Earlier this week, the royal family debuted the first official photo of Charles as king of the United Kingdom.
At first glance, there appeared to be nothing out of the ordinary about the image.
Charles and his queen consort, Camilla, were posed next to the Will and Kate, the new prince and princess of Wales.
If there was any message behind the photo, it seemed to be that the institution of the royal family remains strong following the death of Queen Elizabeth II, and the Windsor clan can look forward to a bright future.
But happy families don’t get clicks (we think Tolstoy said something like that), so it wasn’t long before before the British tabloid media started treating the pic like one giant middle finger pointed in the direction of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
Yes, as you’ve likely heard by now, several outlets are claiming that Meghan is more hated than ever in the UK these days.
Of course, those reports are mostly coming from people who have made careers of bashing Meghan.
We’re talking about people like Tom Bower, who’s been using the Queen’s death as another opportunity to promote his trash-tastic new book, Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the War Between the Windsors.
Bower, as you may recall, is the guy whose stated goal is to bring about Meghan’s downfall, yet who is still treated like a legitimate author and journalist overseas.
This is the same guy who claimed that Harry’s friends held an intervention to prevent him from marrying Meghan, and that the Queen celebrated when she found out that the Duchess would be unable to attend Prince Philip’s funeral.
Page Six — having apparently not gotten the memo that Bower is a professional troll — interviewed this opportunistic hack about the portrait of Charles and the Sussexes’ poorly-received trip to the UK.
“It was all about, we’re back now on course to build Brand Meghan and the book, the Netflix series, the podcast,” he told us.
“Everything is money. And to their advantage, they were in the public eye for seven days during the funeral or more, every day they were filmed,” Bower said of Harry’s decision to attend his grandmother’s funeral.
Bower claims that Charles posed for his photo while Harry and Meghan were still in town in order to send the message that the couple had been royally snubbed.
He also says that Harry and Meghan “absolutely” intended to humiliate the royals by releasing their own official portrait this week(above).
Bower claims that when the Sussexes were in London for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, “they were shuffled off to a window upstairs and hardly seen.”
At the Queen’s funeral, however, “they were center stage.”
Bower insists, of course, that the couple only showed their faces during the Queen’s period of mourning so that they could further promote “their brand.”
“You know, she has really got one interest,” Bower told Page Six, “and that’s Meghan and the casualties are the royal family and as far as she’s concerned, that’s terrific.”
Throughout her life, Queen Elizabeth II served as a living testament to the importance of duty, family, loyalty, and unity.
One might think that the folks who claim to be mourning her might take a few weeks off from talking trash about her family as a show of respect, but apparently that’s asking too much.
Meghan Markle & Prince Harry: Shocked, Humiliated By Charles’ First Photo as … was originally published on The Hollywood Gossip .