Their new portraits risk displeasing the royal family

ROYALTY – These paintings probably won’t hang in the halls of Buckingham Palace or Windsor. Even as Prince Harry and Meghan Markle left their royal duties to move to the United States in 2020, they were depicted as “historical royal figures” by Dan Llywelyn Hall, a Welsh artist who had already created a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II in 2013.

The artist painted ten portraits inspired by royalty throughout history for the Society of Antiquaries, as part of an exhibition which takes place from June 28 at Burlington House in London. The exhibition, entitled The Reigncelebrates 150 years of the Society of Antiquaries.

Prince Harry is depicted as Charles Edward Stuart, known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, a pretender to the throne in the late 18th century. Meghan Markle is depicted as Lady Elizabeth Grey, briefly Queen Consort of England in the late 15th century.

Despite the tensions between the couple and the rest of the royal family, and the controversies that these paintings could arouse, the artist is convinced of the relevance of the representations he made of Harry and Meghan, as he explained to our colleagues at BBC : “It seemed to me that these figures on the razor’s edge of public opinion were ideal for establishing comparisons with distant monarchs.”

Artistic and historical comparisons

“In Harry’s case, I entered the story before he met Meghan – the young party boy whose future is at stake, much like the Bonnie prince I compared him to,” justifies Dan Llywelyn Hall. The artist sees in Harry a parallel with Bonnie Prince Charlie, both having been contested and marginalized figures of royalty.

The parallel between Meghan and Dame Elizabeth Grey is particularly interesting for the artist, both being “influential outsiders” in the royal family. “I thought that casting Meghan as the White Queen, who was a Queen Consort and perhaps the most influential outsider in royal history, might have an ironic side and wouldn’t necessarily go beyond the bounds of reality,” adds Dan Llywelyn Hall, still at the BBC.

On March 31, 2020, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex ended their obligations to the Crown to lead an independent life across the Atlantic, giving up their royal representative duties and any public funding. As shown in the Netflix documentary series Harry & Meghan et Sparethe autobiography of Lady Di and Charles III’s youngest son published in 2023, this separation was in fact the result of years of resentment. The break between the couple settled in California and the royal family was not, however, done smoothly. Which is why these portraits risk making the Windsor clan grind their teeth.

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