The Duke and Duchess of Sussex and Prince Andrew will not join Queen Elizabeth on the Buckingham Palace balcony at Trooping the Colour. Video / AP
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It's not often that William and Kate, Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, get a frank public assessment of their professional performance - but thankfully, that's what Welsh pensioners are for.
During the pandemic in 2020, the couple called the bingo numbers for the residents of a care home in Cardiff via Zoom.
When they pitched up in person three months later and met the same residents, they were introduced to then-87-year-old Joan Drew-Smith, who wasted no time telling the future King and Queen what she thought of their bingo turn.
And 'if only' when it comes to their return to Cardiff this weekend: It just happens to be the very same day that Harry and Meghan, Duke and Duchess of Sussex will meet the Queen and finally introduce her to their daughter and her namesake Lilibet. (Their son Archie, 3, will also be there of course.)
Prince William and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, are due in Cardiff on the day his brother Prince Harry and wife Meghan will meet with the Queen. Photo / File
The Sussexes landed back in the UK early Thursday morning, their first meaningful return to Harry's homeland since their wintry exit from the royal ranks in 2020.
They travelled via – what else? – private jet, landing at Farnborough Airport where they were met by one of Her Majesty's own Range Rovers and three of her protection officers to make the half-hour trip to their home, Frogmore Cottage. (Of the warm welcome, "The Queen believed it was the right thing to do," an insider told the Sun.)
They are of course back because Thursday (London time) is the first of the four days of celebrations for the Queen's Platinum Jubilee, marking her historic 70 years on the throne. Take that Queen Victoria! The eternally dour monarch only notched up 63 years, many of which she spent sourly in Scotland ignoring a lick of duty.
The Jubilee will kick off with Trooping the Colour, the sovereign's official birthday bash, followed by a service of thanksgiving at St Paul's on Friday, a concert at Buckingham Palace on Saturday night and a massive People's Pageant on Sunday involving more than 5000 participants and a surfeit of puppets.
It was only several weeks ago that Harry and Meghan finally announced that they would be attending the festivities, only for a report to come out that claimed they are filming something called an "at-home" docu-series for Netflix. (What do they call a spade in Montecito? A hand-tooled earth extraction device?)
The whole family put on a united front in 2018, but things will be much more tense behind the scenes for the Queen's Jubilee celebrations this weekend. Photo / AP
While Harry and Meghan, now private citizens, won't be appearing in any official capacity, we will still be seeing them.
For Trooping, they will reportedly be ignominiously bussed to Horse Guards Parade with other extended members of the royal family, rather than making the journey in the royal carriage procession as they did in 2019. There, they and various extraneous Windsors will watch the military spectacle from the nearby Major General's Office.
Then on Friday, the duke and duchess will be part of the vast sea of titled relatives who will join Her Majesty at St Paul's including pariah Prince Andrew for a service of thanksgiving.
With an unspecified gaggle of younger members of the royal family likely to be in the audience for Saturday's conference, there's a chance we might see Harry and Meghan then too. Ditto Sunday's Pageant hoo-haa.
But of course this trip is about far more than giving Meghan a couple of opportunities to prove that she can wear the hell out of a fabulous hat that costs about as much as a second-hand car. Oh no. This is a biggie in a strictly personal sense too.
Harry's relatives have not seen his son Archie since 2019 and baby Lili has never set a tiny foot on British soil.
Of course in the intervening years, not only has their family grown but Harry and Meghan have mutinied in the most spectacular fashion, breaking royal ranks to tell a reported global audience of 50 million people about how institutionally racist and cruel the Palace is.
It was only several weeks ago that Harry and Meghan finally announced that they would be attending the festivities. Photo / File
It was not only the Palace in the Sussexes' crosshairs during that interview but Kate too, with Meghan telling the world that her sister-in-law made her cry in the lead-up to their 2018 wedding. (There had previously been reports that Meghan had made Kate cry, a subject that the Duchess of Cambridge has never publicly discussed.)
Not helping this charged situation was that the duo reportedly "told, not asked" Her Majesty that they wanted to co-opt her lifelong nickname for their daughter.
Or to put it another way, it is the Duke and Duchess of Sussex who are responsible for sparking one of the biggest crises in modern royal history and it is the Duke and Duchess of Sussex who have now turned up (in part at least) for crumpets and some quality family time.
Thus we get to the very curious question of the timing of le grand family reunion which is, according to the Sun, set down for Saturday.
Rather than attending that day's Jubilee event (the Derby at Epsom) the 96-year-old Queen will instead be enjoying a reunion with her adored grandson and his family.
Curious then that the day earmarked for Harry's emotional return to the royal bosom just so happens to be the same day that the remaining working members of the royal family will all be out waving the flag for the monarchy across the country. (Princess Anne will be going to Scotland on Friday and then on Saturday, the Cambridges will be heading to Wales, and Edward and Sophie, Earl and Countess of Wessex are off to Northern Ireland.)
Prince Andrew, Meghan the Duchess of Sussex and Prince Harry won't be so visible with the Queen as they were in 2018, watching a Royal Air Force fly-past. Photo / AP
Was it simply a matter of busy diaries clashing, or something more calculated that explains why this years-in-the-making trans-Atlantic family get-together was planned for right when the Cambridges are far away from Windsor?
To be fair, Saturday will be Lili's first birthday, with plans for the tot to enjoy a small party at Frogmore Cottage.
But do we seriously believe that the only window courtiers could find in Her Majesty's schedule for this touching family gathering just happened to be exactly when William and Kate will be more than 200km away?
How likely is it, given the decidedly vinegary relationship between the Cambridges and the Sussexes, that they might be planning on some other get-together outside of Saturday's planned meeting?
A few days ago the Mirror reported that William and Harry have been sharing regular FaceTime calls to "rebond" but that "Meghan and Kate, both 40, have so far held back from on-screen contact."
Again, this would hardly suggest some sort of jolly afternoon tea replete with jammy dodgers is on the cards for the two couples.
Which leaves us with the possibility that Harry, Meghan, Archie and Lili might spend the better part of a week in the UK and not actually catch up at all with William and Kate and their kids, Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis.
That would be a crying shame for the five little ones given how close both William and Harry are with their various cousins and how those relationships seem to have flourished in adulthood. (They have, Mike Tindall once revealed, a WhatsApp group and all.)
With the start of the Jubilee, an event involving horses, children, mock corgis, thousands of performers, the military, and Netflix's most high-profile hires, the only thing left to say here is, pob lwc, which is of course 'good luck' in Welsh. The Queen, the horses and the kids are all going to need it.
