Well, if it wasn’t official before, it is now.
We’ve known for several days now that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle intend to step down from as “senior members” of the British royal family, but for many, the news didn’t really hit home until today.
That’s because it wasn’t until this afternoon that Queen Elizabeth II issued a statement on the matter and revealed that the Sussexes have her blessing as they embark on their new lives as pseudo-peasants.
The Queen, of course, was conciliatory and professional in her statements, as she virtually always is.
But just because she didn’t subject Meghan and Harry to a public tongue-lashing, that doesn’t mean she’s thrilled with their decision to step away from their royal duties.
In fact, according to a new report from Vanity Fair, QE2 is outraged by Harry and Meghan’s decision, and she views it as nothing less than the shirking of a sacred responsibility.
“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,” a source identified as “one of the Queen’s closest confidantes” tells the magazine.
The insider goes on to claim that from the Queen’s perspective, the timing of Harry and Meghan’s “stunt” couldn’t be worse.
“At the end of the day she is 93 and this has been a genuine shock for her,” the source says.
“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,” the insider adds.
“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.”
We’re sure Harry is sensitive to the Queen’s plight, but at the end of the day, his primary responsibility is to his wife and son, not his grandmother.
The insider goes on to say that despite rumors to the contrary, the Queen was more accommodating to Meghan than to anyone else who ever married into the royal family.
And the insider claims that the more Meghan and Harry were given, the more they expected.
“She was very upset by some of Harry’s demands and the way he went about certain things,” says 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,” the insider adds.
“I think she was dismayed by his attitude in general and I remember speaking to her and her being rather upset by how beastly Harry was being. Their relationship was quite badly damaged by it all.”
Yikes. “Beastly” is not a term that generally comes to mind when one thinks of Harry.
A different source claims that the Queen is not alone in her feeling that the Sussexes were not sufficiently appreciative of all that was done for them.
“There’s a feeling that what in the last two years have they been refused?” the insider says.
“There has always been a willingness to consider. The Queen is always there to talk about family matters but when it comes to matters of monarchy and the institution it’s not off the cuff. It’s not just a case of popping over for tea to discuss it,” the source continues.
“Decisions made on things like that have ramifications for three generations going forward and time was needed to get this right.”
That last part feelings like a bit like an unintentional confession.
After all that blathering on about how Meghan and Harry were endlessly coddled, Source #2 admits that certain requests were denied for fear of “ramifications.”
We may never know what those requests were, but if they were big enough that the Sussexes felt they were not free to live the lives they envisioned for themselves, then they were absolutely right to walk away.