Queen Not Mean in Excluding Prince Harry and Meghan, Commenter Says

• The Queen wasn’t mean to exclude Harry and Meghan from Christmas photos, a commenter has claimed.
• Victoria Arbiter said the Queen’s 2019 photo selection highlighted the line of succession.
• Arbiter’s comments respond to claims made in Tom Bower’s upcoming book, “Revenge.”

Queen Elizabeth II wasn’t being mean when she excluded the Duke and Duchess of Sussex from photos on her Christmas show in 2019, according to royal commentator Victoria Arbiter.

Victoria, whose father is the Queen’s former press secretary Dickie Arbiter, made the comments in response to claims made in Tom Bower’s forthcoming book, ‘Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the war between the Windsors’. which is to be released on Thursday.

In an excerpt published in The Mirror on Sunday, Bower writes that Prince Harry was “stunned” to learn that the Queen had not included a picture of him and Markle in her annual address to the nation.

“To Harry’s fury there was no picture of him, Meghan and Archie,” Bower wrote, adding, “The Windsors were knocking the Sussexes out of history,” according to The Mirror.

It is tradition for Her Majesty to deliver a speech in the UK on Christmas Day from her office at Buckingham Palace, where each year she is surrounded by photos of her family. In 2019, photos of the Queen’s father, King George VI, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and their children, Prince Charles and Camilla, and Prince Philip were on display.

Victoria told Insider the photos were chosen to highlight and promote the direct line of succession, as well as to reassure the UK following Prince Andrew’s disastrous BBC ‘Newsnight’ interview, which aired in November of the same year.

“It was inevitable that people would assume the Queen chose to leave them out as the Windsors’ war sells out, but there was no slight or malice,” Victoria said.

“So often people try to read into every little thing and sometimes with good reason, but the Queen is neither petty nor petty,” she added. “All of his children and grandchildren might get offended depending on who’s featured each year, but they know the system and they know why certain decisions are made, so it’s a shame so much has been done about the absence of the Sussexes. It wasn’t personal.”

Meanwhile, Richard Fitzwilliams, a royal commentator and former editor of The International Who’s Who, told Insider that Harry and Markle likely see it as a “direct snob”. He said the Queen was “totally justified by events” in excluding the couple, referring to Harry’s public split with Prince William as well as Harry and Markle stepping down from royal duties in January 2020.

At the time of the broadcast, Markle, Harry and their son, Archie, were celebrating Christmas privately in Canada, marking their first Christmas without the royal family. The decision to step back had been in the works for months at this point, according to the excerpt from the book published in The Mirror.

Representatives for Buckingham Palace and the Duke and Duchess of Sussex did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.