Prince Andrew's Instagram post from Christmas 2018 is a major dig at Meghan. She is in the frame - but she is entirely hidden behind Prince Charles. All you can see is the tiny blue feather of her hat peeping out over Charles' head.
Of all the photos taken that day, why would Andrew choose this particular one to post?
I see him as Meghan's greatest enemy within the family.
First of all, given his own salacious habits it's not impossible that he knows Meghan from her yachting days.
Secondly, Meghan is getting the kind of royal engagements and positions Andrew has long sought for his own daughters, Beatrice and Eugenie. Charles is trying to slim down the monarchy and cut costs - a basic survival mechanism in a changing Britain - and has so far refused to add the girls to the public payroll.
(I think he will need them at some point, however, since hundreds of royal engagements every year are currently carried out by over-65s like Princess Anne, the Kents, and the Duke of Glouchester. Who is going to open the Bath Canine Society Championships Dog Show when they pass on?)
Thirdly, Meghan openly disrespected Andrew's daughter Eugenie, first by forcing Eugenie to push her long-planned spring 2018 wedding to October 2018, and then by announcing her pregnancy at Eugenie's wedding, taking the spotlight off the bride. The pregnancy announcement meant that in the week following the wedding most of the press was focused on Meghan, not on the long-suffering Eugenie and her very pretty wedding dress.
Nobody knows when Meghan is due, but if it is April as advertised, there was no need to announce on that particular day in October.
Andrew, as the family's least popular member, has very little to lose. There's not much chance of rehabilitating his own reputation (everyone knows about his ties to convicted sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein and various dictators and despots), but he has two daughters that he would like to see treated as important royals.
If the price of getting Bea and Eugenie placed as full-time working royals is taking down Meghan, I'm sure he'd be happy to do that.
Comments
Charles and Andrew are presumably not bowing because they were staying with the Queen at Sandringham and had already seen her once that day. Apparently you only bow or curtsey the first time you see the monarch on any given day.
That said, I agree with you that Harry looks like he has low self-esteem in most of the photos coming out recently. He looked crushed the other evening when they were boo'ed at Royal Albert Hall.