After images of Prince Harry speaking to a nearly empty room surfaced, his keynote address at a United Nations event became a target for ridicule.

The prince, together with his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, spent the night in New York City where he spoke at the UN to commemorate Nelson Mandela Day.

He took the opportunity to praise his “soulmate,” the Duchess of Sussex, and to share memories of the African continent and his late mother, Princess Diana.

“To a freedom fighter hope is what a lifebelt is to a swimmer – a guarantee that one will keep afloat and free from danger,” the 37-year-old said at one point in a letter penned by the Nobel Peace Prize laureate.

Cue the obvious rhetorical flourish: “How many of us are in danger of losing those lifebelts right now?” Harry clunkily asked the crowd.

But amused social media users have jumped onto images of the address that have surfaced online, showing Harry speaking to a nearly empty room.

One Twitter user, @WalkerDevon1922, sarcastically commented: “It was to a packed house.”

@lindajoy54 added: “The big UN speech today was a bust for Harry! Room was almost EMPTY! “

“Embarrassingly empty” was how another described it.

@Awareone5 quipped: “Harry addressing an empty UN assembly today.

“Folks must be on vacation, or not interested in what he had to say.”

@sarah_delore added: “The room at the UN is embarrassingly empty.”

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Contrast all of this with events in 2010 when the Queen took to the same stage to deliver only the second address of her reign at the UN to a pretty much full house. The hundreds of delegates also used the occasion to give her a standing ovation.

If this outing was meant to solidify Harry and Meghan’s post-Megxit, self-appointed positioning as next gen leaders, the Millennial go-getting, private-jetting vanguard of change, then there must be some very #sadfaces inside Team Sussex right now.

But royal expert Marlene Koenig disagreed, commenting: “It was never meant to be a packed house as this was an informal event for Mandela Day.

“The GA [General Assembly] does not come until September.”

She also said the event would have been viewed by a massive global audience.

“A room is more than a physical space. Yes, it was a small group of people who attended Nelson Mandela Day at the UN, [but] the speech was live streamed around the world, there are also links to watch the speech,” she said.

“I expect more people watched that speech than were in the actual room.”