If there’s one thing that 2024 taught royal fans, it is that the longer the family feud rages on at the palace, the closer Princess Diana’s family huddles around Prince Harry. The Spencers have drawn a clear line in the sand to support and embrace the Duke of Sussex and Meghan Markle after they’ve both been largely ignored by King Charles III and Prince William.
Princess Diana would have been proud that her brother and sister, Earl Charles Spencer and Lady Jane Fellowes, showed a united front for Harry during his milestone 10th-anniversary celebration of the Invictus Games in May. Earl Spencer even opened up his home last week to the Duke of Sussex when he needed a place to stay ahead of the funeral of Lady Jane’s husband, Lord Robert Fellowes. Now, the Express is claiming that the Sussexes have scored a Christmas invite.
Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex with his aunt Lady Jane Fellowes and uncle Earl Spencer during the unveiling of a statue of Diana, Princess of Wales, in the Sunken Garden at Kensington Palace, on what would have been her 60th birthday on July 1, 2021 in London, England.
“Charles [Spencer] has invited Harry, Meghan, and the children to Althorp this Christmas,” a royal insider told the media outlet. “It’s far too early to say whether they will take him up on it, but the offer is there if they want it.” Earl Spencer is telling Harry and Meghan that they are always welcome in the family, and they have a safe place to visit and introduce their kids to their U.K. roots. The source noted that while King Charles hasn’t invited the couple to Sandringham “just yet,” they didn’t believe the Sussexes “would take them up on it anyway.”
Harry and Meghan probably won’t take the Spencers up on their offer either. The looming issue for the Duke of Sussex is the ongoing security issues his family would face if they stepped foot in the U.K. His team made it clear in January 2022 that if the British government could not provide police protection that he would pay for, then Meghan, Prince Archie, and Princess Lilibet would not step foot in his home country.
“Prince Harry inherited a security risk at birth, for life. He remains sixth in line to the throne, served two tours of combat duty in Afghanistan, and in recent years his family has been subjected to well-documented neo-Nazi and extremist threats,” his legal representative told Us Weekly two years ago. “While his role within the Institution has changed, his profile as a member of the royal family has not. Nor has the threat to him and his family.”
Harry and Meghan will likely spend the holiday in California with their children and Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, instead. Still, it seems that Earl Spencer’s heart is in the right place with extending the invitation — it’s exactly what Princess Diana would have wanted for her youngest son.
