Queen Elizabeth ‘Upset’ After Prince Harry Was Rude ‘For Ten Minutes’
Queen Elizabeth II felt “really upset” by Prince Harry and Meghan Markle over plans for their royal wedding, according to the late monarch’s cousin.
Lady Elizabeth Anson wrote that the late queen was “not at all content” and noted an incident in which Harry was “rude to her for ten minutes.”
The account emerged on Royal Extra, the Substack blog of biographer Sally Bedell Smith.
Anson died aged 79 in November 2020, eight months after Harry and Meghan moved to America and around four months before their bombshell Oprah Winfrey interview in March 2021.
The queen died in September 2022, meaning neither woman is alive to verify or lend additional context to the account. No doubt, Harry and Meghan might have a different recollection of their relationship with the prince’s grandmother.
Why It Matters
The Sussexes’ relationship with the queen has long been a battle ground between them and their detractors, with the couple making much in interviews of how close they were.
Harry said in a 2022 conversation with Hoda Kotb: “We have a really special relationship. We talk about things that she can’t talk about with anybody else.”
However, in January 2020 the couple were accused of blindsiding the monarch by unilaterally announcing their plans to leave the royal family before thrashing out a deal.
The queen never publicly confirmed or denied any account of her true feelings about the Sussexes, either from them or any other source.
Needless to say, Lady Elizabeth Anson’s account adds to a growing body of conflicting takes on the nature of the queen’s feelings about the royal rebels.
Lady Elizabeth Anson gave a series of interviews to Bedell Smith over the years before her death in 2020.
Bedell Smith has now published additional details on her Substack blog, Royal Extra, detailing an apparent argument between Harry and the queen in 2018.
The prince had asked the Archbishop of Canterbury, then Justin Welby, to perform their wedding ceremony at St. George’s Chapel, in Windsor Castle.
However, he had not asked for permission from the Dean of Windsor, who is responsible for the chapel.
Anson told Bedell Smith: “Harry seems to think the queen can do what she wants, but she can’t. On the religious side, it is the Dean of Windsor’s jurisdiction.”
This, she suggests, caused significant conflict in the relationship between monarch and grandson.
“Harry has blown his relationship with his grandmother, Anson said. “She said she was really upset. I was shocked when the queen told me this, how she was so saddened.
“I had no idea about the conversation, that he was rude to her for ten minutes. They had tea with her the day before yesterday. She was trying to find out about the wedding dress, and Meghan wouldn’t tell her.”
The queen and Harry “patched things up” by April, one month before the wedding, according to Anson, but “she felt very left out, so he wrote her a letter about what was happening.”
Anson, a party planner who organized the queen’s 80th birthday bash, tried to give Meghan ideas for her wedding but “Harry wrote to me and said they were going another way.”
“He said, ‘I am close to my grandmother, and she is content with this,'” she told Bedell Smith. “When I spoke with the Queen, she said she is not at all content.”
Anson’s characterization was not all bad, in fact she was quite positive about Harry prior to his relationship with Meghan. She suggested the queen felt Harry was “the star” when the time came to delegate duties.
And at the point Harry and Meghan got engaged in November 2017, Anson told Bedell Smith Meghan was “poised, very natural, intelligent, and thoughtful,” adding that: “You can feel a very loving connection.”
However, Anson later said “the jury is out on whether she [the queen] likes Meghan,” and added: “Harry is besotted and weak about women. We hope but don’t quite think she is in love. We think she engineered it all.”
What People Are Saying
Bedell Smith described how close the queen and Anson were: “They spoke at least weekly on the phone, and the queen had quiet dinners with Liza every month or so. In the queen’s later years, Liza affectionately referred to her as “Jemima” (for reasons she never explained) and ‘The Number One Lady.'”
