Queen Elizabeth II was “deeply hurt by her grandson’s attacks” after Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey, according to historian Hugo Vickers, who says the monarch grew so wary of Harry that she would only take his calls if someone else could listen in. Vickers says the queen asked her lady-in-waiting to stay with her when Harry rang and kept the exchanges to little more than “yes” and “no.”
The royal reaction went public in 2021, when the queen issued a statement saying, “The issues raised, especially the racial ones, are troubling. Although some memories may vary, they will be taken very seriously.” Vickers says that behind the measured language was a monarch trying to protect herself from her grandson and from the fallout of the interview that reopened old wounds inside the family.
Vickers’ account, set out in his book Queen Elizabeth II: A Personal History, scheduled to hit stands in the UK on April 8, adds new claims about how far that strain reached. He writes that Elizabeth suggested Harry wait a year before marrying Meghan, did not like Meghan’s wedding dress because it was too white and had ungainly shoulders, and later ordered that no photographer be allowed when Harry and Meghan met her during the Platinum Jubilee celebrations in June 2022.
The book also says the queen refused to meet the Sussexes privately when they first introduced her to their daughter, Lilibet Diana, during the Jubilee visit, insisting that the encounter take place in front of her lady-in-waiting. Vickers says Elizabeth’s view was blunt: “This is a family affair and must remain in the family.”
That private caution matched the public unease around Harry and Meghan after the Oprah interview, when the couple’s claims about life inside the royal household widened the split between the Sussexes and the rest of the family. Vickers frames the later Jubilee meeting as proof that, by 2022, the queen no longer trusted even an intimate family visit to stay private.
He writes that Elizabeth’s suspicion was rooted in the fear that anything said in her presence could quickly leave the room. “It wouldn’t have been a photo for the family album; it would have gone straight to the US media or Netflix,” he says. For a monarch known for discipline and restraint, that was enough to change the way she handled one of the most personal relationships of her reign.
Vickers also alleges that the queen once drove to Frogmore Cottage after hearing that Meghan had been rude to a gardener responsible for property maintenance, and scolded her directly. Elizabeth died in 2022, but the book suggests the damage from the Oprah interview remained visible in the last years of her life, shaping not just public statements but the terms on which she was willing to see her own grandson.