How Harry blew his relationship with the queen
The late Queen Elizabeth II was extremely suspicious of Meghan Markle and ended up being profoundly unhappy with Prince Harry and Meghan after they wed, Sally Bedell Smith revealed in her Substack column this week, prompting several sources to deliver fresh accounts to The Royalist of their own understanding of the queen’s dismay at her once-favored grandson.
One source, a former courtier, told The Daily Beast: “Ultimately, the queen felt betrayed by Harry, and when he and Meghan attacked the institution that she spent her whole life serving in the Oprah interview, that betrayal was complete. It was absolutely shocking to those of us that knew him that he would do that, not least because her husband was on his deathbed.”
The Oprah interview with Harry and Meghan was broadcast on March 7, 2021. Prince Philip died on April 9, 2021—33 days later. In the interview, Markle alleged that the royal family had expressed concerns about “how dark” her first child’s skin would be when he was born. The allegation prompted a response from Buckingham Palace: “While some recollections may vary, they are taken very seriously and will be addressed by the family privately.”
The former staffer told The Royalist: “The allegations of racism dismayed [the queen]. To accuse an unidentified person within the family of racism, thereby casting the shadow of suspicion over everyone, was unforgivable in her eyes. That was what ultimately prompted her to issue the ‘recollections may vary’ statement. Things were never the same after that. … It was a horrific series of betrayals at the end of her life.”
Speaking to biographer Robert Hardman, one staffer said that the queen, who died at 96 in September 2022, was “as angry as I’d ever seen her” after Harry and Meghan publicly claimed that they consulted with the monarch before giving their daughter the queen’s nickname. “They used her name, Lilibet, without her permission for their child,” a source told The Royalist. The queen’s team told the BBC the palace had not been asked for permission in advance.
Another friend of the royals told The Daily Beast: “You have to remember [that] the queen was seriously ill for several years with bone cancer. She knew she was dying, she could hardly see, she could hardly stand, she could hardly move. And then she was completely let down by her grandson. It was utterly devastating for her.”
A friend of Prince William and Kate Middleton said: “The family, of course, all blame Meghan 100 percent. As Sally Bedell Smith’s column made clear, he ain’t the sharpest tool in the box, and they feel he was completely manipulated and that Meghan saw him and realized she could become the most famous person in the world. Then the reality of what their boring royal life would be like sunk in, and she decided to ruthlessly milk it for all it was worth. That is their view.”
The revelations by Bedell Smith were based on interviews with the queen’s cousin, the late Lady Liza Anson. Bedell Smith said that, just days before Meghan and Harry’s wedding, Anson told her: “We hope but don’t quite think she is in love. We think she engineered it all.”
The friend of William and Kate added: “The family think it is a rerun of what happened with Wallis Simpson and Edward VIII, and the only solution is to follow the same playbook. Exile worked before, and it will work again.”
In 1936, Edward VIII abdicated to marry American Wallis Simpson.
This weekend, the Daily Mail society columnist Richard Kay gave a tart anecdote from a Buckingham Palace switchboard operator who recalled Harry calling the late queen after moving to the United States.
The operator followed standard procedure, ringing the queen’s private number and letting her know who was on the line.
“She would always thank you, and then you would connect the call and leave them to their conversation,” the operator recalled. But this time, something else happened: “When I announced to the queen that Harry was her caller, there was just a stony silence. In fact, it was so uncomfortable that I filled the silence myself by saying, ‘Thank you, your Majesty,’ and then connected them. It was memorable because the queen would never not acknowledge you.”
Kate the great
All attention next week will be on Kate Middleton, who is expected to make a rare summer appearance to greet French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife at the beginning of their state visit to the United Kingdom on Tuesday. Middleton is not expected to attend a formal state dinner, but Prince William will.
Middleton’s decision to go ahead with the engagement, even in truncated form, will be welcome news to royal planners who have been trying to figure out exactly how much Kate will be able and willing to do in terms of royal engagements—not just this year, but until she becomes queen.
Kate has long made it clear that she has no intention of being a Princess Anne-style royal, clocking up hundreds of public appearances a year.
But, following her cancer diagnosis and recovery, she is making that explicit: She skipped an appearance with the king at Royal Ascot, citing “balance.” As The Daily Beast reported at the time, this triggered “a real sense of panic” in the palace.
Then, this week, she told a group of cancer patients about the “really, really difficult” period she has endured since being declared cancer-free earlier this year.
Kate didn’t directly mention her absence from Ascot but did say: “You put on a sort of brave face, stoicism through treatment. Treatment’s done, then it’s like, ‘I can crack on, get back to normal,’ but actually, the phase afterwards is really, really difficult.
She added, in remarks reported by People: “You have to find your new normal and that takes time … and it’s a rollercoaster, it’s not smooth, like you expect it to be. The reality is you go through hard times.”
Kate announced she had been diagnosed with cancer in March 2024. The disease was discovered after she underwent abdominal surgery. She announced in September 2024 that she had finished chemotherapy and said in January 2025 that she was in remission.
Her father-in-law, King Charles, also announced that he had been diagnosed with cancer last year.
Kate is expected to appear at the Wimbledon tennis championships this week, as The Daily Beast reported.
One source last week told The Daily Beast: “Kate is recalibrating her entire life, her entire work-life balance. [Ascot] was a wakeup call, not a one-off. She has never found the public appearances, and the forensic attention and criticism that goes with them, at all easy to deal with, and it was just too much this week.”
The source added: “The last few years have been horrific; the disgusting things that Harry said about her and William and her family, the relentless speculation about her and William, the queen’s death, the king’s diagnosis which had them both thinking they were going to have to take over and then her own cancer diagnosis and treatment. It’s all taken its toll, and if she needs more time to recover, William will fight tooth and nail to see she is given it.”
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