Prince Archie’s Adorable Reaction After Accidentally Breaking Queen Elizabeth Christmas Ornament

The 19-month-old tried to fix it by “spraying water on the broken pieces,” his father Prince Harry wrote in the pages of his memoir ‘Spare’

Published on December 25, 2024 03:30PM EST

Meghan Markle once gifted her husband Prince Harry a small Christmas ornament of Queen Elizabeth — but, unfortunately, it didn’t last long.

As the Duke of Sussex, 40, recounted in his 2023 memoir Spare, he, Meghan and their son Prince Archie spent their first Christmas in the United States in 2020. (Daughter Princess Lilibet wouldn’t be born until June 2021.) That year, Meghan gave Harry “a little Christmas ornament of…the Queen!” he wrote in Spare’s pages.

“I roared,” he wrote. “What the—?”

“Meg had spotted it in a local store and thought I might like it,” Harry continued. “I held it to the light. It was Granny’s face to a T.”

He added that he “hung it on an eye-level branch. It made me happy to see her there. It made Meg and me smile.”

However, Prince Archie — who is now 5 years old but was then just 19 months old — accidentally broke it.

“Archie, playing around the tree, jostled the stand, shook the tree and Granny fell,” Harry wrote. “I heard a smash and turned. Pieces lay all over the floor.”

Archie sweetly tried to fix it, as Harry wrote that his son “ran and grabbed a spray bottle. For some reason he thought spraying water on the broken pieces would fix it.”

Humor ensued when Meghan told her son, “No, Archie, no — do not spray Gan-Gan!” Harry then grabbed a dustpan to clean up, he wrote, sweeping up the pieces and remarking to himself, “This is weird.”

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The Sussex family of four is expected to spend the holidays in the U.S. again this year, as they haven’t taken part in Christmas at Sandringham with the royal family since 2018, the year Harry and Meghan married and when Meghan was pregnant with Archie.

Speaking to Marie Claire last month, Meghan, 43, said, “I love the holidays,” adding that “every year it gets better” with Archie, 5, and Lili, 3, as they grow up and understand Christmas more and more.

“At first, I think as a mom with children you’re just enjoying having them there, but they’re not understanding everything that’s happening yet,” she said. “But now we’re at the age where I just can’t wait to see it through their lens every year.”

“Every single holiday is a new adventure,” she continued, adding that it’s important for her that her kids experience the “magic” of traditions like putting out “carrots for the reindeer” at Christmas.