- The Mail on Sunday understands that the Collection Trust does not have any of the photographs.
There are no photographs of the Duchess of Sussex in the Royal Collection, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
This is despite vast archives containing more than a million objects spanning five centuries of the monarchy.
Works from the collection are often displayed in royal properties, including the King’s Gallery next to Buckingham Palace, which is currently hosting an exhibition entitled “Royal Portraits: A Century of Photography”.
But while the exhibition has delighted visitors with never-before-seen photos of Queen Elizabeth II and Princess Margaret, tourists have been surprised to find no images of Meghan Markle or her two children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet.
The Foreign Office understands this is because the collection, which is held by the Royal Collection Trust, a department of the royal household, does not contain any of the photographs.
A painting of Queen Elizabeth II by Andy Warhol in the Royal Collection at the King’s Gallery
The collection contains more than a million royal objects, but no photographs of Meghan Markle
A visitor examines a Paolo Roversi portrait of the Duchess of Cambridge in November 2021
Images of the Royal Family do not automatically become part of the Royal Collection, but are often donated by the photographer or specially commissioned.
Royal Portraits contains five photographs of Prince William, but there are no photos of the Duke of Sussex as an adult, and he appears only once in a 1994 photograph taken by John Swannell.
It depicts a young Prince Harry laughing with his brother William and mother Princess Diana.
The Royal Collection is not owned by King Charles, but is held “in trust” for “his successors and the nation”.
A spokeswoman for the trust said: “Royal Portraits… focuses on photographs taken during organised portrait sessions,” adding that the images in the collection were “chosen for what they can tell us about the evolution of royal portrait photography.”
