Royal family shifts Twitter protocol for Meghan Markle’s 42nd birthday
Official Twitter accounts for King Charles and Prince William typically share birthday messages to the Sussex family but this year marks a shift
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Meghan Markle celebrated her 42nd birthday on Friday but there was radio silence from senior members of the royal family.
Last year, the official Twitter accounts for the royal family, including the now Prince and Princess of Wales and King Charles and Queen Camilla, publicly shared birthday wishes for Meghan on social media. But neither of the official Twitter accounts wished the duchess a happy birthday this year.
“Wishing a happy birthday to The Duchess of Sussex!” wrote the @KensingtonRoyal Twitter account for Prince William on Meghan’s 41st birthday, sharing a picture of Meghan smiling while wearing a white coat and matching hat.
The Clarence House account, which at the time was being used to share updates on the then Prince Charles and his wife Camilla, shared an identical tweet with a different picture of Meghan.
However, in June this year, there was radio silence from senior members of the royal family on social media as Harry and Meghan’s daughter, Princess Lilibet, celebrated her second birthday.
Prince Archie also did not receive any birthday wishes on his fourth birthday, which fell on the same day as King Charles’s coronation in May.
The Independent has contacted Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace for comment.
This year marks a very different birthday for Meghan and her husband Prince Harry. Relations between the Sussexes and the royal family have soured in the past year, given the release of Harry and Meghan’s Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan and Harry’s tell-all memoir Spare, in which he made a series of claims about his fraught relationship with senior members of the royal family.
Tensions are thought to have consistently worsened since Harry and Meghan decided to step back from royal duties in 2020 and move to Los Angeles.
The Sussexes reportedly did not receive an invitation for a royal family gathering to mark the anniversary of the death of Queen Elizabeth II.
On 8 September, King Charles III is expected to commemorate his mother at a gathering in Balmoral Castle.
The day will also mark the anniversary of the King’s accession.
A source told The Sun that there has not been “any outreach” to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex regarding the royal event.
“If they are not included in any of those plans they will find a way to mark the significance in their own way,” the source said.
Meghan and Harry were spotted leaving a celebrity hotspot restaurant in Montecito, California on Wednesday night, ahead of Meghan’s birthday on Friday.
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