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TL;DR: 

  • Queen Elizabeth gifted Frogmore Cottage to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. 
  • Per Katie Nicholl’s book, The New Royals, Queen Elizabeth told a friend, “I hope they respect it.” 
  • Prince Harry and Meghan Markle lived there from April 2019 to March 2020.
  • Frogmore Cottage remains Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s U.K. residence. 

Queen Elizabeth II had a simple “hope” for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle when she gave them Frogmore Cottage, a forthcoming book says. Ahead, learn what the queen allegedly told a relative years before the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s 2022 “bittersweet” return to their U.K. home.

Queen Elizabeth wanted Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to ‘respect’ all she’d be ‘giving up,’ according to book

According to Katie Nicholl’s book, The New Royals: Queen Elizabeth’s Legacy and the Future of the Crown, the queen had just five words after she gave Frogmore Cottage to Harry and Meghan. 

“She said, ‘I hope they’ll respect it,’” Lady Elizabeth Anson told Nicholl via an excerpt published by Daily Mail.

Anson, who died in 2020, also told the royal expert why it had been such a “big deal” for the queen to give up Frogmore Cottage. 

“The queen’s entrance into the gardens is right next to their cottage,” she said. Anson continued, telling the Vanity Fair royal correspondent it meant the queen relinquished “privacy.”  

“It is essentially her back yard [sic], her solitude, and her privacy,” Anson explained. “She was giving that up in gifting Harry and Meghan Frogmore Cottage. We all thought it was very big of her.” 

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle wanted to live at Windsor Castle, book says

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, who were gifted Frogmore Cottage by Queen Elizabeth, hold hands during a September 2022 visit to Germany
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle | Rolf Vennenbernd/picture alliance via Getty Images

According to Nicholl’s The New Royals, Frogmore Cottage wasn’t Harry and Meghan’s first choice. In the book, out Oct. 4, she wrote they’d “hoped” for a “suite of apartments at Windsor Castle.” Instead, the queen gave them Frogmore Cottage, located not far from the castle. 

Harry and Meghan made renovations to Frogmore Cottage. Finally, around April 2019, a month before the birth of their son Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, they moved in. 

Previously, the couple lived in Nottingham Cottage or “Nott Cott.” Once Harry’s bachelor pad, it’s situated on the grounds of Kensington Palace in London, England. Additionally, it’s not far from other royals’ homes, including Prince William and Kate Middleton’s Apartment 1A. 

Queen Elizabeth used to stop by to check on Harry and Meghan, according to a royal correspondent 

An exterior view of Frogmore Cottage, the Windsor home Queen Elizabeth gave to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle before saying, according to Katie Nicholl’s book, The New Royals, she hopes Prince Harry and Meghan Markle 'respect it'
Frogmore Cottage | Steve Parsons/PA Images via Getty Images
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Supposedly, visits from the queen happened often when Harry and Meghan lived at Frogmore Cottage. Royal correspondent Richard Palmer once said Queen Elizabeth stopped by to see the couple “quite regularly” after their 2018 royal wedding. 

“She was worried about how unhappy and unsettled they were,” Palmer said. “So, I was told at one point that she was going around to see them to make sure they were OK.” 

Harry’s cousin, Princess Eugenie, and her husband, Jack Brooksbank, most recently lived at Frogmore Cottage with their son, August. As for Harry and Meghan, their primary residence is a mansion in Montecito, California. However, Frogmore Cottage remains their U.K. home. 

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