Harry and Meghan’s daughter Lilibet ‘snubbed’ by royal family on her second birthday
Princess Lilibet Diana celebrated her second birthday on Sunday (4 June) but there was radio silence from senior members of the royal family.
Last year, the official Twitter accounts for the royal family, King Charles and Queen Camilla, plus that of the Prince and Princess of Wales all wished Lilibet a happy first birthday.
But on Sunday, neither of the three Twitter accounts publicly sent their birthday wishes to the young royal, who is the only daughter and second child of The Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
Prince Archie also did not receive any birthday wishes on his fourth birthday, which fell on the same day as King Charles’s coronation last month.
The Independent has contacted Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace for comment.
Neither Harry’s wife Meghan Markle nor their children attended the coronation, while Prince Harry arrived solo and left for Los Angeles shortly after the ceremony finished.
Relations between the Sussexes and the royal family have soured in the past year, given the release of Harry and Meghan’s Netflix docuseries 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 moved to Los Angeles.
While representatives of the Sussexes have not commented on how the family celebrated Lilibet’s first birthday, it is understood to have been a very different occasion, compared to last year’s intimate picnic at their UK residence, Frogmore Cottage, which was attended by members of their British family including Zara and Mike Tindall.
Neither Charles, Camilla, William nor Kate were present at Lilibet’s first birthday or her christening in March.
It comes as Prince Harry arrives in London today to appear at the High Court for his case against the publisher of the Daily Mirror over alleged unlawful information gathering.
Upon the accession of King Charles III, following the death of the children’s grandmother in September 2022, Lilibet received the title of Princess, while her brother Archie, four, became a Prince, but they have not yet been present at any official royal engagements with their father.
The official British website of the royal family was updated to refer to “Prince Archie of Sussex” and “Princess Lilibet of Sussex” on 9 March 2023. It was reported that any titles would be used in formal settings, but not in everyday conversations.
