There’s yet more drama over a royal photograph

People just love overanalyzing royal photographs, and this time it’s Prince Harry’s birthday picture that doesn’t include Meghan Markle.

Back in March, the mysteriously absent Kate Middleton posted a innocent-looking picture of herself with her children, only to have it recalled for being digitally altered. The internet went wild with conspiracy theories, and eventually they got their answer: Kate’s disappearance from public life was because she’d had a cancer diagnosis.

Now people are turning their attention to Prince Harry’s birthday pic. This incident also has a backstory: Prince Harry is very much persona non grata with the British royal family these days. In 2020 he and his wife Meghan Markle stepped down from the royal family and went to live in America, citing press intrusion and racism as two of the main reasons they left.

As you can imagine, the royals did not take well to this and appear to have pretty much cut Harry and Meghan out of their lives. The Harry photograph has picked up attention because, by posting it, it was the first time the royals had actually acknowledged Harry in a while.

It’s a very short message—there’s a birthday wish, a cake emoji, and that’s it. But then there’s the photo that’s been causing so much trouble. Meghan Markle was with her husband Harry at the photographed event, you see, and people became suspicious that Markle had been cropped out.

If that was the case, it unfortunately wouldn’t be too surprising, which is why people are on such high alert for it. Markle faced a tidal wave of racism and classism from the moment she married Prince Harry. She was too independent, the British tabloids over-dramatically lamented, or too assertive. Closing her own car door, instead of having a servant to it for her, gained several days’ worth of comment. (Yes, really!)

Then came story after story about how awful she supposedly was. She allegedly made Kate Middleton cry (Markle herself debunked this one during her famous interview with Oprah) and allegedly bullied palace staff. There were new horrible rumors about her every day, even while she was pregnant, and eventually she just threw in the towel. Anyone in her position would have done the same thing.

So it’s understandable that people might jump to the wrong conclusion and think Markle was cropped out of an image. However, that’s actually not what happened! Markle was indeed at the same event as Harry and was sitting next to him while the photograph was taken. However, the shot used in the social media post was a closeup of Harry where Markle didn’t feature in the original photograph.

British newspaper The Independent actually spoke to Buckingham Palace spokespeople and confirmed the image wasn’t altered. So that’s that!

Harry and Meghan are living their best lives in California right now and seem to be staying under the radar. It remains to be seen if Harry will publicly respond to the post wishing him a happy birthday.