'The ultimate embarrassing uncle’
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle made news this month as they announced that they were planning on stepping down from their roles as ‘senior’ members of the royal family, hoping to become financially independent.
It was then announced by Buckingham Palace that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex will be losing their HRH titles following a new deal, and repaying ‘Sovereign Grant expenditure for the refurbishment of Frogmore Cottage’.
Releasing an official statement, Buckingham Palace announced: ‘The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are grateful to Her Majesty and the Royal Family for their ongoing support as they embark on the next chapter of their lives.’
Following their move to Canada, reports have been emerging about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s relationship with the rest of the family, with Prince William and Prince Charles said to be reaching out with love and affection, while Kate Middleton is rumoured to have been ‘in tears’ over her relationship with Harry.
One relationship that Meghan Markle is rumoured not to be missing however is with Prince Harry’s uncle, Prince Andrew.
The 59-year-old made news last year as he finally addressed his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, 66-year-old multimillionaire businessman and registered sex offender who died in an apparent suicide earlier this year.
Epstein, whose name Prince Andrew has been linked to, was being held without bail on charges of sex trafficking girls (some as young as 14) and in an attempt to address the allegations, Prince Andrew did a royal first, engaging in a one-hour ‘car crash’ interview about Epstein with BBC Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis, aired from Buckingham Palace. As a result, he was forced to step down from royal duties and his Buckingham Palace office.
Meghan is reported to have not been a fan of Andrew’s before the scandal however, with a royal source via The Sun Online reporting that the Duchess was not impressed by his ‘stuffy’ behaviour.
‘Put it this way, she doesn’t view Andrew as one of the Family’s great assets and he’s not going to be one of the people she’s going to miss on her time away from the Windsors,’ the source reported. ‘She views him as the ultimate embarrassing uncle.’
‘Meghan is not enamoured of Andrew at all,’ a source told the publication after his ‘car-crash’ interview. ‘Not just because of his questionable attitude to women and how he referred to them in that awful Newsnight interview, in which he was talking in an almost alien language, as if all women were conquests.’
The source continued: ‘Meeting the real Andrew was even worse - she told a friend that she couldn’t see the attraction - he wasn’t exactly welcoming to her and that he was stuffy and pompous. And that he kept on making awful, puerile jokes - which he seemed to find hilarious.’
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have not yet commented.
