Queen Elizabeth Removes Obamas from Royal Wedding Guest List-Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
After Buckingham Palace announced Prince Harry’s engagement to Meghan Merkel, Queen Elizabeth removed the Obamas from the Royal Wedding guest list.
The Truth:
Buckingham Palace had not released a Royal Wedding guest list at the time this rumor went viral. And there were no indications that Queen Elizabeth removed the Obamas from the guest list.
Those rumors spread across websites known for publishing fabricated reports in December 2017. One post that appeared at Your News Wire was shared 80,000 times within days. Without citing any sources, these stories reported that Queen Elizabeth removed the Obamas from the Royal Wedding list despite Michelle’s efforts to “kiss up.”
The post reports Michelle Obama assumed she had a “rightful place” on the guest list because Meghan Markle is black. But that was before Queen Elizabeth removed the Obamas from the Royal Wedding guest list, delivering a “humiliating beatdown.”
Your News Wire doesn’t identify its content as fake news, but its disclaimer states that it makes “no representations” that its content is accurate. And we’ve investigated many fabricated reports that have appeared at Your News Wire in the past. This appears to be the latest.
Queen Elizabeth Removes Obamas from Royal Wedding Guest List: A Familiar Story
British tabloid The Daily Mail reported that Buckingham Palace didn’t invite the Obamas to Prince William and Kate Middleton’s wedding in 2011, although 40 heads of states were on the guest list. That claim proved misleading.
The Obamas weren’t invited, but neither were either heads of state. The 40 “heads of state” referred to in the article were actually 40 members of foreign royal families. So, why weren’t heads of state invited? Because Prince William was not directly in line to assume the throne, it wouldn’t be considered an official state visit. That explains why Ronald and Nancy Reagan were invited to Princess Dianna’s wedding in 1981, but later presidents (including the Obamas) didn’t receive invites.
Added security costs for protecting a sitting president were also cited as a reason for the Obamas’ exclusion from the guest list at the time.
The Real Story on the Royal Wedding Guest List
It’s not clear if Donald and Melania Trump will receive invites to the Royal Wedding. But there was early speculation that Barack and Michelle Obama would receive one, Newsweek reports:
The Obamas have forged a close relationship with Prince Harry. Former first lady Michelle Obama appeared with the 33-year-old royal for charity events in Chicago at the end of October. The former president was overheard quizzing Harry on his relationship with Markle, an American actor, when he sat with the prince at the Invictus Games, a sports event for injured servicemen and women founded by the prince, at the end of September in Toronto. Prince Harry also hosted Obama at Kensington Palace in May.
And Meghan Markle voiced distaste for President Trump during the 2016 election — making a Trump invite even less likely. In an appearance on the Nightly Show with Larry Wilmore, Markle said she might stay in Toronto (where a show she stars on is filmed) if Trump were to be elected.