Harry and Meghan choose Christmas card without picture of children

Harry and Meghan have chosen not to include a picture with their children on their annual Christmas card, according to reports.

The virtual greeting, reportedly sent by email, included a message reading: “On behalf of the office of Prince Harry & Meghan, The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Archewell Productions and Archewell Foundation, we wish you a very happy holiday season”, according to the People magazine.

This year they chose not to include their children, Archie and Lilibet, who featured in last year’s card.

Instead Meghan, 42, and Harry, 39, chose a photo from the closing ceremony of the 2023 Invictus Games, which took place in September in Dusseldorf, Germany.

Harry wore a black suit with a black dress shirt, while Meghan wore a green strapless dress with floral details as they smiled and clapped.

Last year’s card was the first time the couple revealed a picture of their second child, Lilibet, now aged two, who was held in the air by her smiling mother as a delighted Harry admired her.

Harry and Meghan revealed this year’s card on the day of the Duke of Sussex’s partial victory in a High Court phone-hacking claim, when a judge ruled his phone was probably hacked “to a modest extent” by the publisher Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN).

The conclusion of the case prompted a salvo from Piers Morgan, former editor of the Daily Mirror between 1995 and 2003, who accused Harry of wanting to “destroy the British monarchy”.

In the tirade, which Morgan delivered outside his London home, he insisted he had “zero knowledge” of an article about the duke published during his time as editor of the paper, which may have involved unlawful information gathering and denied ever having hacked a phone or telling anyone anyone else to.