By Sheila Mckenzie-
The infinitely tolerant and forgiving late queen encouraged Meghan Markle to continue her acting career, despite conventional practices that require royals to be fully devoted to royal duties, it has been revealed.
The controversial Oprah Winfrey interview by Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle did not particularly rile the late monarch, who took an objective view in concluding that the aggrieved couple had a right to give their perspective to the world, even though the details were damaging and disputed.
The intimate biography of the queen by Gyles Brandreth, Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait, details much of what transpired in the royal family.
The very forgiving queen also made reference to a distasteful interview by the Duke of York in an interview for Newsnight in 2019, in which the late monarch asked: ‘Didn’t Sarah do something similar?’
She was referring to a six-part television series in 2011 aired on the Oprah Winfrey Network in the U.S entitled ‘Finding Sarah- a six-part TV series in which the former Duchess of York shared her tears and her heartache with a TV psychiatrist and the viewing millions.
And contrary to the general perception in black communities in the Uk and America, the royal family considered it a good thing having a mixed-race person joining the Royal Family, and their wedding was welcomed by all and sundry.
Research in three black communities (Hackney, Brixton and Peckham) in the Uk by The Eye Of Media.Com, never revealed publicly before, suggests that 82% of black people believe Meghan Markle was never accepted in the royal family because of her mixed-race heritage and the fact she was a divorcee.
Though that demographic group would dispute the claim of Gyles Brandreth, the general consensus by sources close to the royal family is that the Duchess of Sussex was thoroughly welcomed in the royal family. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle themselves attested to this fact during their controversial 2020 Oprah Winfrey interview in which Prince Harry said he was surprised how much his wife was welcomed to the fold when she first joined the royal family.
Meghan Markle herself said the Queen was very pleasant to her during her time in the royal family
Also revealed in the well written and engaging book is that the late monarch loved Harry, was very fond of him, and was concerned for his mental wellbeing.
What the book doesn’t make clear is how the Queen handled the internal disputes that allegedly caused Meghan Markle unhappiness in the royal family.
It reveals that the queen thought Prince Harry was a little over in love with Meghan Markle and was not happy about the alleged bullying by Meghan Markle against her staff.
Many members of the royal family found the choice of name for Prince Harry second child ‘bewildering’ and ‘rather presumptuous’, given that ‘Lilibet’ as a name had always been intimately and exclusively the Queen’s, Brandreth writes.
However, the Queen was happy with the choice of name, and said: ‘I hear they’re calling her “Lili”, which is very pretty and seems just right.’
One thing the queen was not prepared to accept was for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle to do was to do their own thing under the name of the queen. The couple desired financial independence and wanted to be able to continue to serve Queen and Commonwealth, on their own terms.
According to the authours, The Queen convened a family meeting at Sandringham – attended by Charles, William and Harry – and a way forward was agreed.
”Harry and Meghan could do as they pleased, but they could not represent the Queen while doing so. Their HRH titles would be put in abeyance and Harry, to his dismay, was required to give up his royal patronages and military appointments. Harry was distressed, as he put it, ‘that it should come to this’. So was his grandmother.
”In a personal statement, she made it clear that Harry and Meghan would always be close members of her family, and she went out of her way to praise her American granddaughter-in-law. But she was equally clear that she wasn’t going to have a couple of freelance royals roaming the world doing their own thing in any sense in her name”.
Revealed in the intimate biography of the queen by Gyles Brandreth, Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait is published by Michael Joseph on 8 December, he uses his contacts with the royal family to detail much of what transpired in the royal family
Writing about Prince Harry, he says: ”The Queen was devoted to Harry. She loved him, she thought him ‘huge fun’, and she truly wished him well in his new life abroad.
Whenever Harry called his grandmother from Montecito, he was always put through to Her Majesty immediately.
‘The truth is that when her grandson told her he was marrying Meghan Markle, she was truly delighted by the prospect. She liked Meghan and told lots of people so. And she did everything she could to make her future granddaughter-in-law feel welcome”, he says.
The fact that the late Queen permitted Meghan Markle to continue her acting career reveals an incredibly high level of flexibility by the queen and shows her to have been very loving to both Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle stepped back from royal duties after feeling ill-treated, after feeling sidelined when a photo of them was omitted from the Queens 2019 speech.
They also bitterly complained that senior members of the royal family failed to intervene when Harry complained that false press stories were being published continuously without challenge.
During the Oprah Winfrey interview in 2020, both Prince Harry and Meghan Markle complained that a senior member of the royal family had expressed concern about how dark the colour of their unborn child would be.
The couple never named the royal member who made the alleged comment, sparking controversy over whether it was true and in what context it was made.
The queen is also known to have been concerned about Prince Harry’s relationship with his brother, Prince William, and wanted the two brothers to reconcile as quickly as possible.
Her Majesty’s official cause of death was listed as “old age”, but Brandreth claimed it was actually a rare form of bone marrow cancer that took the Monarch’s life.
Brandreth wrote: “I had heard that the Queen had a form of myeloma — bone marrow cancer — which would explain her tiredness and weight loss and those ‘mobility issues’ we were often told about during the last year or so of her life.
“The most common symptom of myeloma is bone pain, especially in the pelvis and lower back, and multiple myeloma is a disease that often affects the elderly.
Her Majesty’s official cause of death was listed as “old age”, but Brandreth claimed it was actually a rare form of bone marrow cancer that took the Monarch’s life.
There is speculation that the revelation of the Queen’s battle of cancer was made to block the possibility of Prince Harry revealing it in his book as breaking news.
Kinsey Schofield, founder and creator of the To Di For Daily podcast, theorised that the Sussexes were not “trusted” with the information. In the latest episode of the podcast, which came in the form of a TalkTV segment with present Cristo Foufas, Ms Schofield referenced a “very interesting theory”
She said: “Somebody messaged me today suggesting that perhaps because I don’t know about you, but I’ve heard these rumours about bone marrow cancer for a very long time now — Gyles got permission from the family to include this in his book to ensure that it wasn’t breaking news if Harry included it in Spare, which I think is very intelligent.
“I think that that very much could be it because we’ve heard the whispers and perhaps the family wanted to control how that information was released.”
It has been confirmed that neither the Duke nor Duchess of Sussex were aware of the Queen’s battle with cancer, and it is also unlikely Prince Harry would have wanted to reveal such information in his book, since the main aim of his book was to reveal his perspective of life as a royal from his perspective.