THE HAGUE: Britain’s Prince Harry and his wife Meghan arrived in The Hague on Friday for the Invictus Games, a day after visiting his grandmother Queen Elizabeth II in Britain.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex were in the Dutch city for the sporting event Harry, who served with the British army in Afghanistan, founded for disabled military veterans that starts on Saturday.
Harry, 37, and his wife, 40, were criticised by British tabloids for skipping Prince Philip’s memorial service in Westminster Abbey last month.
Philip, who was married to the queen for 73 years, died last April just weeks short of his 100th birthday.
The couple on Thursday met Queen Elizabeth who will celebrate her 96th birthday in a few days.
Harry and Meghan will attend an evening reception on Friday hosted by the city of The Hague and the Dutch defence ministry.
The couple will attend the opening ceremony where they will give a speech.
More than 500 participants from 20 countries are taking part in the games, which have been postponed twice because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The games will end on April 22.
A team of 19 people from war-torn Ukraine arrived in the Netherlands to take part but the group regretted the absence of one participant, imprisoned in the besieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol.
The paramedic, Yuliia Paievska, known as Taira, is “in danger of death now”, a spokeswoman for the team told AFP.
“She is the only woman on the team and was due to compete in archery and swimming,” the team said in a statement.
The Invictus Games, the first of which took place in London in September 2014, have been a recurrent theme in Harry and Meghan’s relationship.
It was during the 2017 games that the prince made his first public appearance with the American ex-actress. The following year, they were in Sydney, a few days after announcing she was pregnant.
Harry and his wife quit royal life and moved to North America two years ago.
As a result of their decision, the UK government withdrew his taxpayer-funded protection on visits back to Britain, a decision that Harry is challenging in the courts.
