Is Archie really too titchy for a trip to Balmoral?

POOR baby Archie. His parents, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, are said to have decided he is too small to travel to Balmoral and so they will not be accepting the Queen’s invitation to join her there this year.

So Archie, darling, thou shalt not go to the Highland ball after all. thou shalt miss the drizzle and the midges and the slow glory of the green Highlands rusting into the crisp embrace of autumn.

thou shalt also miss the thunder of the guns out on the moors, as the shooting season gets into full swing and the downed game-birds rain upon the heather bambam-bam like some bloody apocalypse amid a howling torrent of guts and gore.

Up on the killing fields of Balmoral, if it flies it dies, if it hops it drops and if it’s brown it’s down, boom. Well. Not quite. Not at all, really. Yet I suspect this is how the Californian duchess imagines a gentle afternoon of grouse-shooting or deer-stalking might be like. And I wonder if it is her aversion to hunting and bloodsports that is the reason behind this surprising Scottish no-show?

After all, Archie was big enough to travel to Nice to see Uncle elton John recently.

the four-month-old was also not too teeny-weeny to fly to Ibiza for a lovely break to celebrate mummy’s birthday over the summer.

Need I add that both of those trips are much farther afield than the 500-mile trek from the Sussexes’ home in Windsor to the Queen’s Scottish castle?

Yet Balmoral is suddenly a no-go zone, for reasons that remain unclear.

Although ‘Palace sources’ have denied Archie’s age is the reason, if Prince Harry’s excuse that his son is below some hitherto unknown age/size restriction, it is laughable. What is Archie, some bit of luggage they had hoped to stow in the hold of their nonprivate jet because they don’t do that sort of thing any more?

And anyway, what is more portable than a little bub in a basket?

On the scale of travel hassle, Baby Sussex is right up there with a yoga mat and he’s less bothersome than a kitten. After all, royal babes in arms have been travelling to and from Balmoral for decades, with no hint of trouble or stress.

Yet — and this is the real problem — Harry is now so caught up in his own righteous storm and so contemptuous of those who dare to criticise him that he no longer bothers to give reasons that might stand up to scrutiny or understanding. Instead, he just says the first thing that comes into his head and to hell with it.

‘I have to fly on private jets for family security! Ninety-nine per cent of my life is spent on commercial airlines! Archie is too titchy for Balmoral! Don’t do as I do, do as I say,’ is what he seems to be saying.

He cannot even accept that he might be in the wrong. ‘No one is perfect. We could all do better,’ he said earlier this week, launching a global project to make the tourist industry more sustainable.

No, Harry. You could do better. A lot better. Leave us out of this.

It might seem extraordinary that

Harry would not want to visit his 93-year-old grandmother with his new baby, a Balmoral rite of passage that is a staunch tradition within the family.

It had been widely expected that this summer would mark Meghan’s first stay there. the Sussexes did not go last year as Meghan was in the early stages of pregnancy, but now we live in strange royal times.

It is easy to understand the Sussexes’ desire to live a different kind of life, to want to rip up the royal rulebook and do things their way.

In many ways, their energy in this direction is admirable. Yet all it has resulted in is a rising crescendo of ill will as they clatter gormlessly from one PR disaster to the next.

One can only imagine how the Sussexes must seethe, when the perfect, immaculate Cambridges dutifully hop on their budget flight to Balmoral, then turn up looking like the picture-perfect family on Princess Charlotte’s first day at school.

Unlike their gaffe-prone younger counterparts, the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge rarely put a foot wrong.

Yet William and Kate are a future king and queen, parents to three direct heirs to the British throne. Public expectation about their role in society is only matched by the greater responsibilities to the Crown they must bear — not to mention their sense of duty and destiny.

For them, the bar is set so much higher.

BY COMPARISON, the Sussexes have the freedom to live the kind of woke vegan lives they find attractive, to hang out with the celebrities they seem to adore and to make the kind of lifestyle choices that suit them.

Fine — but please, please don’t insult everyone by fobbing us off with these pathetic excuses for the choices you make.

If the Sussexes really want privacy and protection — which is Harry’s excuse for everything, from taking private jets to leading a cloak-and-dagger expedition about his son’s birth and subsequent christening — then where better than Balmoral?

After all, it is a fortress deep in a forest, in a 50,000-acre estate enclosed in a national park 50 miles from the nearest city.

But for reasons unknown, this is not the kind of privacy that the couple covet, so on with the show we go.