Royal Family Makes Major Slight Against Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Ahead of Christmas

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle will not be celebrating Christmas with the rest of the royal family at Sandringham this year, PEOPLE reports.

According to the outlet, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have not received an invitation to this year’s royal Christmas celebration and expect to spend the holidays in the U.S. with their children Prince Archie, 5, and Princess Lilibet, 3. Meanwhile, Harry’s brother, Prince William, and his wife, Kate Middleton, are set to spend Christmas with the rest of the royal family and their three children, Prince George, 11, Princess Charlotte, 9, and Prince Louis, 6.

Harry, 40, and his wife, 43, have not celebrated Christmas with the royal family at Sandringham since 2018, the year they were married. The two were also not invited to Trooping the Colour in June, which came a month after Harry and his father, King Charles, failed to meet up while the Duke of Sussex was in the U.K. for the 10th-anniversary celebration of the Invictus Games. A spokesperson for Prince Harry at the time said the lack of a father-son reunion was due to the king’s “full schedule.”

Tensions between Harry, his brother, and their father have been reported for years, escalating after the Duke and Duchess of Sussex stepped back from their royal duties in January 2020 and moved their family to California.

After King Charles, 76, publicly announced that he had been diagnosed with cancer in February, Prince Harry did travel to the U.K. to meet with his father, but a royal source told PEOPLE in July that the monarch is no longer responding to his son’s attempt at correspondence.

Prince Harry and Meghan previously discussed their time spending Christmas with the royal family at Sandringham in their 2022 Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan, with the Duchess of Sussex revealing she sat next to Harry’s grandfather Prince Philip at dinner.

“I remember so vividly the first Christmas at Sandringham,” she recalled. “Calling my mom, and she’s like, ‘How’s it going?’ And I said, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s amazing.’” She continued, “It’s just like a big family like I always wanted. And there was just this constant movement and energy and fun.”

While Meghan said she thought her dinner conversation with the late Duke of Edinburgh “went really well,” her husband told her that ultimately she “had his bad ear,” meaning his late grandfather couldn’t really hear her. “I was like, ‘Oh — well, I thought it went really well,’” Meghan joked.