The next chapter in the tale? Eugenie’s wedding to Jack Brooksbank in 2018. All was still rosy, for the most part, between the Sussexes and the Firm, with wedding bells still echoing from Harry and Meghan’s own big day months before. The newlyweds were, Harry wrote, ecstatic that their close friends were finally tying the knot, even postponing their Royal Tour of Australia to make sure they could return to St George’s Chapel and pull up a pew for Eugenie.
And with the great and the gilded gathering to see the Princess down the aisle, what better occasion to inform the Firm of the Sussexes’ own glad tidings? Meghan, after all, was pregnant with Prince Archie. One-by-one, the couple revealed the news to the royal family: Prince Charles was told in his study, Prince William and Catherine informed at the drinks reception. They were, Harry recalls, overjoyed to hear of a new Windsor, as were the late Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip.
But rumours, as they do, began to spiral. Apparently, some relatives felt that Harry and Meghan had made quite the faux pas. ‘Many wondered why Meghan chose to reveal her news on the bride’s big day,’ wrote Tom Bower in Revenge: Meghan, Harry And The War Between The Windsors. Dylan Howard and Andy Tillett, too, suggested that the Yorks were less than pleased with Meghan and Harry. The pregnancy announcement, they wrote, was a ‘huge social gaffe … stealing the limelight from Eugenie, who was furious’.