Last month, I expressed my surprise that the British tabloids weren’t doing more around Peter Phillips and Harriet Sperling’s wedding, which is now coming up on Saturday. This is the only royal (adjacent) wedding of the year, and Peter’s first cousins are Prince Harry and Prince William. Surely, the Mail should have been wringing every melodrama out of this wedding for months, right? Instead, we only got a terse confirmation a few weeks ago that Peter had not invited Harry to the wedding and that they weren’t very close these days. Well now, just days before the wedding, royal commentators have only just realized that they could be making a meal out of it. In so doing, they’re basically admitting that Prince William threw yet another wedding tantrum about how people need to choose between him and Harry. Pitiful.
Prince Harry was left off the guest list for cousin Peter Phillips’ upcoming wedding to Harriet Sperling because the groom’s loyalties allegedly lie with Prince William. Royal commentator Emily Nash exclusively spoke with Page Six while promoting her upcoming appearance on the live recording of Hello! Magazine’s “A Right Royal Podcast” next Tuesday.
“I think it comes down to interpersonal relationships, doesn’t it?” Nash said. “What we were told was that Peter hadn’t spoken to Harry for the last few years. And so it sort of has been a natural cooling off and he wasn’t invited as a result.”
Nash explained that Phillips is, however, “very close” to the Prince of Wales.
“[Peter is] very loyal; he’s very protective. He’s been a very good sounding board to his cousin over the years,” Nash said. “So it absolutely makes sense that I think had both Wales brothers been there, it would have put a completely different slant on the whole event. And that’s not what you want on what should be the happiest day of your life, right?”
Page Six has reached out to representatives for Prince Harry but didn’t immediately get a response. Nash recalled Phillips, 48, being the “peacemaker” between the Duke of Sussex, 41, and his older brother, 43, during Prince Philip’s 2021 funeral.
“Peter was positioned between the two warring brothers,” Nash said. “He was sort of put right in the middle of them as the older cousin, and that must have been a really difficult moment for him.” She added, “Of course, a lot of water has gone under the bridge since then.”
Nash cited Harry’s tell-all memoir “Spare” and his and wife Meghan Markle’s Netflix docuseries — both of which laid bare the family’s private tensions — as more reasons for his falling out with Princess Anne’s son.
The Hello! Magazine editor believes it was a “smart” move that Harry was snubbed from the wedding.
“If that had been the case, that would have become the absolute focal point for Peter and Harriet’s special day, and there have been enough distractions, I think, from the good things about the royal family over the past year,” Nash said. “Hopefully, they can just have this one day to come together and celebrate someone’s happy news for a change.”
William and wife Kate Middleton are expected to attend the June 6 nuptials, and Nash believes King Charles III will also “make an appearance.” She also expects that the Prince and Princess of Wales’ kids could attend, and Phillips’ sister, Zara Tindall, and her husband, Mike, are a definite yes. Harriet’s daughter from her first marriage to Antonio St. John Sperling, Georgina, is expected to attend as well.
“There is a real family at the heart of it — and a blended one as well. So it really is reflecting the much more modern face of the royal family,” Nash said.
“That would have become the absolute focal point for Peter and Harriet’s special day…” As opposed to right now, when the focal point of Peter and Harriet’s wedding is still about how he did NOT invite Harry. That’s been the main story for two weeks now: Peter didn’t invite Harry, why didn’t he invite Harry, did William throw a tantrum about someone else’s wedding (again), did William threaten Peter over not inviting Harry. As always, I assume that this is ALL William and he’s regularly screaming at his relatives and trying to force them to “choose sides.” Pretty soon, we’ll hear about how Peter is actually the monarchy’s secret weapon AND the brother William needs right now (sorry to Mike Tindall).
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid, Cover Images.
