Prince Harry will fly to the UK to attend his grandfather Prince Philip’s funeral on Saturday, but his wife, Meghan Markle, won’t be with him.
Markle, who is due to give birth to the couple’s second child, a girl, in early summer will stay home in California on her doctor’s advice, Buckingham Palace announced —
even though she flew to New York for a baby shower while seven months pregnant with son Archie in February 2019.
She had hoped to be at Harry’s side, a royal source told The Post. But the trip, and the 12-hour flight, were deemed potentially too taxing.
“The Duke of Sussex is planning to attend,” a royal spokesman said at a press briefing, using Harry’s other title.
“The Duchess of Sussex has been advised by her physician not to travel. So the duke will be attending.”
The funeral at Windsor Castle’s St. George’s Chapel will be an intimate affair, limited to 30 participants under strict UK social-distancing rules.
Not even Prime Minister Boris Johnson will attend, so as to allow space for as many royal family members as possible.
Philip died Friday at home at the castle, just two months short of his 100th birthday.
He was honored Saturday with a 40-minute gun salute throughout the country.
Philip’s funeral will be the first time Harry, 36, has returned to his homeland since he and Markle, 39, quit the royal family just over a year ago, and it would be his first encounter since last month’s explosive interview with Oprah Winfrey, in which the couple made allegations of racism within the royal family.
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During the interview, Markle said she was so miserable she was suicidal — and no one helped. Harry, meanwhile, told Oprah his father, Prince Charles, and brother, Prince William, are “trapped” within their senior roles.
But Harry talked warmly of his love for his grandmother, the queen, and a source said Friday he would not miss the funeral for the world.
“Harry was extremely close to his grandfather,” a royal source told The Post. “He will, of course, be there, no matter how difficult relations are between the Sussexes and the family.”
The queen has not spoken publicly on the death of her husband of 73 years, although her daughter-in-law, the Countess of Wessex — Prince Edward’s wife — said after visiting Saturday that she is doing “amazing” despite her loss.
On Saturday, Prince Charles, Elizabeth and Philip’s eldest child and heir to the throne, made his first statement on the loss of “my dear papa.”
“I particularly wanted to say, that my father spent the last 70 years giving the most remarkable, devoted service to the queen, to my family and the country, and also to home,” Charles said.
“And as you can imagine, my family and I miss my father enormously,” Charles told reporters camped out in front of his home in Gloucestershire.
“We are so deeply touched by the number of other people here and elsewhere around the world and the commonwealth who share our loss and our sorrow,” Charles said. “My dear papa was a very special person who I think above all else would have been amazed by the reaction and the touching things that have been said about him.”
