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The Times on Harry and Meghan's Jubilee visit - posting the article as you can't read unless you have a subscription.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/w...ngth-lsvll2qb7

Prince William and Prince Harry: Brothers At Arms Length
Monday June 6th

In the end, after all the sound and fury of the past two years, the
return of the royal drama queens was notable for its lack of drama. Some at the Palace feared that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex would use the Queen’s jubilee as a brand-building exercise, with “friends” giving breathless updates to People magazine and Netflix camera crews falling over the corgis.
True, it would have made marvellous telly if William had thumped Harry for being beastly on Oprah, or if baby Lilibet had been wheeled round Windsor wearing a Disney princess outfit and a coronet, but still. The weekend was all about the Queen, and for once the Sussexes appeared to have got the memo.
Meghan pasted on her Mona Lisa game face and Harry wisely refrained from talking, because it never ends well when he talks, especially for his closest family. Remember that recent chat on American TV during the Invictus Games? The one when he said he’d just visited the Queen, for the first time in God knows how long, to make sure she was “protected” and had the “right people around her”? That must have gone down a storm with all the people who are actually around her all the time: the Prince of Wales, say, or Prince William.

However, this weekend the message projected loud and clear was that the royal ship, with the Queen at the helm, is sailing serenely on. Megxit? What Megxit?

On Thursday, June 2, they arrived quietly on a private jet at Farnborough airport in Hampshire. They were picked up by royal protection officers and driven to Frogmore Cottage, where hopefully someone will have made up the beds, put the heating on and stocked up on spaghetti hoops for the kids’ tea. From there they were driven the short distance to Windsor Castle to introduce Lilibet, who turned one on June 4, to the Queen, whose feelings about their public appropriation of her private pet name we will never know unless she
too goes on Oprah. Cue Omid Scobie, the Sussexes’ cheerleader, who absolutely definitely didn’t have a hotline to Team Sussex for his book until it turned out that actually, oops, he did.
Anyway, he duly popped up last week to inform a grateful nation that the Sussexes wanted to keep a low profile on their trip, but that introducing Lilibet to the Queen was one of their goals. “Those moments with Lilibet are very much private between them and the Queen, and of course we know how much she’s been looking forward to it,” he added, nicely highlighting the discretion for which the Sussexes are famous while casually breaching the Queen’s confidence.

Having flown 5,000 miles around the world to help the Queen to celebrate, they appear to have attended only two events. The first, on June 2, was Trooping the Colour. They watched it largely out of sight in a room overlooking Horse Guards Parade.
The second appearance was on June 3, at the service of thanksgiving at St Paul’s Cathedral, where they were cheered by some members of the crowd, booed by others and seated in Siberia. The last time they attended a church service with the royal family — the infamously glacial Commonwealth service at Westminster Abbey in March 2020, just before Megxit — they proceeded up the aisle with Prince Charles and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

Fast forward to Friday, and by the time Charles, Camilla, William and Kate arrived and took their seats at the front, Harry and Meghan had been twiddling their thumbs for nearly 20 minutes. They were seated on the other side of the aisle, squashed in halfway along a pew next to Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, who chatted to them amiably, and directly behind the Earl and Countess of Wessex, who did not. Ever the diplomat, the Queen is said to have insisted that they get their own car to St Paul’s instead of piling into a coach with all the other also - rans.

On the downside, from a brand-building point of view, they weren’t invited to a lunch at Buckingham Palace after Trooping the Colour. On the plus side, they were invited to a lunch at Guildhall after the service at St Paul’s, but didn’t go. Were they worried that only Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, and Zara and Mike Tindall would speak to them?

The Queen has always stressed that Harry and Meghan remain “much loved members of the family”, but it’s a description that appears not to resonate with some of them, including Prince William. While the Sussexes are reported to have had a private meeting with Prince Charles and the Duchess of Cornwall at Clarence House, no such encounter is thought to have taken place with the Cambridges.
They swept straight past them, without so much as a glance, and were long gone by the time Harry got up from his pew. It was thought possible that the Sussexes would attend the Platinum Party at the Palace on Saturday, but they didn’t. Did Prince William, said to still be furious about the Oprah interview, veto it?
Protocol dictated that Harry could be kept safely out of thumping distance at St Paul’s. No such protocol would have protected him at the Palace concert, where the royals were all seated together behind the Cambridges. Word was put out that the Sussexes were celebrating Lilibet’s birthday privately at Frogmore, but unless a one-year-old’s party turned into an all-night rave, they could plausibly have hitched a ride up the M4 to sing Sweet Caroline, if anyone had wanted them to. They were missing also from the royal box at the Platinum Jubilee Pageant yesterday.

Scobie told the BBC that the brothers’ relationship was not back on track. One school of thought says that since it has been two years, they should get over it. The other argues that you can’t blame Prince William for worrying that any private conversation he has with Harry will end up on Oprah. When or if we will see the Sussexes back in the UK, let alone whether we’ll see William and Harry joshing as they used to, only time will tell.
Harry’s book is due out in the autumn, so it’s entirely possible that he’ll pop over then, flog a few copies and ruin the royal Christmas.
Will they still be much loved members of the family when Charles is in charge? This trip seemed to carry the faintest whiff of Edward VIII and Mrs Simpson, of a slide into irrelevance.

As they pack up the travel cot at Frogmore and head back to their life of moneyed leisure in California, they might congratulate themselves that they didn’t have to spend a damp, cold Sunday at a jubilee street party in Newport Pagnell. The Queen has spent her life doing just that, and she still radiates enthusiasm and has a twinkle in her eye. Harry and Meghan? Not so much. That may be something for them to think about next time the Netflix director shouts: “Action!”