AS a photographic example of "soft power", it was hard to beat.
Charles, King of the United Kingdom and Commonwealth, flanked by his wife Queen Camilla, his son and heir Prince William and Catherine, Princess of Wales, all resplendent in full glorious royal regalia as they welcomed 500 diplomats from around the world to a white-tie party at Buckingham Palace.
But there was a subliminal message behind the photo, and it was directed to the two renegade royals in California, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
And that message was a simple but devastatingly effective one: "We’re the A-list royals, and no amount of your whiny, nasty, race-baiting garbage is going to change the fact you’re now increasingly irrelevant C-list celebrity grifters whose only currency is trashing their families to the highest bidder."
Watch Piers Morgan Uncensored weekdays on Sky 522, Virgin Media 606, Freeview 237, Freesat 217 or on Fox Nation in the US and enjoy his explosive interviews here
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It was the late Elizabeth the Queen Mother who first perfectly articulated the three commandments of being a popular senior royal: "Never complain, never explain, and rarely be heard speaking in public."
She herself pursued that formula so successfully that she ended her 101-year-old life as a beloved public figure despite running up a £4 million overdraft with her bankers Coutts with her lavish lifestyle.
The grateful British people never forgot the way she insisted she and King George VI stay in London during the Blitz despite the Palace being repeatedly bombed which led her to say: "I am glad we have been bombed. Now we can look the East End in the eye."
Her daughter Queen Elizabeth II followed the exact same mantra throughout her own glorious reign and was even more beloved as a result.
And I know Queen Camilla believes in it too because she told me she did. It’s stood her in very good stead as her steadily rising popularity since the dark days after Princess Diana’s death has shown.
Broadly speaking, whilst cognizant that young people like public emoting, William and Kate also stick to the stay schtum, keep calm and carry on plan despite the constant provocation from his brother and sister-in-law.
The truth is that we don’t expect or need much from our Royal Family.
They’re unelected figureheads for our country with no real power other than to represent Britain on the global stage with all the pomp, pageantry and ceremony that makes us almost unique now in a world where most Monarchies have disappeared.
They perform myriad public duties, many of which are mundane but mean a lot to local communities, and in return, we pay for them to live in palaces, attended by vast arrays of servants.
When people ask, "What’s the point of the Royals?", I say it’s to act as the nation’s flag-waver, moral barometer, and comfort blanket in the tough times.
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And the tourism they bring in more than washes their expensive faces.
Actions do the talking
You only had to look at the astounding global reaction to the deaths of Prince Philip and the Queen, the latter’s Platinum Jubilee, and King Charles’s Coronation to see the enormous impact our Royal Family still has on public consciousness, and to understand that they remain the biggest stars on the planet.
And that’s why Harry and Meghan’s dreadful flame-throwing, money-grabbing antics have been so dangerous.
In particular, the vile unsubstantiated allegations of racism they hurled at the Royals during their Oprah Winfrey interview which sparked a furore that I instantly feared might be an existential threat to the Monarchy.
Last week, on my TalkTV show Piers Morgan Uncensored, I revealed that the two Royals the Sussexes claimed had "concerns" about the potential skin colour of their unborn son Archie – and who were been "accidentally" named in Sussex lickspittle Omid Scobie’s new book Endgame - were Charles and Kate.
I did so because it seemed absurd that Dutch people could know but British people couldn’t, this unedifying farce has gone on long enough, and it means their identities can no longer be held over them as a threat by a delusional destructive duo who’ve deliberately fuelled their ugly smear by refusing to ever say who said what.
After I named them, generating much faux outrage from other media until they realised that I was right and followed suit, people asked me how I thought Charles and Kate would respond, and I said I thought they’d say and do absolutely nothing in response to the risible racism allegations but let their actions do their talking for them.
After all, why bother even acknowledging an accusation we all know is utter nonsense, and over which Harry himself performed a pathetic screeching U-turn two years later, pretending he and Meghan had never meant to say the Royals were racist and it was all invented by the terrible press?
One member of the Royal Family told me that my naming decision had "lanced a boil that was long overdue lancing".
Exactly.
As William memorably said in the aftermath of the Oprah whine-a-thon: "We're very much not a racist family."
No, they’re not.
The Royal Family has consistently proven itself to be a campaigning force for racial harmony, equality, and justice, representing a country that is the most racially tolerant in the world.
And last night, the big four came together to tell their race-inflaming estranged relatives, and the rest of the world, that they’re going to continue doing so for a long time to come.
This does indeed feel like an Endgame - only for the Sussexes as influential royals, not the Monarchy.
