Prince Harry & Meghan Markle "Demoted" on The Royal Family Website

Prince William, Kate Middleton, Meghan Markle, Prince Harry

(Image credit: Getty Images)

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are no longer working royals, but they are some of the most recognizable members of the family.

This, it seems, has posed a conundrum for the Royal Family in deciding how to include them in official materials, such as their website.

But according to Page Six, King Charles III's regime has wasted no time in demoting the Duke and Duchess of Sussex to the bottom of their info page, where they feature just above the disgraced Prince Andrew, who stopped being a working royal following the accusations of sexual assault made against him by Virginia Giuffre, a survivor of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

According to the publication, while they were working royals, the Sussexes featured just below Prince William and Kate Middleton, then Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. When the Sussexes left their roles as senior royals, they were pushed to the spot right below Anne, Princess Royal.

Prince William, Princess Catherine, Meghan Markle, Prince Harry at Windsor

But since King Charles acceded the throne, they have been demoted to second-to-last place, which puts them below the far lesser known royals the Duchess of Gloucester, the Duke of Gloucester, the Duke of Kent, and Princess Alexandra.

This page is technically for titled and working royals (which is why members of the family such as Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie or Zara Tindall aren't featured), so it does make sense that the Sussexes and Andrew not be prominently featured, since they have all ceased to be working royals.

However, we can't pretend that there aren't implications behind this choice and consequences to it for family relations as well as individual members' public-facing reputation. Besides, why did Charles and his advisors decide to demote his son and daughter-in-law, seemingly for no reason, when Queen Elizabeth had kept them higher up? Go figure.

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Iris Goldsztajn is a London-based journalist, editor and author. She is the morning editor at Marie Claire, and her work has appeared in the likes of British Vogue, InStyle, Cosmopolitan, Refinery29 and SELF. Iris writes about everything from celebrity news and relationship advice to the pitfalls of diet culture and the joys of exercise. She has many opinions on Harry Styles, and can typically be found eating her body weight in cheap chocolate.