Royal commentator Richard Fitzwilliams told GB News that Meghan decided to stay away from the UK because of the rift between the royal family and the Sussexes, and also due to her poor approval rating. “It was not a question of supporting him [Harry], she [Meghan] was not coming here because her ratings in the polls are terrible,” Fitzwilliams said.

“The Royal Family has this huge rift, so there are all sorts of reasons why she chose to stay away,” he added. “She assumed which turned out to be the case that she would get positive publicity in Nigeria. It made total sense not to accompany Harry to St Paul’s Cathedral, it would have been unthinkable a few years ago that this would happen but it has.”

‘I think they will be very satisfied…’

Meghan did not join Harry at the event, but flew to Heathrow Airport to meet him before the two of them travelled to Nigeria. The Sussexes championed mental health awareness during several events in the country.

“I think they will be very satisfied with it because it was a private visit that had all the trappings of a royal visit,” Fitzwilliams said. “So in reality, people conflated the two, and it had enormous press coverage.”

He added, “They had huge international coverage so what this gives them is an opportunity to build the value of their brand internationally by doing this again. Now that they have beefed up their communication team, I would expect them to do this again. This puts them much more into the A-lister bracket. What they had done before was not that much or that impressive.