Megxit has come full circle. “Harry and Meghan not attending Thanksgiving reception after frosty reaction at St Paul’s service,” runs the headline at GB News. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex arrived to boos from the crowd as they entered the cathedral. They left the Platinum Jubilee service to much the same sentiment. The Sussexes were also a “no show” at the “Party at the Palace” concert, Saturday night.

What did the Sussexes expect? They spurned the rigors of membership in the Royal Family, only to descend upon America where they believed a rival court could be established in California. Harry and Meghan were not above scathing commentary against their fellow Windsors, self-promotion being the primary goal of their newfound life away from the limelight.

To be fair, there were cheers amongst the catcalls at St. Paul’s. (Prime Minister Boris Johnson heard his own share of jeers, too.) Who, though, would have imagined, casting thoughts back to the day of their marriage, that the public reception to Harry and Meghan would have chilled so precipitously?

Sitting at a distance from each other in separate aisles, the Daily Mail reports, “the two feuding brothers adopted strikingly different demeanors” — Prince Harry carefree, with Prince William pensive. Nor did either brother speak with his sibling during the service.

This casts doubt on an earlier report this week from the Mail that “Prince William and Prince Harry are holding ‘weekly video calls’ and are ‘very much back on their old buddy terms’ ahead of reunion at Queen’s Jubilee celebrations, source claims.”

Another source tells Page Six of the New York Post that “At the moment, it does not look likely that Harry and Meghan and William and Kate will meet up separately during the Jubilee celebrations.” Alas, for Elizabeth II, for whom family is central, the reputed reconciliation appears the triumph of hope over experience.

Credit Harry and Meghan, too, for their chutzpah. They carried themselves flawlessly, given the public relations catastrophe that they unleashed upon the Royal Family since the infamous Oprah Winfrey interview in March 2021.

One would assume that it would be Prince William who would enter St Paul’s in confidence, knowing he enjoyed the full support of his family and the nation. Instead, Harry “was pictured laughing and joking in his seat,” while it was “William who appeared to look uneasy.”

Shakespeare knew of such. “Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown” — even if that privilege (and responsibility) lies in the future for William. Yet the show must go on. The Queen commands it be so. “Her Majesty ‘ordered the family to come together’ with ‘no dramas’ to overshadow the events,” according to the Mail.

Doubly unfortunate, therefore, that “discomfort” following Trooping the Color festivities, yesterday, necessitated Elizabeth II to pull out of the St. Paul’s service today. Her presence would have animated the spirit of thanksgiving, subtly emphasized by her role as head of the Church of England.

Moreover, Her Majesty’s presence would have overshadowed any princely embarrassments from the wings. That she considered it better to watch from the seclusion of Buckingham Palace, given the PR potential of her own attendance, speaks to the Queen’s unspoken health concerns.

Thus is highlighted the dual nature of royalty: symbols of stability for the nation, while enduring all the vicissitudes common to all families.They and the nation may celebrate Elizabeth’s 70 years of service and sovereignty, yet the Windsors above all are mindful of their matriarch’s advancing years and the twilight of her reign.

Amidst all this conflicting emotion, enter Harry and Meghan. The Sussexes have had a run of bad luck with their commercial enterprises. An animated series has been canceled, and Harry’s book is said to be stalled, its publisher postponing its release in expectation that its royal author can spice it up.

If Netflix entertained expectations of a Platinum Jubilee triumph to bolster their contractual obligations with the Sussexes, the pointedly public disapproval of Harry and Meghan is unhelpful. One imagines that only further opprobrium, public and private, kept them from immediately decamping back home to California.

Let them read their Disraeli. “In the hour of public adversity, or in the anxious conjuncture of public affairs, the nation rallies round the Family and the Throne,” Dizzy wrote in a speech on conservative principles, “and its spirit is animated and sustained by the expression of public affection.”

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