The 1 Moment When Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Became ‘Furious’ With Queen Elizabeth II and Claimed She Was ‘Conspiring Against Them’
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle stepped back from their royal roles in March 2020. In January of that year, the two made the official announcement that they would be looking for a different way to move forward with royal life. Harry and Meghan did not spend the 2019 holidays with the family (and haven’t spent Christmas there since), so there were already rumors swirling that things were not as they seemed behind closed doors.
But sources claim there was one defining moment in 2019 when Harry and Meghan realized they had to get out of the royal family — and it had everything do to with the late queen.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle thought the queen was ‘conspiring’ against them
Each year, the monarch delivers a televised Christmas speech, reflecting on the past year and looking forward to the next. It wasn’t so much her 2019 speech that caught the attention of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex; rather, it was the background images. The queen gave her speech with plenty of family photos visible, but Harry and Meghan were nowhere to be found.
“Finding Freedom,” a book by Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand that has been rumored to have had Meghan and Harry’s help, claimed the Sussexes felt “sidelined” and were “furious” that their family image of Harry, Meghan, and then-infant Prince Archie was not visible in the queen’s Christmas address, according to Express.
“One didn’t have to look further than the family photos displayed during the queen’s speech on Christmas Day,” Scobie and Durand wrote in the book. In the Green Drawing Room at Buckingham Palace, where the queen delivered her address, viewers glimpsed photos of the [Waleses] and their children, Charles and Camilla, Prince Philip, and a black-and-white image of George VI.” The absence of a family picture of the Sussexes was reportedly Harry and Meghan’s last straw, as they thought the queen and other family members were “conspiring” against them.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle did have a close relationship with Queen Elizabeth II
Despite tensions between Harry and the rest of the royal family, they ultimately did have a close relationship with the queen, and the queen reportedly was supportive of Harry and Meghan’s decision to leave the royal family. When Harry and Meghan welcomed their daughter, they lovingly named her Lilibet, which was the queen’s childhood nickname.
Harry and Meghan took part in all of the queen’s funeral services, and they spent an extra week in the UK in 2022 to mourn her loss. While the queen didn’t love all of the drama that had unfolded between Harry, Meghan, and the rest of the family, she was in favor of Harry and Meghan’s wish to pursue a different life and always had a soft spot for the couple.
