Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have “privately congratulated” William and Kate on their 10th wedding anniversary, a spokesperson for the California-based couple has told The Daily Beast.
The two couples have had a strained relationship for several years now, and last month Harry and Meghan told Oprah Winfrey in a bombshell interview that they were subjected to racist questions by an unnamed member of the royal family about the likely skin color of their then-unborn child Archie.
The interview also saw Meghan accuse Kate of making her cry in the run-up to the wedding. Meghan said that when she tried to enlist support to get press stories suggesting it was Meghan who made Kate cry corrected, Buckingham Palace refused to intervene to help her.
Meghan, who is pregnant with the couple’s second child, a girl who they have said will be born this summer, did not travel to the U.K. with her husband for Prince Philip’s funeral. Meghan did send a handwritten note and a wreath.
After the funeral, Harry and William were filmed walking side by side and talking; however, both sides have played down reports that Harry, William, and Charles spent several hours locked in conversation after the funeral or that this represented any sort of a breakthrough.
The Mail claimed that Charles and William insisted on meeting with Harry together so that nobody’s words could be misconstrued afterward, and that the meeting happened on the grounds of Windsor Castle.
Sources told The Daily Beast there was little expectation the trip would heal the rift.
The visit marked the first time Harry has seen his family since making explosive allegations about royal racism during an interview with Oprah, in which he claimed his father and brother are “trapped in the system.”
Optimists will read the gesture of congratulations on Harry and Meghan’s part as a significant olive branch between the two warring families, but others may well say that such an interpretation is grasping at straws.