Royal family
Courtiers and others have said that several royals had strong opinions about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s relationship including Prince Harry’s father.
Less than two years after tying the knot, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle announced that they were stepping down from their roles within the royal family. The outside world saw the duke’s relatives all smiles the day he married the former Suits star, so no one suspected that there was trouble behind the scenes or that anyone didn’t get along with his bride.
But we know now that there was some friction early on between Meghan and the Princess of Wales (formerly known as Kate Middleton), and that Prince William tried to talk to his brother about getting married too quickly.
Now we’re hearing that the Waleses aren’t the only royals who had concerns about Harry’s relationship with Meghan. Here’s more on that.
King Charles felt Prince Harry was ‘whipped’ after he started seeing Meghan
It’s believed that King Charles and Meghan had a pretty good relationship before the Sussexes stepped down. The monarch even walked her down the aisle when she married his son. But there have also been rumblings that while Charles liked Meghan as a person, he thought Harry was a bit “whipped” by her.
On The Sun‘s Royal Exclusive Show, commentator Esther Krauke said: “We know that King Charles said something about him being whipped. We keep hearing things consistently coming out from courtiers and people that are close to the royal family.
“I think where things went wrong was clearly the cultural clash. I think in some ways Meghan thought she was marrying a billionaire, but was marrying a millionaire with like sort of a reduced status.”
Queen Elizabeth thought Harry was ‘consumed by Meghan and it ‘clouded his judgement’
Krauke added that she believed at one point “The queen’s opinion of Meghan evolved, and it’s much like how the country’s opinion evolved.”
But according to royal commentator and historian Robert Jobson, who authored the book Our King Charles III — The Man And The Monarch Revealed, while the queen may have eventually warmed to Meghan when she married Harry, after they stepped down she began to feel that the prince’s love for his wife “clouded his judgment” with his family.
“In truth, by the time his grandmother died, Harry had precious few supporters left in the family,” Jobson wrote (per the Daily Mail). “Even the queen, who had always had great affection for him, eventually tired of his outbursts. First, she had wearied of the volatile exchanges between Harry and his brother, which sometimes took place in her presence. Then Harry and Meghan had started publicly criticizing both the monarchy and members of the royal family.
“At that point, the queen was frankly mystified by the couple’s behavior, describing it as ‘quite mad.’ She came to believe, however, that her grandson was ‘so consumed’ by his love for Meghan that it was ‘clouding his judgment.’”
Moreover, the late monarch’s cousin and one of her closest confidants, Lady Elizabeth Anson, shared with royal biographer Sally Bedell Smith that the queen thought “Harry was perhaps a little bit too much in love” with the duchess.
