UK queen hosts Harry crisis talks
SANDRINGHAM : Queen Elizabeth and her heirs met Prince Harry on Monday to thrash out a plan for him and his actress wife Meghan after they triggered a family crisis by deciding to step back from royal duties and spend more time in North America.
Harry’s father and heir to the throne Prince Charles and his elder brother Prince William attended the meeting at the queen’s rural Sandringham estate in eastern England, a palace source said.
The shock announcement by Harry, 35, and Meghan, 38, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, has exposed divisions in the Windsor family and prompted soulsearching over what it means to be royal in the 21st century.
The couple consulted neither the queen nor Charles on the announcement, made on Instagram and their own website, a step seen as impertinent and premature by a family whose roots go back through a thousand years of European history.
Meghan is currently in Canada with their infant son Archie. She may join the discussion by telephone.
She and Harry say they want a “progressive” new role for themselves and financial independence, which could mean working in the United States where Meghan is from. But it is unclear how they will pull off a partial pullback from royal roles - which some media have dubbed “Megxit” in a play on Britain’s tortuous Brexit departure from the European Union - or who will pay for a transatlantic lifestyle.
MINISTER DISMISSES MEDIA RACISM CLAIM Home secretary Priti Patel on Monday dismissed suggestions that some of the country’s media coverage of Meghan Markle had racist connotations.
“I’m not in that category at all where I believe there’s racism at all,” she told BBC.
On future security arrangements for Harry and Meghan, she said, “I’m not going to provide any detailed information on the security arrangements for either them or any members of the royal family.”