PRINCE Harry and Meghan Markle’s united front may not be as real as they want you to believe, experts have speculated.
In their first joint appearance in three months, Harry, 40, and Meghan, 43, spoke about tackling online violence against children.
However, their unified stand may not be as solid as the pair make it seem, according to one expert.
Body language specialist Judy James spotted an “awkward” sign that could hint not is all as it seems for the couple.
She focused in on a “very telling” non-verbal message about the pair’s relationship in the video when Harry puts his arm around Meghan.
Judy said the “deliberate, pre-planned, and quite neatly choreographed” gesture seems to indicate the couple want to portray a sense of being “together”.
She added: “The body language looks rather awkward, and rather contrived.
“The arm looks rather stiff and their bodies are not particularly close together at that point.
“But as a signal to the world, it seems to imply unity and togetherness.”
It comes after insiders told The Sun that the couple are spending more and more of their down time apart.
Prince Harry travelled to New York, London and Lesotho without Meghan – and spent the night of his birthday on a hiking holiday without his wife, although sources close to the couple insist it was Meghan who organised the lads’ trip.
In the video, where the pair are dressed in dark blazers adorned with poppies, she described Harry’s body language as “resolutely military” up until his arm movement.
He glances only a few times at Meghan in the video, firstly with a “stern facial expression”, implying he is being very “assertive” and “serious” in his role, according to Judy.
However, she said Meghan had a whole different body language approach, being “much warmer” and “much softer.”
She highlighted how Meghan’s mirroring and non-verbal responses to Harry signal strong ties, and very much a desire to display emotional and professional unity.
Meghan performs a soft asymmetric smile as she speaks and she looks very keen to project signals of love and support for Harry, Judy added.
The expert added that every time Meghan turned to look at Harry, she did so with a “warm, loving smile of endorsement, affirmation, and affection” that speaks to the couple working “as a team”.
She also spoke of how whenever the pair appear together, they are very much “emphasising” that they are a “royal couple.”
While they may not be hinting at wanting to return to the Royal Family, she said it appears to be a nod to the fact that they are royals, even when away from the UK.
Another royal expert, Hugo Vickers, felt there was nothing “unnatural” about the video.
However, he did agree there’s no move for the pair to come back to the UK as it could deflect from what the King and working members of the royal family are trying to do.
The first hints of friction reportedly came after William was introduced to Meghan when she was staying at Kensington Palace.
Once she’d returned home to Canada, William and Harry sat down for a brother-to-brother chat.
He knew Harry was already head-over-heels for her but it has been claimed he advised him to take it slowly.
The younger prince reportedly didn’t take too kindly to the advice, with one royal source saying he “went mental”.
Then in June 2019 Harry and Meghan officially split off from the charity they shared with William and Kate.
The Royal Foundation will be divided between the Sussexes and Cambridges as the couples focus on their own separate charitable endeavours.
Prince William and Prince Harry first established the Royal Foundation in 2009 before Kate joined two years later shortly after their engagement was announced.
The trio would often appear together at events and the Foundation had huge successes with projects like the Invictus Games for injured veterans and the mental health Heads Together campaign.
The Royal Foundation said the decision was made following the conclusion of a review into its structure – but added both couples will continue to work together in the future.
Harry and Meg were living in close proximity to Kate and Wills within the Kensington Palace estate, but they switched to Frogmore Cottage in Windsor before baby Archie was born.
The move further increased rumours of a fallout.
Harry also hinted in his ITV documentary “Harry and Meghan, An African Journey” that he and his brother had grown apart.
In 2021, Harry and Meghan give their bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey where Harry accused his dad of cutting him off financially.
Harry then jetted back to UK to join William in unveiling a statue to their mother Princess Diana in the grounds of Kensington Palace. But sources claimed William didn’t want to attend the memorial amid their ongoing rift.
In 2022, just before their grandmother the Queen died, sources claimed Kate acts as a “peacemaker” between the brothers.
Harry claimed his brother “knocked him to the floor” during an argument about Meghan, in his memoir.
In Spare, Harry said William branded Meghan “rude” and “difficult” during a row.
Harry alleged William “grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and … knocked me to the floor”.
He said he was left with a visible injury to his back following the argument in 2019 at Nottingham Cottage on the grounds of Kensington Palace, where he was living at the time.
In January this year, Harry flew in to be with Charles after the monarch’s shock cancer diagnosis.
Harry flew back to the US the following day – without seeing Wills.
In May he visited the UK for a three-day visit without seeing King Charles or Prince William.
Hugo continued: “I think the British public are fairly negative about Meghan Markle, and to some extent about Prince Harry as well, because he’s thrown a lot of javelins at his family, a lot of a lot of remarks in spare, a lot of things in various interviews, and so forth, and none of that’s very helpful or constructive.
“I don’t think Meghan Markle wants to come back to this country, and she’s kept well away for a long time.”
But for Harry, he feels it would be “unnatural” for the King’s son to not occasionally return to the UK, especially given how “popular” he was beforehand when undertaking royal duties.
The expert added: “He was jolly good at them [royal duties] and very popular before that, and always seemed very happy when he was doing things on the grounds.
“As I’ve said many times before, people are usually very happy when they’re putting things into life rather than taking things out of life.
“If you’re working for the general good rather than for yourself, it usually works better.”
While he didn’t rule out a return in the future, saying that “anything can happen” in the long run if people are “prepared to compromise and be sensible about it,” the expert doesn’t think a reunion is likely at the moment.
