After weeks of speculation and dubiously sourced reports, it has finally been confirmed that Prince Harry, Meghan Markle, and their children, Archie and Lilibet, met with other members of the royal family while the Sussex family was in the UK for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations.
Specifically, little Archie and Lili (as she is nicknamed) saw their grandfather, Prince Charles. ace multiple media outlets reported on Wednesday and Thursday, a “royal source” (or “senior royal source,” depending on the publication) speaking at a Clarence House press briefing told a room full of reporters how happy Charles was to see his grandchildren earlier that month .
“It was fantastic to see them. It was wonderful to have them back in Britain,” the royal source said of the Sussexes, according to the BBC, NBC, Metro, People, Harper’s Bazaar, Town and Country, and Sky News, to name a few. “The Prince and the Duchess [of Cornwall] were absolutely thrilled to see them.
“The Prince, of course, hasn’t seen his grandson Archie for a bit of time, and so it was very, very, very special to have some time with him,” the royal source said, as quoted by the media outlets. “He had n’t met Lilibet, his granddaughter, and so to meet her for the first time was, I think, very emotional — a very wonderful thing.”
The Telegraph and Newsweek had one extra quote from that royal source that’s absent from the other reports: “What grandparent wouldn’t think that was a good day all round?”
It should be noted that this wasn’t a news conference about Mountbatten-Windsor family relations. It was a financial review — a briefing about how much taxpayer money Clarence House/Prince Charles had spent in the past fiscal year ahead of the publication of the Sovereign Grant Annual Report.
And although we have no idea who this “senior royal source” is, we know for certain that he (all of the stories used male pronouns) was speaking at a Clarence House press briefing in front of dozens of reporters. Whatever he said was officially approved by Charles’s media team.
This is the first time that anyone has confirmed that Lilibet “Lili” Mountbatten-Windsor met her royal relatives. The Sussexes have never commented on it, and neither has Buckingham Palace. All the stories reporting it cite anonymous sources using words like “the Sun understands” instead of naming the person who shared this information.
For the record, I reached out to the Sussex press team about these family reunion reports and they declined to comment.