The Queen delivers a heartfelt message of hope in her Christmas address, praising the "indomitable spirit" of those who have risen "magnificently" to the challenges of the pandemic. Video / BBC
Opinion
After a dramatic year for the Royal Family, the Queen's annual Christmas address contained a stark message for Harry and Meghan.
When it comes to adjectives which perfectly sum up the Queen, "inscrutable" is one of my favourites.
For a woman whose every utterance and word is meticulously crafted and scripted, for whom her every public appearance is rigorously choreographed, she gives very, very little away.
However, conversely, the 94-year-old monarch has also became impressively adept at being able to convey multitudes using such ostensibly simple things as her choice of broach to the position of her erstwhile Launer handbag, having long improvised a sort of regal semaphore.
Take the selection of family images which appear on her desk during her Christmas message.
Queen Elizabeth II appears on a screen by videolink from Windsor Castle. Photo / Getty Images
Those framed, elegant shots of her nearest and sometimes dearest are not randomly chucked on the antique desk she sits behind at the last minute by some harried BBC assistant before they begin filming.
Rather, I'm guessing, a cadre of pinstriped courtiers and the monarch spend time debating and planning which exact shots to use with a solemnity and focus usually reserved for missile strikes and her Ascot headwear selection.
Every year, when the Queen's broadcast airs, her choice of which photographs appear by her side is scrutinised and parsed with obsessive rigour and read as a clear cut signal of which of her extended clan are in or out of favour.
And boy, this year's selection – or lack thereof – would seem to speak volumes.
There alongside Her Majesty, resplendent in purple and wearing the Courtauld Thomson Scallop-Shell Brooch (a personally meaningful piece left to her by her mother) stood only one, rather small framed family memento, namely a surprisingly personal and casual image of her husband Prince Philip. (Generally we see three to four previously released official images of various Windsors, nary a blurry Kodak image among them, with even more shots on side tables.)
What was marked about this year's outing was what was not there, namely any images of her wider family including Harry and Meghan, Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
Nor in her just under five minute address did she once mention the tumultuous and historic events her own family had experienced this year, including her grandson and his wife quitting and both Prince Charles and Prince William both being diagnosed with COVID.
Added to which, video footage which played over parts of the speech showed only the remaining senior working members undertaking events this year (the poor old Duke of Glouscter and Duke of Kent who still toil away on Her Majesty's behalf somehow got forgotten) despite the fact that Harry and Meghan logged three months of this year as official representatives of his grandmother. (I'm not sure if this particular move was prudent or just kinda petty.)
The message, whether intended or not, seems pointed: The Sussexes have been edited out of the official royal narrative.
There is a particular sting to this state of affairs given that in the long and winding road to Megxit, the Queen's speech in 2019 was, reportedly, a significant moment. That year, Her Majesty recorded her annual speech saying that the year had been "quite bumpy" surrounded by images of Philip, the Cambridge family, Prince Charles and wife Camilla Duchess of Cornwall and her father King George VI.
Harry and Meghan. Photo / Getty Images
For Harry and Meghan, at that stage 7500km away in Canada enjoying a supposed sabbatical from royal working life, the nonagenarian sovereign's failure to include their family was allegedly read as pointed rebuke. (So too was the official image released of the Queen with Princes Charles, William and George.)
In the biography Finding Freedom, authors Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand write of that point in time: "Harry felt as though he and Meghan had long been sidelined by the institution and were not a fundamental part of its future. One didn't have to look further than the family
photos displayed during the Queen's speech on Christmas Day … Noticeably absent was a photo of Harry, Meghan, and their new baby, Archie. Palace sources insisted that the photos were chosen to represent the direct line of succession, but for Harry and Meghan, it was yet another sign that they needed [sic] consider their own path."
Which brings us yesterday's speech. For the past 12 months, stories about the rift between Harry and his wider family have dominated royal news. Time and again, there have been reports painting relations between the renegade royal and his father and brother as fractured.
If the Queen had chosen this year to include, say, an adorable shot of the Sussexes and their 18-month-old son Archie on her desk, it would have been a powerful, symbolic olive branch and incredibly loud signal to both the duke and duchess and the world that Her Majesty still held the family in high regard.
Such a simple – but profound – gesture would surely have helped heal the breach.
She clearly chose not to.
It is an omission, which given Harry and Meghan's previous alleged sensitivity to such slights, seems unlikely to be missed.
(Notably Her Majesty did feature a selection of photographs from Kate's widely lauded Hold Still photography exhibition as part of the broadcast. In the silent patois of the Queen, this was a whopping, full-throated declaration of approval and a sign that she holds Kate in extremely high regard, AKA the regal equivalent of a big fat gold star.)
As 2020 winds down, a historic year that has seen the palace buffeted by a series of PR crises and family ructions, it would seem that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been neatly, if not brutally, excised, from palace view, the unspoken message being the royal family has moved on and is solely focused on getting on with the business of HRH-dom. Sussex who?
However, with Harry and Meghan gearing up for a blockbuster year, with the launch of their new charity venture Archwewell not to mention their megabucks deals with Netflix and Spotify, that might not be so simple given we are about to see Brand Sussex truly unleashed.
The Queen, Prince Charles and Camilla wait to thank volunteers and workers for the work they are doing during the pandemic. Photo / Getty Images
I'm guessing that in 2021, it's going to be impossible for anyone, including the palace, to so neatly ignore Harry and Meghan as the Queen has just done in her speech. Hold onto your Philips Treacy hats people – I reckon it's going to be a wild, thrilling ride.
Daniela Elser is a royal expert and writer with more than 15 years experience working with a number of Australia's leading media titles.
