Last year, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry took center stage at the star-studded 70th birthday celebration for Kris Jenner, held at Jeff Bezos’s sprawling Beverly Hills home. The “0070” James Bond-themed soirée was attended by the global elite, including Kim Kardashian, Kylie Jenner, Mariah Carey, Oprah Winfrey, and even Mark Zuckerberg.
However, photos of the royal pair “partying and dancing” hit the internet, sparking an immediate “Poppygate” scandal. Critics were quick to ask: why was Harry wearing a poppy pin while partying, and why did Meghan seem to have forgotten the solemnity required of a Duchess?
The Meaning Of The Poppy
The red poppy, which is the ultimate symbol of Remembrance Day, was inspired by the WWI poem “In Flanders Fields.” The poppy honors the courage and sacrifice of those who gave their lives in military service.
The flower, worn on the left lapel — close to the heart — is a non-negotiable mark of respect in the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth.
The “Post-And-Delete” Drama
Meghan Markle, in a stunning black outfit, faced backlash after appearing at the glitzy gathering without a poppy. The story took a whole other level after Markle made the unwise decision to eventually issue a bizarre explanation that she “could not find a pin” or a real poppy in California.
According to the report, sources close to the Duchess justified the missing emblem by stating to the Daily Mail: “Meghan was unable to visibly honour the war dead as poppies are not widely available in the States, unlike in Commonwealth countries.”
Markle was criticized because poppy flowers are available online and grow wild across the state. The drama escalated when Kim Kardashian suddenly scrubbed all evidence of the Sussexes from her Instagram at the huge party.
Appearing on the podcast Khloé in Wonder Land, Kim set the record straight. The billionaire told sister Khloé Kardashian that it was a silly reality, since she had to remove the photos, even though she knew the world had already seen them. Despite being Hollywood celebrities, they are royals first and must respect certain traditions.
She said: “It was really innocent, which is so crazy. Mom and Meghan have been friends for some years now, and they have a really sweet relationship. We were told that it was totally cool to post. And then, after it was posted, I think they realized it was Remembrance Day and didn’t want to be seen at a party, even though it was already up, you know, and then taken down. And then I think they realized, like, ‘Oh, this was so silly.’”
She reiterated that Harry and Meghan simply did not want to rub the royals the wrong way with the photos that gave the wrong idea.
The reality star added: “So we took them down to respect Remembrance Day. You’ve got to laugh at, like, the situation sometimes and just, like, lighten it up and be if everyone’s taking it the wrong way, like, lean in. I was like, ‘We should do a full Skims campaign.’ Take the photo — even just us, like, I’ll shoot you at mom, you know, post it and then delete it, like, 30 minutes later. And then I say, ‘Oh, sorry, I didn’t have permission to post those photos for the campaign.”
The business mogul concluded by: “If we just made it light and made it funny, you know, I think it would have been, like, received differently, but I hated how that was received by everyone. That sucks. It was just made into something that was so crazy and ridiculous that it just didn’t have to be.”
The Survival Of The Reality Queen Vs. The Duchess
Some have noted that Kim Kardashian’s quick thinking in pivotingfrom the photo scandal into a potential Skims campaign with Markle and Prince Harry demonstrates that in 2026, a “Reality Queen” can survive a PR hit with a laugh and even turn it into a financial win. But it is not the same for a “Duchess,” who seems to be trapped in a perpetual state of damage control because there are many expectations and rules that tie a royal down.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle wanted to live in both worlds, but Kim Kardashian has proven that the rules of the “silly reality” in Montecito are no match for the surgical control of publicity in the Kardashian empire. The verdict is in: the Sussexes may have kept their dignity off the grid, but they lost the narrative to a woman who knows that, in the digital age, a deleted photo says far more than the original ever could.
The Reality Check Heard ‘Round The World
Kim Kardashian’s confession is also a shift in the celebrity hierarchy: for the first time, the Kardashians appear to be the ones showing more transparency than the royals, who once looked down upon them. By scrubbing the images to protect the “optics” of solemnity, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle inadvertently highlighted the very thing they were trying to hide — that they were, in fact, “partying and dancing” while the rest of the U.K. was in mourning, and that raises certain questions about their behavior.
