Dear Gossips,

Welcome back from Christmas and Boxing Day. Earlier this week, when Buckingham Palace released an advance photo from the Queen’s Christmas message, to be broadcast in the UK on Christmas Day, many noted that House Sussex was not included among the photos that were placed on her desk. Instead, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle showed up during the video, as Her Majesty looked back on 2019 and listed Archie Harrison Mountbatten Windsor’s birth as one of the highlights of the year. I wonder if the British tabloids were disappointed. They were hoping, no doubt, to make a story out of the Sussexes not being around. 

At the end of the video (which you can see here) is footage from the Queen’s Christmas lunch, when she joined Prince Charles, Prince William, and Big G to make Christmas pudding. LOL, did you see the Queen did when Big G started stabbing at the bowl? Move Charles. MOVE. This is the only place our heir can exercise his conquering genes. 

For the British royals, then, it was the Christmas that they hoped for, considering the circumstances. Prince Andrew was at Sandringham but did not join the other members of his family for the traditional walk to church. Instead he attended an earlier service so as not to be a distraction. Not that distractions aren’t helpful, sometimes. Children are the best kind of distraction. We’ll get to that later this morning. 

But as we approach the end of the year and the beginning of a new one, and a new decade, it remains to be seen how much of or how little of a presence Andrew will be. Princess Beatrice still has not announced her wedding date, understandably not wanting to muddle her happy occasion with her father’s scandal. She and Edoardo Mozzi were at Sandringham though so, clearly, the Queen has already approved, it’s now just a matter of letting people know when it’s happening and how public – or not – it will be. The British royal way is to always let things pass, to rely on the fact that they almost always do. That said, this dreadful business with Andrew and Jeffrey Epstein, the dead rapist pedophile, has lasted a lot longer than they expected. It obviously has surprised them how long it’s lasted, mostly because Andrew was such a f-cking idiot during his interview with BBC Newsnight. Remember, all of this blew up in is face because he HAD to have his say. How long will it be – if ever – before they trust him out on his own again? 

Yours in gossip,

Lainey