six-week sabbatical, a spot of R'n R away from the UK. However, then news broke that not only that, they would be skipping Christmas at Sandringham, meaning that their baby son Archie would be spending his first holiday season far away from his Gan Gan.
The news prompted the expected disapproving clucking from certain quarters while other voices very rightly pointed out that since marrying, William and Kate have spent two Christmases with the Middletons rather than the royal side of the family without triggering the same furrowed brows.
The Sussexes will this year celebrate at their newish home in Santa Barbara, the mansion they moved into in July this year.
It must surely be a relief for the family that this time, there is no bank of cameras watching, they won't need to change clothes multiple times, nor do they have to contend with spending part of the day in public with their every move being parsed and analysed.
In 2020, Harry and Meghan might finally have gotten the best Christmas present of all: Peace.
• Daniela Elser is a royal expert and writer with more than 15 years experience working with a number of Australia's leading media titles.
