What the Queen Really Thought of Meghan

The late Queen Elizabeth II’s closest confidants reveal the truth about her relationship with Meghan Markle

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In all of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s criticism of the royal family, Elizabeth II was the exception. “The queen has always been wonderful to me,” Meghan once gushed, calling her “warm and inviting.” And Harry, who acknowledges that he enjoyed a “special relationship” with the late queen, always blamed courtiers for the Firm’s cold treatment of his wife. His principled and loving “Granny,” he insisted in his bridgeburning CBS interview in 2021, was simply surrounded by manipulative opportunists who fed her “bad advice.”

But in the more than two years since Elizabeth’s death at 96, those close to the monarch have revealed what the queen really thought about Meghan. “There was tension almost immediately,” says a source, “and because Meghan and Harry continued to shockingly defy the queen’s wishes, their relationship was irreparably strained when she passed.” Since then, in a series of bombshell books and interviews, adds the source, “the queen’s confidants have been exposing their secret feud so that the world knows the truth about Meghan.”

The first signs of friction came before Meghan and Harry’s 2018 wedding. In his memoir,