Meghan and Harry have just been punched in the gut – William and Charles must be seething.H

Harry and Meghan might not be wanted this Christmas (Image: Getty)

French author Eugène Sue said ‘revenge is a dish best served cold’ – and in the case of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, that dish may be the Christmas turkey. Last December the Royal Family all gathered for the traditional Christmas at Sandringham, but with four glaring adult omissions: The first two being Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor and Sarah Ferguson. After the pair were stripped of their titles and no longer the Duke and Duchess of York, following revelations linked to Jeffrey Epstein, King Charles and Prince William quite rightly wouldn’t have been seen dead with either of them. The other personae non gratae were Harry and Meghan, who instead spent Yuletide in their multimillion-pound mansion in Montecito, California reportedly playing board games like Scrabble.

Well, if Scrabble is their thing then it appears Charles and William have an 11-point word for them that sums up this coming Christmas: ‘Revenge’. The Sussexes are to spend this Christmas holiday in their new country pad in the Cotswolds, with Prince Archie, seven, Princess Lilibet, five, and Meghan’s mum Doria Ragland.

But now they are back in the UK, wouldn’t they be hoping to build some bridges with Charles, Camilla, William and Kate by joining them for the Sandringham festive feast? Well, it appears they simply haven’t, and won’t, be invited. You can see where the Royal Family are coming from.

Why ruin the best meal of the year with awkward silences, accusatory glances, frosty stares. Especially when you have sharp cutlery to hand; after all, Harry seriously shoved knives into his family’s backs with his slew of nasty and cruel claims in his 2023 memoir Spare.

It’s been claimed Charles and William have “effectively banned” the couple from joining them at the Sandringham estate for Christmas with Woman&Home reporting this is a “quiet act of revenge”. The publication added: “After all, Christmas is a time for family, peace and reconciliation.”

The question left pondering then is ‘Will Harry and Meghan be upset with the snub?’ Yes and no. When the entire rest of the family – bar Andrew and Fergie at least, and maybe Beatrice, Eugenie and their two families – are absent from the famous ‘walk to church’ line-up on Christmas morning at Sandringham, they will feel even further out in the cold than now.

This is how Prince Harry changed after Meghan

William, Kate and family last Christmas at Sandringham (Image: Getty)

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Those images will show a united family, and it will seem they are united in still being enraged with Harry and Meghan’s barbed comments individually about them. But I think the couple, especially Harry, are so thick-skinned and entrenched in their victimhood ideology – they are almost in a cult of their own personas, and the snub will merely embolden them to believe they are in the right all along.

They are deluded of course, but that will be their mindset – and that is why I cannot see Harry and William ever properly making up and being close again. Ancient Greek tragedies summed it up in one word: ‘hubris’. It means a character flaw of monumental arrogance, over-confidence or misplaced defiance that would end up triggering a ruinous downfall.

And Harry, in case you need to know for Christmas, in Scrabble ‘hubris’ also scores 11 points – the same as ‘revenge’.

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