Today Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, turns 39 years old. While many speculated that the royal family might not even acknowledge her birthday online given The State Of Things, both the Queen and Prince William and Kate Middleton sent Meghan warm birthday wishes on their Instagram accounts.
The family is in a bit of a mess right now. For starters, and most alarmingly, Prince Andrew remains embroiled in the ongoing scandal surrounding the rape and assault of underage girls allegedly orchestrated by Jeffery Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Prince Andrew is also not being particularly helpful to investigators, and somehow the Crown has managed to keep both the Queen's favorite son and many of the details of his possible involvement largely out of the public eye.
On top of that, a controversial book about Meghan and Harry is due to be released on August 11. Numerous sneak peeks into the book's content have shown that it will definitely divulge royal secrets that the family may wish could stay under wraps.
The official Royal Family account kicked off the day by sharing a photo of Queen Elizabeth and Meghan for their 2018 visit to Chester. The photo is captioned, "Wishing The Duchess of Sussex a very happy birthday!"
This visit was notable as it was Meghan's first official outing with the Queen.
Meghan and Harry had only been married for a few months when the Queen and the duchess took this trip together, and the website Chester Live described a successful visit: "And they seemed to get on very well, and were photographed smiling and joking throughout the day. It was obviously a very memorable day for the Queen to have included it in the video of her best moments from the year."
The Cambridges' Instagram account also posted a cheery birthday message for Meghan. While they kept it quite short, the caption is nice enough: "Wishing a very happy birthday to The Duchess of Sussex today!"
The Clarence House account also sent birthday greetings to Meghan. The account represents Prince Charles and Camilla. Prince Charles and Meghan reportedly have a close bond, and Charles walked Meghan down the aisle on her wedding day. One source noted, "I think Harry will be eternally grateful to his papa for stepping in and giving Meghan's hand in marriage. The bond between them is very close."
Meanwhile, the family is surely bracing themselves for everything that could be revealed once Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of a Modern Royal Family is released.
Quite a few details have already been leaked, including the fact that Prince Harry is reportedly fond of using the ghost emoji in text messages and seems to have charmed Meghan by doing so.
The book also squashes one particularly nefarious rumor: that Meghan was denied the tiara she wanted to wear on her wedding day by the Queen herself. Instead, the real story appears to be that Harry and the Queen's dresser, Angela Kelly, clashed over tiaras instead.
However, as notable as some of the drama reported in the book might be, it's truly nothing compared to the ongoing scandal that Prince Andrew has found himself in for months now. While he has mostly managed to stay out of the spotlight, the recent arrest of Ghislaine Maxwell has sparked renewed interest in what's going on with Andrew's own legal case.
Prince Andrew was reportedly quite close with Jeffrey Epstein, the ex-boyfriend of Maxwell and alleged co-mastermind behind a reported sex trafficking ring. Epstein and Maxwell are accused of organizing the ring and actively recruiting, assaulting, and abusing many underage girls in the process.
Maxwell is said to have introduced Prince Andrew to Jeffrey Epstein in 1999. Now Andrew has had a major accusation leveled against him: "that Epstein forced another of his teenage victims into sexual encounters with Andrew on three separate occasions."
Though Prince Andrew has stepped back from royal duties and has largely dropped out of the limelight, rumors of his involvement in the ring still follow him. This is compounded by the fact that Andrew refuses to acknowledge the rumors or even participate in the effort to uncover what did and didn't happen.
Andrew has said that he quit associating with Epstein in 2010: "I went to see him and I was doing a number of other things in New York at the time and we had an opportunity to go for a walk in the park and that was the conversation coincidentally that was photographed which was when I said to him, I said, 'Look, because of what has happened, I don't think it is appropriate that we should remain in contact.'"
He added, "By mutual agreement during that walk in the park we decided that we would part company and I left, I think it was the next day and to this day I never had any contact with him from that day forward."
However, Andrew has also said that he was in contact with Maxwell as recently as the last year.
He's said that the two didn't discuss Epstein before his death. "There wasn't anything to discuss about him because he wasn't in the news, you know, it was just … we had moved on."
It's currently not clear how the case against Maxwell could impact Prince Andrew.
Audrey Strauss, the acting US attorney for the Southern District of New York, has only commented that she'd love to have more information from Andrew: "I'm not going to comment on anyone's status in this investigation but I will say that we would welcome Prince Andrew coming in to talk with us, we would like to have the benefit of his statement."
"I have no further comment beyond what I just said, which is that our doors remain open, as we previously said, and we would welcome him coming in and giving us an opportunity to hear his statement."
Prince Andrew's team had previously commented that he is "willing to help any appropriate law enforcement agency with their investigations, if required," but it's unclear to what extent, if any, Prince Andrew has done so.
