Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie returned to the royal spotlight in Gloucestershire on Saturday as they joined senior members of the royal family for the wedding of Peter Phillips and Harriet Sperling, an event from which Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were, according to royal commentators, deliberately left off the guest list to avoid overshadowing the bride.
The York sisters' appearance at St. Mary the Virgin Church marked their first inclusion in a major royal gathering since their father, Prince Andrew, was arrested, and amid renewed scrutiny over reports that King Charles covers the full costs of their palace homes. Their re-emergence came at a wedding that quietly revealed who is in and who is very firmly out of the inner royal circle.
Beatrice and Eugenie arrived with their husbands, Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi and Jack Brooksbank, walking up the church path before being greeted by cousin Zara Tindall with a hug at the entrance. Inside, they joined a guest list that read like a roll‑call of working royals, the king and queen, the Prince and Princess of Wales, and the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh among them. Princess Anne, mother of the groom, stood out in a vivid yellow outfit as she watched her son marry the NHS paediatric nurse.
Conspicuously absent were Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson, who remain frozen out of public royal occasions following their connection to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. Yet it was another omission that drew more attention. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, already estranged from the royal family and living in California, were not invited to Peter Phillips' second wedding, despite Harry once being close to his cousin.
Long-Running Tensions
Harry and Peter have not been in contact for years, with the distance allegedly rooted in a dispute dating back almost two decades. That early crack in the relationship, if the account is accurate, has widened into a rift that now plays out in public through empty chairs at family milestones.
Phillips' first wedding, to Canadian Autumn Kelly in 2008, is at the centre of the reported grievance. According to the Mail, Peter struck a deal with Hello! magazine worth an estimated £500,000 for exclusive coverage of the event without fully informing his relatives. Harry, then in his twenties, is said to have been furious.
What reportedly stung most was that he had brought his then‑girlfriend Chelsy Davy to the ceremony, using the occasion to introduce her to Queen Elizabeth II for the first time. He understood that photographers were present, but believed they were shooting a personal album for Peter and Autumn. Only later, it is claimed, did he realise that images of himself, Chelsy and other guests would appear in a glossy spread.
The Mirror has also reported on Harry's anger at feeling blindsided by the commercial deal. While these accounts rely on unnamed sources and should be treated with some caution, they are consistent in suggesting that trust between the cousins was badly damaged and never properly repaired.
That private grievance now sits on top of a much wider and more visible schism. Since Harry and Meghan stepped back from royal duties and publicly criticised the institution, every family invitation or lack of one has acquired an extra layer of meaning.
'The Biggest No-No'
Former BBC royal correspondent Jennie Bond has argued that keeping Prince Harry and Meghan away from Phillips' wedding was less about old magazine deals and more about an unwritten rule of the social season. Speaking previously about the Sussexes' exclusion from the guest list, she said that no bride wants her big day turned into a global Harry and Meghan story.
'Wedding guest lists are so often a nightmare,' Bond observed, noting the endless calculations over who might be offended by a snub. 'And the biggest no-no is to take attention away from the bride on her big day. That's undoubtedly what would happen if Harry, with or without Meghan, came to Peter and Harriet's wedding.'
Any appearance by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex alongside senior royals would be guaranteed to dominate headlines and risk awkward questions about where they sat, who spoke to them and who didn't. For a relatively low‑key country wedding, that kind of circus is the last thing most couples would want.
Bond suggested that Harry, now well aware of the fraught dynamics with his father and brother, is unlikely to have been surprised by the lack of an invitation, even if it still hurts. 'It's clear that the rift between Harry and his father and brother has had repercussions throughout the whole family,' she said, adding that other royals are treading carefully to avoid 'further upset.'
She went on to note that Phillips is closer in age to Prince William and, since Harry left the UK, spends far more time with the heir to the throne than with his younger cousin. In Bond's view, it is 'only natural' that Harry might feel excluded from such a major family event, but until relations improve he is likely to remain on the margins of large royal gatherings.
Meanwhile, Phillips and Harriet Sperling are trying to get on with their lives. The king's nephew, who is 19th in line to the throne and the late queen's eldest grandchild, announced his engagement to Harriet in August.
He shares two daughters, Savannah and Isla, with his first wife, Autumn Kelly, and had a long-term relationship with Lindsay Wallace before they split in 2024.
Harriet, a paediatric nurse and mother to a teenage daughter, Georgia, made her public debut in royal circles last summer at the Badminton Horse Trials, where she was seen chatting with Princess Anne, Zara Tindall and Queen Camilla. By the time she walked up the aisle in Gloucestershire, surrounded by senior royals, the only lingering question was not about her place in the family, but about the two relatives who never received an invitation.
Nothing about the internal family conversations has been confirmed, so the precise reasons for excluding Prince Harry and Meghan Markle from the guest list remain unverified and should be treated with a degree of caution.
