Is This the Queen's Gambit?

If the Sussexes have received an invitation to Platinum Jubilee events, this could be the Queen's strategy.

On the Wednesday before Easter, Harry and Meghan flew first class from Los Angeles to London. From London they made their way to Windsor where the reportedly stayed at their own Frogmore Cottage before heading to Windsor Castle the next day for tea with the Queen. This would have been the first time the Queen saw Meghan since the Sussexes’ tumultuous exit over two years ago. Harry saw the Queen at the Duke of Edinburgh’s funeral just over a year ago.  

According to Richard Kay of the Daily Mail, the Queen stipulated that Harry and Meghan meet with Charles before her own tea with the two. According to Kay, those three—Charles, Harry, and Meghan—met for fifteen minutes, and Camilla joined halfway through.

Just a few days later, Victoria Ward reported in the Telegraph that Harry and Meghan have been invited to join members of the royal family on the balcony for the Platinum Jubilee. The report did not give much detail at all about the source—e.g., palace source, or aides, or what have you. It didn’t say or hypothesize who extended the invitation. Victoria simply said “it is understood.”  

There is some real outrage among fans and commentators that Harry and Meghan might join the royals for the Platinum Jubilee celebrations in light of their shocking allegations against the royal family. I certainly understand that sentiment. Harry and Meghan have made very damaging and sustained attacks against the royal family. They have been at pains to try to disassociate the Queen from the rest of the family, and it is my personal opinion that once the Queen dies, and there is no more to be gained, Meghan will attempt to discredit and damage the monarchy to the most grievous extent possible. I think the Queen and Charles suspect that, but I believe William really knows that down to his core.   

Nevertheless, there may be a method to the monarchy’s seeming madness here.

First of all, I don’t think the Queen is getting senile, as some have suggested. Certainly she would have approved this decision, and Charles would have signed off on it, too. I think the invitation was issued for a number of reasons.

Obviously the Queen has a soft spot for Harry, and I think we can all be sure that Charles loves his son, too. So there is a natural desire within both Charles and the Queen to reconcile with Harry.

But to me, this does not feel so much like an olive branch as a “keep your friends close and your enemies closer.” I suspect Charles is acting primarily in fear. My suspicion is that he is desperate to heal the breach with Harry and Meghan, both to assuage the suggestions of racism and hopefully preempt with kindness whatever dumpster fires the Sussexes plan to light with their various media endeavors.   

As for the Queen, she could be approaching this with a different strategy. The Queen is Harry’s grandmother, and she loves him, but she has already faced off against one woman who married into the family and threatened to take the institution down. Now, as much as Meghan would prefer it to the contrary, she is no Diana. But with the sensitive political culture we live in today, and the politically precarious situation the royals are in—what with their colonial past and all—Meghan’s accusations of racism are a deadly threat the royals aren’t sure how to address.

But if Meghan and Harry come back to Britain and stand on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, waving to cheering crowds with other senior members of the family, it undermines their claims of abuse and bigotry. Harry and Meghan will argue they only came for the Queen, whom they love, but it will paint them hypocrites nonetheless. It certainly could blunt the force of accusations they may want to make down the road.  

As much as Harry and Meghan try to disassociate the Queen from the rest of the royal family, she is the leader of the family and of the institution. If Harry and Meghan—after all their blustering, all their tears, all their shocking allegations—come back to Britain to bask in the glow of their royal connections and enjoy a privileged party or two, it can’t help but undermine the gravity of their claims.

The Platinum Jubilee is not a birthday celebration. It is not a milestone for the Queen in her personal capacity. It is a celebration—a Jubilee, in fact—of Elizabeth as a monarch, as the head of an institution. Perhaps Harry and Meghan want to paper over this inconvenient fact. Perhaps they don’t think logically enough to fully process it. But if the institution is archaic and racist, as Meghan suggested, and if the whole system is a kind of “prison,” as Harry stated, this jubilee is celebrating that archaic institution, and Elizabeth II is squarely at the helm of the penitentiary.

That obvious reality isn’t convenient for Harry and Meghan. Because they like the status; they like the platform; they like the privilege. As I have argued before, they never wanted to stop being royal. Now they want their cake and to eat it, too. So they pretend that the Queen is a sweet doddering old grandmother—completely divorced from her past and, indeed, her present—while the rest of the family are out of touch with the modern, democratic world, benefiting from unearned advantages and suffering from institutionally-instilled bigotry.  

At some point, though, you can’t have it both ways. You can’t say all the family members are ingrained with bigotry by a warped family culture when the Queen herself formed that family with Philip. You can’t say the institution is corrupt to its core and revere the Queen who heads it.   

There has been an assumption, though, that Meghan and Harry will leap at this invitation. But I am not so sure the two will attend. It sounds like Harry very much wants to, but I suspect that secretly Meghan wants no part of it. The couple got what they needed last week with their private meeting with the Queen. They recharged their royal credentials with a cozy meeting. Now they can make reference to this special intimacy—as Harry has already done in his TODAY interview—and remind the world they are still royal. But I don’t think Meghan has the fortitude to come back to a gathering of senior royals and be outranked. I don’t think she wants to mix with William or Kate ever again, unless it is on her turf, and she is the star.

Maybe the Queen knows that. Maybe at the end of the day, Her Majesty is calling Meghan’s bluff with this invitation. If Meghan and Harry accept and attend, it defangs them a little—it could limit the damage they try to do down the road. But, if Meghan’s real issue is not that she wasn’t accepted or supported enough by the BRF, but that she wants to be the brightest star in a galaxy where William and Kate are the rising sun and moon, then she will likely decline—and the royals will get the credit for extending a welcoming hand. Perhaps this invitation is nothing more than a tidy check-mate from the monarchy.  

Time will tell. But if I had to put money on it, I’d say Harry returns alone or they don’t show up at all.