Cressida Bonas. Photo / Getty Images
OPINION:
The royal family might not be much good at obscuring their German roots, Dry July or making marriages stick but gosh they are oddly good at staying friends with their exes. Princess Anne, to this day, invites her former paramour Andrew Parker Bowles to Ascot, who also just happens to be Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall's first husband.
Prince Andrew, at least back when he used to be allowed out of the palace on his own recognisance, used to catch up with his '80s girlfriend Koo Stark, added to which for the last 15 years has lived with his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York.
The younger generation are equally adept at the still-chummy two-step. Prince William reportedly dated Jecca Craig as a teenager but went on to spend time in Kenya with her and her family and even attended her wedding. Prince Harry invited both of his most significant former girlfriends, Chelsy Davy and Cressida Bonas, to his own big day.
Which is all delightfully cosy and surprisingly mature.
But the reappearance of Cressida this week in the royal midst - attending an event alongside the Queen, no less - comes as quite the surprise.
On Sunday, the first double christening in royal history was held at the All Saints Chapel in Great Windsor Park, with the sons of Princess Eugenie and Zara Tindall getting their turns to be gingerly dunked in water from the River Jordan.
(Charles brought back the stuff himself last week. According to the Telegraph, "The Prince flew back to Britain with a 'few dozen' bottles of the water from the site where Christians believe Jesus was baptised for future royal christenings." Sure beats duty-free gin and a family-sized Toblerone.)
The event was only for close family and friends and yet there in Windsor and having made the cut was none other than Cressida and her husband Harry Wentworth-Stanley.
The word that comes to mind here is "ouch".
In the first half of this year, Her Majesty acquired three more great-grandchildren: Eugenie's son August, Zara's son Lucas and Harry's daughter Lilibet.
Only two of them were christened on Sunday.
Harry and Meghan's absence from the small royal event was conspicuous, whether that was by their choice, his family's choice or all of them being briefly in perfect consensus and their collective choice.
No matter why or how this situation came to pass, the symbolism of the moment could not be more glaring: the royal family gathering together - including the 95-year-old Queen, who rallied for the occasion - in a moment of unity while the Sussexes were thousands of kilometres away.
The moment could not have better illustrated the chasm that continues to exist between the house of Windsor and the California-based palace truants.
If Harry, Meghan and their daughter were not invited to be a part of the historic moment, and there has not been a whisper in the press to say that they were, then this is nothing short of cutting.
Potentially further rubbing salt into this wound would be the return of Cressida, the woman who got closest to making it up the aisle with Harry, to the royal bosom.
Why was she there, you ask? Easy. She is very close to Eugenie and it was the princess who introduced Harry and Cressida back in 2012. This weekend, clearly Cressida was there under the auspices of that friendship and not her former romance.
But that doesn't really take the bite out of the situation here, does it?
Compounding the potential bite is that the question of whether Lili would get a royal christening has reportedly been something of a bone of contention.
Back in July it was reported that Harry had been telling people he wanted his little girl to get the same royal christening treatment as her big brother Archie, raising the prospect that the Sussexes might return to the UK as a family for the first time since 2019 for the ceremony.
For whatever reasons, this was clearly a non-starter. In October, a palace insider told the Telegraph: "There will not be a christening in the UK. It is not happening." The same report also raised the prospect that she would instead be christened into the Episcopal Church in the US.
On paper, it would have made perfect sense to include Lili in Sunday's ceremony. However, the reality is that things between the Sussexes and the wider royal family still appear to be chilly verging on the Arctic.
Earlier this month, Meghan was forced to apologise for having "accidentally misled" a London court after forgetting that had okayed an aide to brief the authors of the Sussex biography Finding Freedom. The embarrassing moment came as part of her legal stoush with the Daily Mail.
A royal source has told the Times of her decision to pursue the case: "There is frustration all the way to the top, because a lot of people told them that it was unwise to proceed with the case. Now she has been found out."
Likely not improving things is the fact that Harry is set to publish his memoir in the second half of next year, which looms large over the palace.
It's no wonder then that the optimistic reports suggesting hatchets were set to be buried over roast goose and that the Sussex family would spend Christmas at Sandringham with the Queen have all but dried up. Any lingering hopes were knocked on the head last week when Page Six reported that the duke and duchess would not be zipping back to Blighty for the festive period.
"There's a lot that goes into the logistics and the planning of the family Christmas, so of course staff know that Harry and Meghan are not coming," one royal source has said. "If they were, they would have communicated it to their family by now."
The Sussexes' non-appearance in the royal inner circle this weekend only makes the trans-Atlantic breach seem more irrevocable.
All of this raises the question – if squidgy babies and the prospect of hot and cold running Christmas puddings and even the heartache of the loss of a beloved grandfather (and husband) are not enough to force these two factions to reconcile, then what will?
We are now under 40 days until the start of Her Majesty's Platinum Jubilee, which will be a months-long orgy of Union Jack-waving outings and engagements. For the palace, the jubilee should serve as a palate cleanser after the tawdriness of Andrew's self-immolation and the convulsions of Megxit.
The key word there being "should".
However, with Meghan not having stepped foot in the UK since officially stepping back as a working member of the royal family, son Archie having been away for two years and daughter Lili having yet to meet any of her British relatives face-to-face, the chances of any sort of rapprochement seem impossibly slim. Until there is some sort of movement on this front or some thawing of tensions, any palace notions of moving past the Sussex drama are a moot point.
As things stand, the Sussex situation looks set to continue to dog the royal house even as they naively try to get back on monarchical message and move on from the havoc of the last couple of years. (Even more so on this front is the Andrew imbroglio – don't worry, no one has forgotten about him and that he is being sued for allegedly raping a teenage sex trafficking victim on three occasions, a claim he strenuously denies.)
As we fast approach the two-year anniversary of Harry and Meghan shocking the world by announcing they had had enough of the royal dog-and-pony show and were off, they look as on the outs with his family as ever. Time is meant to heal all wounds, but clearly not yet…
• Daniela Elser is a royal expert and a writer with more than 15 years' experience working with a number of Australia's leading media titles.
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