On Monday the royal family will come together for a face to face meeting to try and work out the next steps for Harry and Meghan, who sensationally announced last week that they are stepping down as senior royals. The Queen called the meeting after instructing her most senior aides to work with all the royal households in conjunction with the British and relevant foreign government officials, who are understood to be representing Canada. The goal is to find a workable solution for the Sussexes—but the damaged relationships within the family, particularly between Harry and the Queen, may take much longer to fix.
Initially the response among senior royals was of hurt betrayal and even fury that the couple would make such an important announcement without consulting the Queen. Now the family is working things out with the world watching, and the Queen is keen to find a resolution before irreparable damage is done to arguably the biggest brand in the world—the British Royal Family.
The Queen is more aware than anyone just how dangerous and unsettling this chapter could be for the House of Windsor. Just months ago Prince Andrew was forced to step down (for far more serious and controversial reasons), and now the royal family set to lose two key players who are two of the most popular members of the family.
While the Queen and the other senior royals knew of Harry and Meghan’s early stage plans to review their royal roles and move overseas (as Vanity Fair revealed, there were talks over the Christmas) it was, say sources, always the Queen’s hope that they wouldn’t step away from royal life completely.
“Perhaps it’s a generational thing, or the way she was brought up, but duty is everything to the Queen and she will find this the most upsetting part of all,” says one of the Queen’s closest confidantes.
The shadow of King Edward VIII’s abdication, which happened when she was ten years old, still looms large for the Queen. It is why, despite rumours she plans to hand over the crown to Charles next year, the Queen actually plans to serve until her death. Duty has been instilled in her since she was a young girl and the crown is everything to her, which might explain why one family source said that she was as much “perplexed” as she was hurt by what happened last week.
“At the end of the day she is 93 and this has been a genuine shock for her,” the source said. “After everything she has done for Harry she feels monumentally let down. All she has done is accommodate him and Meghan from the start. The family are all very upset at how the Sussexes have behaved, not least because of the impact it has had on the Queen, who has a very frail husband, the whole Andrew problem to deal with and now Harry, who is frankly behaving like a bolshie teenager. He has dropped a bombshell and left the Queen to pick up the pieces. It has not been great for their relationship. What was once a very warm and jokey grandmother grandson rapport has dissipated.”
The Queen has always had a soft spot for Harry (only he could persuade her to star in that wonderful spoof with the Obamas for his Invcitus Games) but there is evidence that the relationship is not as close as it once was.
One source close to the Queen says her relationship with Harry came under immense strain in the run up to the royal wedding. “She was very upset by some of Harry’s demands and the way he went about certain things,” reveals the source. “He didn’t want to use the Queen’s staff for the wedding, he and Meghan brought in their own florist and cake makers, and Harry apparently asked the Archbishop of Canterbury to marry them before consulting the Queen and the Dean of Windsor, which wasn’t the correct way to do things.”