Prince Harry refused to take part in the Royal Family’s traditional Boxing Day shoot on Tuesday so as not to upset his ‘part-vegan’ activist fiancée, according to reports.
Gamekeepers at the Sandringham estate, where Harry first joined his family at the annual shoot more than 20 years ago, were “stunned” by the prince’s decision, according to The Sun.
“The Boxing Day shoot was always going to be a tricky issue. Meghan is a keen animal rights campaigner and doesn’t like hunting in any form,” an insider source told the newspaper.
“Harry loves it and has always been out there on Boxing Day. But if it means breaking with long-standing royal traditions to avoid upsetting her, so be it. It’s fair to say that there are some pretty stunned faces around here.”
The move was described as a “major departure” for the prince— a keen marksman who earlier this month flew to Germany for a boar hunt whilst his actress wife-to-be stayed in Los Angeles with her mother.
A friend of Harry’s said: “If Meghan’s not comfortable with him doing the shoot, he wouldn’t want to upset her.”
On Wednesday, Prince Harry and the BBC were criticised for producing a politicised “interview” with Barack Obama in which the former president launched a thinly-veiled attack on his successor Donald J. Trump.
The interview was aired after reports on Boxing Day that the British government is pleading with the young couple not to extend the Obamas an invite to their wedding in May.
Foreign Office officials fear relations between the U.S. and UK would plummet if the globalist former leader were to attend the Royal wedding while Trump was not invited, according to The Sun, which reported that “the young Royal couple’s dislike of the new president is well known.”
Robert Lacey, an historian and biographer of the Queen, has previously noted the existence of an activist streak in Markle, remarking that palace protocol requiring that royalty keep quiet on controversial political matters could pose an “existential problem” for the divorced American.
The 36-year-old, who is the first unmarried partner to join Britain’s Royal Family at Christmas, has in the past publicly backed Hillary Clinton, attacked President Trump as “divisive” and “misogynistic”, and used social media to express her opposition to Brexit.
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