Absentees: How is the Windsor's royal Christmas going?

Christmas can be a headache for blended families and/or bickering families. And the English royal family is no exception!

Will the 2024 version of the Royal Windsor Christmas be more family-friendly and consensual than those of recent years?

Nothing suggests it! You don't choose your family, the adage is clear. And it goes for both the Windsors and the average person.

In this winter of 2024, after the trials suffered by the royal family with the cancer of King Charles III, still in treatment, and that of Princess Catherine, who, in remission, has completed a long chemotherapy, Christmas could have been the opportunity to gather young and old around a beautiful unifying tree in the royal residence of Sandringham, in Norfolk, to sing Christmas Carols.

King Charles III and Queen Camilla will reunite Prince William and Kate Middleton and their three children, they have announced. And undoubtedly also Prince Edward and his wife Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, as well as Princess Anne and her children Zara Tindall and Peter Phillips, and their children. But family frictions cannot be resolved in mulled wine and this year again, we will still be counting the absentees. Particularly Prince Harry's family.

Because the Duke of Sussex and his wife Meghan are still tricards. They will not cross the Atlantic to go to St Mary Magdalene Church to attend mass on the morning of December 25. Since 2020, when they withdrew from the official life of the Court, renouncing their role as “senior” members of the family, the Sussexes have accumulated points of friction.

In March 2021, the couple's shock interview by the famous American presenter Oprah Winfrey during which Meghan Markle reported racist remarks coming from certain members of the royal family regarding her unborn baby Archie, stunned Great Britain and displeased to the crown. Their accusatory documentary on the royal family, in six episodes, produced for Netflix in 2022, which takes up these accusations of racism, has not campaigned in favor of a family rapprochement, to put it mildly! As for Harry's autobiography, “The Substitute”, a big bookstore success of the year 2023, and the interview given by the youngest son of Charles and Lady Diana for the ITV channel, this put a piece back in the jukebox. Discord reigns.

Prince Andrew, too, is persona non grata. Mired in scandals, he should not show up. Will Fergie stay with him in his mansion that King Charles wants back? His daughters, Beatrice and Eugenie of York, and their children planned to spend the holidays with their respective spouses' families.

Another thorny question at Christmas: in blended families, who spends the holidays with whom? When you add in the issues of labeling, it gets even more complicated.

So will Queen Camilla's children, Laura Lopes and Thomas Parker Bowles, from her first union with Andrew Parker Bowles, be invited, like last year, with their children and spouses to the royal “Christmas lunch”? This traditional lunch should once again be held at Sandringham, whereas a pre-lunch was held in the time of Queen Elizabeth II before the royal family left for Norfolk.