Queen Elizabeth Had a Blunt Reply for Prince Harry and Meghan When They Requested a Staged Photo With Her and Their Daughter Lilibet
We’ve heard a lot lately about Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle’s decision to name their daughter Lilibet after Queen Elizabeth II and whether or not they really got the late monarch‘s permission and blessing to do so.
Now, another story that is being brought up again is about the one and only time the queen met her great-granddaughter. Here’s how she responded to the Sussexes when they requested she do a photo op during that meeting with their photographer so they could publicly share the image.
Author told the Sussexes did not get the queen’s blessing to give daughter her nickname
On June 4, 2021, Prince Harry and Meghan welcomed their second child who they named Lilibet.
The name immediately raised a lot of eyebrows because as many royal fans know, “Lilibet” was Queen Elizabeth’s childhood nickname that her very close friends and family would call her.
In order to calm all the backlash over the Sussexes’ naming their daughter that, a spokesperson for the pair said that they asked the queen for her permission to use the special name and that she gave them her blessing.
However, royal historian Robert Hardman wrote in his book titled Charles III: New King. New Court. The Inside Story. that Meghan and Harry calling the late monarch and getting her blessing to use the name before they actually did is not true.
Hardman detailed a conversation he had with one of Queen Elizabeth’s senior Palace staffers about the Sussexes’ story that the queen gave them permission to name their daughter that. The Daily Mail noted that staffers said that the queen was “as angry as I’d ever seen her” when Meghan and Harry started putting that untruth out there. The late monarch’s aides told Hardman the queen was saying: “I don’t own the palaces, I don’t own the paintings, the only thing I own is my name. And now they’ve taken that.”
Queen Elizabeth shot down Prince Harry and Meghan’s staged photo request with one word
Princess Lilibet turned a year old in June 2022 and the Sussexes happened to be in England at that time since it was during the queen’s Platinum Jubilee weekend celebrations.
It was Lilibet’s first time in the U.K. and reports surfaced that the queen met her great-granddaughter. However, that meeting did not come with a photo op like Meghan and Harry had requested.
The duke and duchess reportedly wanted to mark the occasion with a photograph of the queen and Lilibet together. But the prince’s grandmother made the decision that was not going to happen and bluntly told them “no.”
“Harry and Meghan wanted their photographer to capture the moment Lilibet met the queen. But they were told no chance,” a Palace insider revealed to The Sun at the time, adding that the monarch insisted it would be “a private family meeting.”
