A royal mix-up. The Meghan Markle anecdotes in Prince Harry’s Spare memoir include one about the Duchess of Sussex mistaking Prince Andrew for Queen Elizabeth II’s assistant. Ahead, what the Duke of Sussex told his now-wife when she met his uncle and grandmother.
Meghan Markle mistook Prince Andrew for Queen Elizabeth’s assistant when Prince Harry introduced them in 2016
The British royal family is extensive. Even Meghan didn’t know every single one of Harry’s relatives after they’d been dating for a while. Case in point: a mix-up when she met Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of York.
In October 2016, three months after their first date at Soho House, Harry introduced Meghan to his grandmother and uncle. They went to the Royal Lodge for lunch when Queen Elizabeth stopped by after church.
As Harry explained in his memoir, Spare, Meghan, now 41, didn’t realize the “man holding the purse” wasn’t Queen Elizabeth’s assistant but rather her son (via Marie Claire). “After a moment, Meg asked me something about the queen’s assistant,” Harry wrote in the book, which dropped Jan. 10.
“‘That man holding the purse. That man who walked her to the door. That wasn’t her assistant? Who was it?’” he recalled Meghan asking. “‘That was her second son. Andrew,’” Harry replied as he quickly summarized the royal family tree.
At the time, Andrew was still a senior “working” royal. He wouldn’t step back from his official duties until November 2019.
Prince Harry described the lunch as ‘very pleasant’
Overall, Harry said Meghan’s first meeting with the queen went well. They chatted with the monarch, discussed church, and touched on Meghan living in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
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“It was all very pleasant,” Harry wrote, adding that Meghan performed a near-perfect curtsy — which the former Suits star re-enacted for Netflix — when she met the queen. 20 minutes later, Queen Elizabeth left the lunch with Andrew escorting her out.
They’d originally planned to have lunch with Andrew, his ex-wife Sarah Ferguson, their youngest daughter Princess Eugenie and her then-boyfriend Jack Brooksbank. So it came as a bit of a surprise as Meghan learned on the drive there she’d be meeting the queen.
“Everyone flooded into the room after she’d driven away,” Harry wrote, saying “the whole vibe changed,” and they toasted with drinks.
Prince Harry said he and Meghan Markle ‘regretted’ their casual outfits for the Queen Elizabeth introduction
Harry also revealed in Spare he and Meghan didn’t like the casual clothes they had on at the time of the Queen Elizabeth introduction.
Harry remembered seeing his “Granny” wearing a “brightly colored dress and matching hat,” a stark contrast to his and Meghan’s informal outfits (via Marie Claire).
“I could see Meg regretting her jeans and black sweater,” he wrote. “I was also regretting my shabby trousers. We didn’t plan. I wanted to tell Granny, but she was busy asking about Meghan’s visit.”
“There wasn’t some big moment of, like, ‘and now you’re going to meet my grandmother,’” Meghan recalled in Netflix’s Harry & Meghan “I remember being in the car and [Harry] was like, ‘you know how to curtsy, right?’ and I just thought it was a joke.”
