Prince Harry and Meghan Markle reportedly caused “unforgivable” stress for Queen Elizabeth II during the final years of her life.
The claim was made by royal biographer Hugo Vickers, who has written a new book, “Queen Elizabeth II: A Personal History.” It explores the late monarch’s triumphs and personal challenges based on sources close to the palace.
Fox News Digital reached out to Buckingham Palace for comment. A spokesperson previously told Fox News Digital, “We don’t comment on such books.” A spokesperson for Archewell, which handles the offices for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, told Fox News Digital, “This is not something we would comment on.”
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“What I find unforgivable is the stress that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle put on the queen in the last years of her life,” Vickers told Fox News Digital.
“[Harry] was doing a really good job over in England and indeed in the Commonwealth. And [Meghan] also seemed to be very committed to the Commonwealth. Even as an actress, before she met and married Prince Harry, she was going to African countries and undertaking humanitarian work. And obviously, she addressed the United Nations. It all looked very positive, but it wasn’t to be.”
Vickers shared a similar sentiment in his book, writing, “The distress the Sussexes caused the Queen in the last years of her life cannot be overestimated.”
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Meghan, an American actress and divorcee, married the British prince in 2018. The couple stepped back in 2020, citing unbearable intrusions by the British press and a lack of support from the palace.
After settling in California, the couple gave an explosive televised interview to Oprah Winfrey in which they aired their grievances. The sit-down, which aired several allegations about the royal family, was viewed by nearly 50 million people worldwide.
After the bombshell tell-all, the queen refused to take Harry’s phone calls without another person in the room, Vickers claimed.
“I think that the queen was obviously feeling rather cautious whenever he got in touch,” said Vickers. “I think that’s how I would put it.”
In the book, Vickers wrote, “Whenever Prince Harry called his grandmother, she asked her lady-in-waiting to stay with her.”
Harry, 41, relocated to his wife’s home state after Queen Elizabeth II rejected his proposal to be “half-in, half-out” as a working royal, according to Vickers.
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“She did give Harry and Meghan a year to think about whether it was going to work out, this exile,” he explained. “She made it quite clear on advice, obviously from her private secretary and his private secretary, and others, that you couldn’t be half in and half out. You couldn’t do what they wanted to do, which was to make their own money and still be contributing to royal duties. This wasn’t going to work. You either did your duties, or you didn’t.”
“And so, they decided that they were going to go off first to Canada, and then later on, to California,” he shared. “And then after the year went by, the question arose: ‘How was it working out?’ They decided that they were going to stay. And at that point, he stepped down from his various positions in England.”
Vickers claims the queen told a friend that Harry, once in “a very useful role” as a popular working royal in the U.K., had “turned into a kind of childminder.” The comment implies his life had largely shifted to caring for his children at his mansion in the wealthy, coastal city of Montecito.
“The way I interpreted that, perhaps rather more harshly, was you cannot be Captain General of the Royal Marines, a very distinguished position which had been held by Prince Philip for many years, and lie barefoot under a tree in California,” said Vickers.
Meghan and Harry’s whirlwind romance began in July 2016 after they were introduced by a mutual friend, quickly escalating from a low-profile courtship to a royal engagement by November 2017. Less than a year later, they were married.
While numerous reports over the years have said Prince William cautioned his brother about moving too quickly, Vickers said he was far from the only one who shared those concerns.
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“I think that whenever somebody rushes into a marriage, there are always likely to be people who are going to say, ‘Steady on, have you thought this through? How’s it going to go? Give it a bit of time,’” said Vickers.
“It’s a very sensible bit of advice to give somebody. Of course, it’s not very popular with the couple in question. And I think that was one of the problems, one of the issues, that people close to Prince Harry — his father, his brother and so forth — did say, ‘Steady on, what’s going on? Are you really sure you are taking the right course?’ And if he were to have repeated that to his bride, she wouldn’t have been very pleased. So, I think that’s part of the tension, frankly.”
Vickers wrote that while some palace staff referred to Meghan, 44, as “Sparkle,” Philip, Harry’s grandfather, dismissed her as “the American.” Charles reportedly urged his son to “have fun with her, but don’t marry her.” The queen even suggested that Harry should wait a year before marriage.
Harry didn’t wait.
“Many were alarmed that the bride had no family members to support her other than her mother,” Vickers wrote. “It was said that the queen did not like the dress — too white and with ungainly shoulders. Someone close to the queen said her attitude to the actual wedding was: ‘You get on with it. It’s nothing to do with me.’”
Vickers said that Harry and Meghan proposed a half-in, half-out arrangement, allowing them to carry out official engagements while pursuing financial independence. Senior royals reacted negatively to the idea, pointing out that part of being a working royal is dedicating your life completely to the role. Vickers wrote that Harry was “reluctantly out.”
In 2022, the queen, England’s longest-reigning monarch, died at age 96. In 2023, Harry’s memoir, “Spare,” was published. In it, he laid bare his struggles with royal life and shared personal details about his family. It became the fastest-selling nonfiction book ever, and it went on to become one of the bestselling memoirs of all time.
The Duke and Duchess are raising their two young children in California.
“How did the queen’s view of Meghan Markle change?” said Vickers. “Well, I should imagine it changed quite a lot. She … [would have seen Harry go] off into a different world and not undertake his duties in the way she has done. I’m sure that was very distressing for her.”
“I think that their departure and the subsequent activities, particularly the Oprah Winfrey interview, obviously were very upsetting,” he said. “And she came up with that wonderful remark, ‘Recollections may vary,’ which was a very polite way of putting it. So I think it inevitably caused her distress.”
“What I feel sad about the queen is that she had a lot of problems going on in the last years of her reign,” Vickers reflected. “She had Brexit, she had [former Prime Minister] Boris Johnson, she had issues with the [former] Prince Andrew, she had issues with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, whereas she should have been sailing into sort of sunlit uplands, enjoying her Platinum Jubilee.”
“… A lot was going on. But then, of course, there always had been all through the reign. There were always problems that had to be dealt with.”
