The royals have been split since Harry and Meghan bolted for the US.
It has been a challenging year in the British Royal Family, to say the least. King Charles III and Kate Middleton, the Princess of Wales, shared a common foe as they each battled cancer throughout the year, while mounting tensions over Prince Andrew’s escalating spy scandal has prompted further division within the House of Windsor as 2024 flips to 2025.
In addition, Kate and her husband Prince William remain estranged from Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who renounced royal life and moved to the United States to launch a media empire in 2020. Those efforts have not always succeeded, and speculation has been rife for a while that a reunion (of sorts) might not be far away.
Grant Harrold, a former butler who served King Charles, has predicted that Kate will “reach out” to Harry and Meghan around Christmas in what is being called both a strategic move and a heartfelt attempt to reconnect with the stateside couple.
“The thing about Christmas is that it’s all about goodwill to others, letting bygones be bygones, forgetting the past, moving into the new year,” Harrold said in a recent interview. “So if there’s any point in the year that the families are going to communicate or touch base, it’s going to be over Christmas — there’s something magical about Christmas that gets families back together.”
Harry and Meghan were not invited to Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, where Charles and the royal family traditionally spend Christmas. Instead, they are poised to stay in California with their children, Archie and Lilibet. But Harrold said that he believes, deep down, that “things are moving in the right direction” in terms of repairing the frosty relationship between the two royal couples.
“I’d like to think that they will all be communicating, whether that is done by text calls or FaceTime — I’d like to think FaceTime, but that’s something we will never know,” Harrold said, pointing to the secrecy within the royal family.
