Prince Harry’s birthday was Sept. 15, making him a Virgo. By some bizarre twist of fate, my cousin Harry’s birthday was Sept. 16, only one day after Prince Harry’s! You have to admit that is pretty cosmic. So happy belated birthday to both.

There the resemblance ends. Cousin Harry, for example, does not get the international press Prince Harry receives. Nowhere near. Ever since Meghan Markle married her prince in 2018, a person could hardly go to the supermarket for a quart of milk or a bag of Doritos without being confronted with blaring headlines about the couple.

“Henpecked Harry Fights Back!” screams the National Enquirer. “IRS Blows Lid Off Harry and Meghan Charity Scandal!” “It’s Hell at Home!” “Why Trump Trashed Harry and Meghan!”

The newsworthiness of Harry and Meghan ebbs and flows somewhat, depending on various factors, like Harry’s relinquishing of royal family duties in 2020, the couple’s appearance with Oprah Winfrey on a special television premiere in 2021 and Harry’s memoir “Spare” published in 2023.

News sources emphasize that for years the relationship of King Charles and Prince William with Harry has been cold and unpalatable as leftover oatmeal.

And now the latest royal outrage: Buckingham Palace denies cropping Meghan out of Harry’s birthday photograph, which was shared on Instagram by Prince William and Princess Catherine (Kate). The message read, “Wishing a Happy 40th Birthday to The Duke of Sussex.”

Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, celebrated her 43rd birthday on August 4 (Leo). However, the royal family did not see fit to share a public birthday message to HER.

It’s always something.

I understand that family gossip from far-flung celebrities around the world can provide relief from problems closer to home, but I can’t really get into it the way some people can.

On the day of Harry’s and Meghan’s wedding at Windsor Castle, my sister texted me at 7:07, considerably earlier than usual, with the question, “Could anyone be cuter than Prince Harry?”

No doubt many people could be cuter than Prince Harry, although he may well be the cutest member of the royal family, over the age of 30. I am not the one to ask. Unlike my sister, I am no royalist. Of course, I always liked Diana.

Because she is a royalist, my sister naturally assumed I had arisen at the crack of dawn for the express purpose of watching all the hoopla attendant to the royal wedding, and that I had been glued to the television set ever since.

“His mother contributed a lot to the cuteness of the royals,” I texted back. “They were faltering in that department.”

Both my sister and I admire Stephanie Ruhle, the MSNBC News anchor, for her incisive political reporting. Imagine my surprise when I turned on the TV just in time to see Ruhle and news correspondent Katie Tur screaming, “Meghan! Meghan!” as the royal newlyweds’ horse drawn carriage passed by through the streets of Windsor.

“We got the first wave!” Ruhle gushed. She was shaking with excitement. “We’re soul sisters!”

I will never look at Stephanie Ruhle in quite the same way again. I am probably being unfair — after all, she is human — but next time I listen to her talking tough about politics, I’ll see her in her purple hat, screaming, arms outstretched to Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex. It’s a wonder she didn’t scare the horses. But then, like police horses, they are trained for that.

The person who really got my attention back then was Meghan’s father, Thomas Markle.

Although he did not attend the wedding, Mr. Markle became famous anyway, because of paparazzi photographs of him buying beer.

“The father of the bride, looking disheveled, in a blue hoodie, buying beer and cigarettes,” “The Sun,” a tabloid, reported.

The tabloids made him sound like some kind of bum. He didn’t look particularly disheveled to me. And what is the deal with hoodies? As if wearing a hoodie denotes criminal tendencies. As my friend Jenny remarked, “Who gets dressed up in their Sunday best to buy beer?”

You picture Markle buying a case of Busch light, whereas in reality it was a four-pack of Heineken.

Still, even if it was a case of Busch Light, so what? Whose business is it? Purchasing beer, after all, is a normal thing to do. Unless you are a royal, of course, in which case you have your servants do it.

Have a good week.

(Martha Allen, of Keene Valley, has been writing for the Lake Placid News since 1996.)