Morning creeps over the stately moldings of Buckingham Palace like an unwanted hangover. The royal wallpaper, once the pride of monarchs, now watches in silent judgment as Meghan Markle and Prince Harry sit at a breakfast table heavy with silver, symbolism, and barely-contained disappointment.
They look like a couple who once escaped a castle but found themselves locked in a cul-de-sac of awkward nostalgia and bad press. Meghan toys with a croissant like it’s a finance spreadsheet, hoping the flaky layers might peel back a solution. Harry stirs his tea—monogrammed, of course—as though he’s searching for royal answers in Earl Grey swirls.
Silence hangs in the air, only broken by the corgis, stationed like furry guards under the table, their judgmental eyes as sharp as their ancestors’. The mood is somewhere between melancholy brunch and a reality show no one asked for.
Then, with the desperation of a man who’s overshared one too many times on podcasts, Harry breaks the silence. He brings up “that time with the milk,” a story so frequently retold it now causes staff to flee on instinct. A nearby footman bolts out of the room pretending deafness, leaving only toast crumbs and unspoken regrets.
Meghan, seizing the chance to redirect, dives into memory lane. She recalls the HGTV pilot they pitched—an idea that crash-landed faster than a royal biography on clearance. She sighs wistfully, noting maybe, just maybe, the common folk had a point about modest homes and grout that doesn’t require its own trust fund.
Harry shrugs, muttering something about marble grout lines looking “wizard.” Meghan rolls her eyes so hard the Queen’s portrait above them practically sighs in oil paint.
And then, from her designer purse—a relic of another life—Meghan pulls a cardboard box. Not jewelry. Not documents. Cake pops. The infamous ones. Frosting now mutated into colors never approved by nature, their sugary heads drooping like exhausted courtiers.
She offers one to Harry with the solemnity of a truce offering. He stares at it, flashes back to online reviews mentioning dental trauma and food poisoning. It’s a silent standoff between dignity and desperate snack consumption. “I haven’t pooped yet today,” he mutters.
Just then, Queen Catherine—ever the royal embodiment of camera-ready composure—glides in. Her voice, sweet as lemon tea, chirps about a “lovely lunch tradition” she and Meghan “share.” Meghan’s smile freezes, recalling that the last “invitation” arrived via royal scheduler with notes about camera angles.
Translation: it was a photo-op, not friendship.
As Catherine vanishes with royal grace, Meghan’s fingers tense around the cake pop stick. Across the table, Harry retreats into old dreams—lavender-scented ambitions of becoming a massage therapist, of healing souls with deep tissue therapy. Alas, Bravo’s pilot rejected him, citing public hazard potential and coining him “The Ginger Cairo Nightmare.”
Meghan pats his hand gently, not sure whether to comfort him or gently suggest career counseling.
“We did get to keep the cake pops,” she whispers, as if finding a silver lining in the sugar decay.
Outside, the media preps for their daily content feast. The headline is practically writing itself: “Royals Return: Tea, Trauma, and Ketchup Catastrophes.”
Inside, Meghan and Harry rise from the table, straighten their designer yet tired outfits, and exit the room with the grim determination of animated characters denied a second season.
Because that’s what it feels like. They’re not living life—they’re living the edit. A royal cartoon caught between satire and sincerity, between failed pitches and public reinvention.
The morning didn’t end in scandal. There were no shattered cups, no dramatic exits. But the truth was loud in its silence: the Sussex brand has been boiled down to lukewarm tea and stale frosting.
And still, they march forward.
Behind them, the Queen’s painted eyes remain fixed, watching another royal chapter dissolve into confusion, cake, and corgi barking.