Balmoral Blunder Meghan's Major Mistake

The under-fire duchess puts friendship before family.

- Judy Kean

When you’re a British royal, there’s one golden rule: never, ever upset the Queen.

It’s looking like that’s a lesson Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, needs to learn in a hurry after she snubbed Her Majesty’s invitation to join the family on holiday at Balmoral, a decision that reportedly left her husband’s grandmother hurt and disappointed.

Meghan, Prince Harry and their son Archie were invited to spend some time at the Queen’s Scottish residence during the British summer break, along with other members of the royal family. But they said no.

According to a spokeswoman for the Sussexes, they were “too busy”, and four-month-old Archie was “too young” to make the trip north. But the excuses didn’t make sense given that the previous month they’d taken Archie to the Spanish island of Ibiza, and then to stay at Sir Elton John’s luxury villa in the South of France.

And then when Meghan (38) found the time to make a last-minute dash across the Atlantic to support her friend Serena Williams in the final of the US Open tennis tournament in New York, that just seemed to rub salt in the wound.

A palace insider says the Queen (93) was “hurt and disappointed” at the couple’s decision not to go to Balmoral. She stays there for a couple of months every British summer, during which time her children and grandchildren spend anything from a few days to a couple of weeks with her and Prince Philip (98).