Never forget that King Charles’s first act as monarch was calling Prince Harry and telling him that Meghan isn’t part of the family, that she was not welcome at Balmoral, and that Harry could not have his wife beside him on the day QEII passed away. The first act of Charles’s reign was a wall-to-wall smear job on Harry and Meghan for having the audacity to simply want to be together on a painful day of mourning. As we come up on QEII’s death-anniversary, there are a lot of pieces about what really happened in the chaos of those first days of Charles’s reign. I’m so glad that Harry wrote about it in Spare too, because it means that “royal sources” can’t lie about what Harry did and said during that hellish two-week hostage situation. Well, Tom Sykes at the Daily Beast has a piece about what happened on that day one year ago, and a huge chunk of the article is devoted to the Sussex drama. Again, seemingly everyone in the family was more focused on snubbing, marginalizing and smearing the Sussexes rather than mourning the queen.

Buckingham Palace announced at 12.50pm that William, Andrew, Edward and Sophie were on their way to Scotland. Things should have now at moved at dizzying speed, with a military jet laid on to whisk the royal party to Scotland reportedly due to take off at 1:30pm. In the event, however, it didn’t take off until 2:40pm. A military source has told The Daily Beast that the delay was caused by a row within the family, who were outraged by a suggestion by Harry that he, and, controversially, Meghan could be given a spot on the plane.

While the Netflix show Harry & Meghan had not yet screened, and Harry’s memoir had not been published, relations were still very bad between the couple and the family, particularly William. Harry said in his memoir that he texted William, asking if he and Meghan could get a lift with him to Scotland.

“It was insane,” a friend of William’s told The Daily Beast. “They had just spent two years slagging off the entire family and calling them racists. Harry had completely betrayed William, and he was holding the memoir [published after the queen’s death] and the Netflix series over them as well. They hadn’t exchanged a cordial word in months. And then he is texting him, saying, ‘Can we get a lift with you.’ I think if it had just been Harry, maybe a way could have been found. But Meghan too? Er, no thanks.”

What Harry and Meghan did next both infuriated the royals and brought matters swiftly to a head: they told their team to publicly announce not only that they would be missing the WellChild Awards, but that they were both going to Balmoral. A former palace staffer told The Daily Beast: “You need an invite to go to Balmoral at any time, let alone a moment of massive constitutional upheaval. They knew Meghan wasn’t wanted. No-one had replied to their messages, no-one had invited her to come. Kate, who had known the queen for decades, wouldn’t have dreamed of being there at her deathbed. But for some reason, Meghan wanted to insert herself into it, so they tried to bounce the [future] king into accepting it by publicly announcing it.”

If that was the Sussexes’ plan, it didn’t work. The moment he heard Harry and Meghan’s statement, Charles knew he had to put his foot down, and he called Harry and told him not to bring Meghan. Harry described the sequence of events in his book: “We told our team to confirm: we’d be missing the WellChildAwards and hurrying up to Scotland. Then came another call from Pa. He said I was welcome at Balmoral, but he didn’t want … her. He started to lay out his reason, which was nonsensical, and disrespectful, and I wasn’t having it. Don’t ever speak about my wife that way. He stammered, apologetic, saying he simply didn’t want a lot of people around. No other wives were coming. Kate wasn’t coming, he said, therefore Meg shouldn’t. Then that’s all you needed to say.”

In Harry’s telling, by the time this unseemly argument with his father concluded, it was “mid-afternoon,” he hadn’t heard from William, who he had texted looking for a lift, and so he had to charter a private plane. Intriguingly, however, a military source told The Daily Beast that the RAF jet—carrying William, Edward, Sophie and Andrew—sat on the tarmac at Northolt airport for up to an hour before taking off at 2:40pm. The source said that they believed the delay was due to uncertainty about whether Harry was expected on the plane.

[From The Daily Beast]

“I think if it had just been Harry, maybe a way could have been found. But Meghan too? Er, no thanks.” “They knew Meghan wasn’t wanted…But for some reason, Meghan wanted to insert herself into it.” This is still utterly disgusting and racist. In QEII’s final minutes on this earth, her heirs were solely focused on being too racist to accept Harry’s Black wife in Scotland. They were focused on isolating Harry, as they have been for years, on punishing him and otherizing him for marrying Meghan and loving Meghan. I’ve said this before, but the Windsors really don’t understand the concept of “you can have disagreements within a family and still put aside your differences to come together for the big events.” What should have been a mournful, grief-stricken time for the family to simply put their differences aside for a week became an exercise in dehumanizing, humiliating, degrading and marginalizing the Sussexes by any means necessary.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.