The house of Windsor ain’t no haunted house.
Members of the British Royal Family have been reportedly banned from ever celebrating Halloween in public after former Queen Victoria instituted a rule that members should “uphold total class and sophistication” at all times.
Royal expert Christina Reeves told the Daily Express Sunday that Victoria, who occupied the throne from 1837 to 1901, wanted members of her household to have “complete self-respect and good behavior when in front of the general public.”
The late monarch’s rule has since endured and has even been followed by the current members of the royal family — though noticeably less strictly enforced.
In 1941, then-Princess Elizabeth and her late sister Princess Margret dressed up as Cinderella to take part in a reenactment of the original fable.
Following her ascendence to the British throne in 1953, Queen Elizabeth II fully stopped dressing up.
Despite the archaic rule, several royals have been known to flout authority and dress up anyway.
One notable occurrence was in 2016 when Prince Harry and Meghan Markle celebrated the spooky holiday with Princess Eugenie and her husband Jack Brooksbank at Toronto’s Soho House.
The occasion came in 2021 after Markle, 42, and the Duke of Sussex, 41, had officially broken away from the family.
“It was a post-apocalypse theme [party], so we had all of this very bizarre costume going on, and we were able to just have one final fun night out,” Markle explained to former talk show host Ellen DeGeneres “[Harry] came to see me in Toronto and our friends and his cousin Eugenie and now her husband Jack, they came as well.”
“And the four of us snuck out in Halloween costumes to just have one fun night on the town before it was out in the world that we were a couple,” Markle reminisced.
Another notable time was in 2005 when Prince Harry attended Olympic show-jumper Richard Meade’s “native and colonial” dress party where the former royal was spotted and photographed wearing a Nazi uniform complete with a swastika armband.
Seeking to minimize the damage, the royal family issued a full apology after the photo was published in The Sun.
“I am very sorry if I have caused any offense,” said the then-20-year-old Prince Harry. “It was a poor choice of costume, and I apologize.”
Prince Harry revealed in his memoir “Spare” that he spoke with the Chief Rabbi in London and said that the visit had a “profound impact” on him.
In his bombshell-ridden novel, the royal claimed that his brother and then-girlfriend Kate Middleton told him to dress in the controversial outfit.
“I phoned Willy and Kate, asked what they thought. Nazi uniform, they said,” Harry wrote. “They both howled. Worse than Willy’s leotard outfit! Way more ridiculous! Which, again, was the point.”
The Duke later called it “one of the biggest mistakes in my life.”