From their very first meeting, over tea at Buckingham Palace, the Queen approved of Meghan Markle. Not only did she like her, she had high...
From their very first meeting, over tea at Buckingham Palace, the Queen approved of Meghan Markle. Not only did she like her, she had high hopes for what the American actress might be able to achieve with Harry for the youth of the Commonwealth.
Soon the country as a whole seemed to take to Meghan with equally genuine delight. One of the few wary of succumbing to her charm offensive, however, was Prince Philip. While the Queen continued to champion Harry’s new love, he warned his wife to be cautious. It was uncanny, he told her, how much Meghan reminded him of the Duchess of Windsor.
When she was just ten, Princess Elizabeth’s beloved father had suddenly become King, after Edward VIII — later the Duke of Windsor — abdicated for the sake of marrying Wallis Simpson, an American divorcee.
This caused a permanent rift in the royal family: the new King George VI refused to receive her and denied her the appellation of Her Royal Highness. For her part, the American duchess openly mocked the Queen (later Queen Mother) as ‘the fat Scotch cook’.
The Queen Mother later blamed the couple for her husband’s early death —caused, she felt, by the stress of taking on the role of King, for which he had been both unprepared and temperamentally unsuited. She never forgave the Duchess, whom she cast as a wicked enchantress.
From the start of Edward’s affair with Wallis — then still married — he had been infatuated with her to the point that he soon began to neglect his royal duties. Once, when he asked Wallis to light a cigarette for him, she replied: ‘Only if you ask properly’ — at which point he got down on his knees and begged like a dog.
Later, after their marriage, Wallis had happily accompanied the Duke of Windsor in 1937 on a visit to Nazi Germany, during which they met Hitler and were both photographed giving the Nazi salute.
As one who had lived through this tumultuous period of royal history, and been directly affected by it, Queen Elizabeth II was perfectly aware what Philip meant when he drew parallels between Meghan and Wallis. Indeed, much later, she would remark in her clipped way that perhaps Harry had been ‘too in love’ with the American actress.
As for Prince Philip, he never appeared to change his mind about Meghan. From the moment he detected her apparent similarity to Wallis, he referred to her as DoW (short for Duchess of Windsor).
Queen Elizabeth II never voiced her true opinion about Harry’s wife except to her very closest confidantes, such as Lady Elizabeth Anson, or Liza as she was known to her friends. A cousin of the Queen, she used to speak on the telephone to the monarch on a daily basis.
Lady Elizabeth told me that the Queen had made only one remark to her about Meghan and Harry’s wedding, which was that the bride’s Givenchy wedding gown was ‘too white’.
In the monarch’s view, it was not appropriate for a divorcee getting remarried in church to look quite so flamboyantly virginal.
Nor was the Queen comfortable with the Prince of Wales’s decision to stand in for Meghan’s father, Thomas Markle, and walk her down the aisle. She was also concerned about 96-year-old Prince Philip’s decision to hobble down the aisle without a stick, despite having had a hip replacement just five weeks before.
Then there was the service itself. Like many others in the congregation, she was startled by the impassioned outpourings of the American Archbishop Michael Curry, who spoke for more than 14 minutes. Both the Queen and Prince Philip, who hate long sermons, were desperate for him to finish. They must also have been aware that some of those around them were stifling their laughter.
One can only speculate about what they thought when Curry, who admitted he didn’t know either Harry or Meghan, later said he’d felt the presence of the slaves from whom he was descended in the chapel, which he felt to be a ‘sign of hope’.
According to Lady Elizabeth, the Queen was dismayed by Harry’s high-handed attitude both before and after the wedding, and their relationship was ‘quite badly damaged by it all’. It was even more damaged when Harry decided to give up being a working royal and leave the country — a decision, said Lady Elizabeth, that the Queen never truly understood. Then came the couple’s infamous interview with Oprah Winfrey, in which Harry said his father was ‘trapped’ and heavily implied that the Royal Family were racist.
The Queen was upset by his attitude, said Lady Elizabeth. However much she loved Harry — and she did — she couldn’t condone the way he was speaking about the institution of the monarchy she’d spent 70 years preserving.
