THE Royal wedding this weekend may be more low-key than the lavish nuptials we’ve seen in the past, but it will prove to be an extraordinary event in two dramatic ways.
As Peter Phillips and his bride, Harriet Sperling, walk down the aisle in the Cotswolds, the family will come together in a show of solidarity. But it is also a devastating public snub to the narrative peddled by Harry and Meghan about the ‘Firm’.
Peter Phillips and his bride Harriet Sperling, will walk down the aisle in the Cotswolds this weekend Credit: Alamy
The Royal Family will come together in a devastating public snub to the narrative peddled by Harry and Meghan about the ‘Firm’ Credit: AP
Because, far from the cold, unwelcoming institution the Sussexes have berated on Oprah, Netflix and across Harry’s memoir, they are opening their arms to a quiet, dignified bride who has no aristocratic titles, is a single mum and works hard as an NHS nurse.
Simply put, Harriet is as down to earth as they come – and a far cry from the demanding Duchess of Sussex.
The respect that Peter is held in, by the entire Royal family, will be evident at this happy gathering.
For a start, it is Derby Day, the one fixture the King will not shift in his diary. The late Queen missed it only twice in seventy years on the throne.
Charles and Camilla now hold her old patronage of the Jockey Club, and they will be at there when the gates fly open.
And yet, before the racing, the King is expected to make a flying visit to a small Cotswold church.
He and Camilla are tipped to squeeze in a royal wedding – his nephew Peter Phillips and Harriet Sperling – before heading to Epsom.
They are understood to be joining the royals including William and Catherine – but not their kids – for a big royal show of unity.
The wider royal family will take their seats in the pew, and celebrate the couple, then for the King and Queen it is off to the races the ninety miles south for the off.
Such a flying visit is in no way a snub. It is the tribute.
After all, Peter – the late Queen and Prince Philip’s oldest and first grandchild – has always been an anchor for the royal family.
Prince Philip adored him and called him “the winner” — the grandson who stayed calm, played hard and asked for nothing.
The Queen judged him the most dependable of her brood.
Charles leans on him still. So does William, who has long trusted his cousin when the weather turns rough.
We saw the measure of the man in April 2021. As Philip’s coffin moved through Windsor and the two estranged princes walked behind it in frozen silence, it was Peter who walked between them, steadying both.
He simply stepped up and did what was needed – held the family together at the moment it might have broken apart.
The family are opening their arms to a quiet, dignified bride who has no aristocratic titles, is a single mum and works hard as an NHS nurse Credit: PA
Peter has always been an anchor for the royal family, with the late Queen judging him the most dependable of her brood Credit: Alamy
It proved how right Princess Anne got it, when she turned down titles for her children.
She wanted Peter and his sister Zara to grow up as people, not princes — to work, to stumble, to earn their place.
Half a century on, the gamble reads as wisdom. She raised a grounded, hard-grafting man with no side to him and a heart in the right spot.
When his first marriage to Autumn ended, he put his two daughters first and kept the parting clean and quiet, for their sake.
He is a present, loving dad. Today (Saturday) he takes on Harriet’s daughter too, with that same steadiness. The modern monarchy could use a few more like him.
And he earns every pound himself. Phillips made his name in motorsport — several years in Formula One, from Stewart Grand Prix to Jaguar to Williams — then seven at the Royal Bank of Scotland, building and selling its first global Formula One sponsorship programme.
Today he is head of partner acquisition at the rights agency CSM Sport & Entertainment, runs his own firm SEL, chairs City Racing and fronts the golf backer ISPS Handa.
Last year he became a director of Maritime Passport, a start-up digitising shipping papers, and is reported to have launched a £5million property venture with the Danish billionaire Troels Holch Povlsen.
King Charles and Camilla are expected to make a flying visit to a small Cotswold church for the wedding before heading to Epsom Credit: Reuters
They will be joining the royals including William and Catherine – but not their kids – for a big royal show of unity Credit: Getty
There were commercial turns too — a much-mocked 2020 milk advert for the Chinese market, filmed in a palace setting — and a reported £750,000 for staging the Queen’s 90th-birthday lunch.
His fortune was put at £15.7million in 2022. Worth stressing not a penny of it comes from the Crown.
He could cash in on his wedding too. But absolutely isn’t this time.
In 2008 he faced a backlash when he sold his first wedding to Hello! for a reported £500,000, his grandmother splashed across a hundred glossy pages — a stunt the Palace branded a serious error of judgement, and one that pushed the Queen to bar senior royals from such deals for good.
This time there is no deal. No big cheque for exclusive rights.
Sources call it out of the question, the issue now too sensitive — and they trace that caution straight to the money-spinning of the Sussexes.
Peter learned the lesson. They never did.
Now the empty chairs. For the story of this wedding is also who will not be in it. No Andrew. No Fergie. No Harry. No Meghan. Four names.
Harry and Meghan have however been snubbed from the big day, alongside Andrew and Fergie Credit: Getty
Peter and Harriet’s wedding will be warm, happy and free of a single difficult moment, precisely because the people who manufacture them stayed away Credit: Alamy
One thread. Drama.
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, stripped of his titles last year, arrested over his Epstein ties, parked in a cottage on the Sandringham estate. Sarah Ferguson, no longer welcome at a royal occasion.
And an ocean away, the Sussexes, who swapped a palace for a streaming deal and a grievance that never ends.
Yet Andrew’s own daughters are understood to be on the guest-list.
Beatrice and Eugenie will be in that church, smiling, even as their father sits disgraced in his bolthole on the Sandringham estate, nursing his bruises.
So the line is not drawn by blood, nor by name. It is drawn by conduct.
Hold your nerve, keep your dignity, and you keep your seat. The princesses kept theirs through every storm.
Meghan threw hers away. Now meet the bride — and understand why her welcome matters most of all.
The bride Harriet is no society catch, no duchess-in-waiting.
She is a senior children’s nurse who spent her career on the wards of Evelina London, tending sick babies, fascinated by how their small brains grow.
She was born plain Harriet Sanders in a Gloucestershire village in 1980, one of four. After her first marriage ended she raised her daughter, Georgia, alone for a decade.
In a tender essay on single motherhood and faith, she once described the two of them as an island. She writes. She prays. She works – and the better for it.
The royal family did not flinch when she arrived on Peter’s arm.
They drew her in. Her daughter took her own bow at the family’s Easter service at St George’s Chapel.
Harriet rode summered at Balmoral, shared Christmas at Sandringham. She will join Peter in the Royal Box at Ascot.
Here is the detail that bites. Bride and groom have both been divorced, so they needed their local vicar to agree before they could wed in church at all. He said yes.
Charles and Camilla, divorced themselves, were refused that very thing in 2005 and made do with a civil service and a blessing. Peter gets the full church wedding.
The Establishment is bending to welcome an ordinary nurse, not freezing her out.
So where is the prejudiced, unyielding institution Meghan has painted since fleeing to the US. Nowhere to be found.
The Windsors will fold in a divorced NHS nurse with no title and no fanfare.
The only thing barred from the room is theatrics. That is what should sting in Montecito.
Meghan once stood alongside Harry inside this family. Now her name sits with Andrew’s and Fergie’s — the absent, the awkward, the quietly removed.
The wedding will be warm, happy and free of a single difficult moment, precisely because the people who manufacture them stayed away.
As for Peter and Harriet, most will toast them. And wish them happiness.
He has earned it, quietly under the radar. So has she.
