Queen Camilla first saw her stepgrandson, Archie, on a photographer's smartphone shortly after the future prince's birth on May 6, 2019. The "unfortunate" reveal was due to his parents Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's sudden shift from royal newborn baby protocol in favor of no posing for the media outside of the hospital.
"We were led to believe that she was going into labor at 2 o'clock, when the baby had been born many hours earlier," veteran royal lensman Arthur Edwards shared. "We were led to believe it was going to be a home birth, and it was at a hospital. The whole thing was just stage-managed to suit them."
"Harry’s baby Archie was almost teething before we found out he was born," he joked before adding: "When William was born, and Harry was born, and George, Charlotte, Louis, we got great pictures outside the hospital. William and Catherine especially — they made such an effort to show the whole world their baby."
Camilla, the then-Duchess of Cornwall, was on tour in Germany at the time and reportedly received no direct communication from Harry, Meghan or their team. This is despite her former position as the Princess of Wales and future queen, which, in keeping with protocol, would have seen her briefed on a new royal birth.
"I remember showing Camilla in, I think, Munich the first pictures of Archie that were taken by the press," Edwards revealed. "I showed her on my phone, and that was the first time she saw him. It was difficult times."
Harry and Meghan were in the throws of enjoying parenthood but also in the final stretch of months as senior, working royals, which analysts now say was a time of "tension and snubs, except a lid was kept on things then before Harry and Meghan blew it off with a canon."
The pair would announce their intention to step down as full-time royals in favor of becoming part-time in January 2020, which the late Queen Elizabeth II rejected by stating: "You are either in or out."
In his controversial 2023 memoir, Spare, Harry unleashed his long-running fury for his stepmother for the whole world to read.
"I remember wondering … if she would be cruel to me; if she would be like all the evil stepmothers in the stories," he wrote. "Despite Willy and me urging him not to, Pa was going ahead," the Duke shared when highlighting how William was allegedly also not a fan of the marriage set for April 9, 2005.
The fiery-haired prince continued: "We pumped his hand, wished him well. No hard feelings. We recognized that he was finally going to be with the woman he loved, the woman he’d always loved."
The New York Post reported on Edwards' comments.