Revealed: Meghan left out of the Royal Collection’s vast archives of more than a million objects

There are no photographs of the Duchess of Sussex in the Royal Collection, The Mail on Sunday can reveal. 

This is despite the vast archives containing more than a million objects spanning five centuries of the monarchy. 

Works from the collection are often displayed at royal properties, including the King’s Gallery next to Buckingham Palace, which is currently holding an exhibition titled ‘Royal Portraits: A Century of Photography’. 

But while the display has delighted visitors with previously unseen 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 MoS understands this is because the collection – which is cared for by the Royal Collection Trust, a department of the royal household – does not contain any such photographs. 

The Collection holds more than a million Royal objects – but no pictures of Meghan Markle

A visitor examines a portrait by Paolo Roversi 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 shots of the Duke of Sussex as an adult, and he features 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 rather ‘held in trust’ for ‘his successors and the nation’. 

A spokeswoman for the trust said: ‘Royal Portraits… focuses on photographs taken during organised portrait sittings’, adding that images from the collection were ‘chosen for what they can tell us about the evolution of royal portrait photography’.