Queen Elizabeth II’s cousin and confidante Lady Elizabeth Anson, who died in 2020, reportedly knew details about the late monarch’s relationship with Meghan Markle.
Anson, who died at age 79, spoke to royal author Sally Bedell Smith in a posthumous interview published by The Times of London on Wednesday, July 2.
“[Prince] Harry wrote to me and said they were going another way. He said, ‘I am close to my grandmother, and she is content with this,’” Anson said, referring to Harry, now 40, and Meghan, 43, planning their 2018 wedding. “When I spoke with the queen, she said she is not at all content. Meghan could turn into nothing but trouble. She sees things in a different way.”
Elizabeth, who died in 2022 at the age of 96, was allegedly “dismayed” that Harry asked the Archbishop of Canterbury to perform the ceremony in St George’s Chapel without obtaining permission from the Dean of Windsor first, according to Anson.
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“Harry seems to think the queen can do what she wants, but she can’t,” Anson claimed. “On the religious side, it is the Dean of Windsor’s jurisdiction. … Harry has blown his relationship with his grandmother. She said she was really upset. I was shocked when the queen told me this, how she was so saddened.”
Harry, who is one of Elizabeth’s grandchildren, is said to have repaired his relationship with his grandmother within months. Anson, meanwhile, spoke to Bedell Smith two weeks before Harry and Meghan tied the knot and claimed that Elizabeth told her that “the jury is out on whether she likes Meghan.”
“My Jemima is very worried,” Anson said, using her informal nickname for Elizabeth. “Harry is besotted and weak about women. We hope, but don’t quite think she is in love. We think she engineered it all.”
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After Harry and Meghan got married, they slowly started distancing themselves from his brother, Prince William, and wife Princess Kate Middleton.
“Meghan and William and Kate are not working well,” Anson recalled to The Times. “That is what the queen said, particularly about the two girls. It’s worrying that so many people are questioning whether Meghan is right for Harry. The problem, bless his heart, is that Harry is neither bright nor strong, and she is both.”
Harry and Meghan ultimately took a step down from their duties as senior working royals in 2020. They moved from London to Montecito, California, to raise their two children: Prince Archie, now 6, and Princess Lilibet, now 4.
While the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have not addressed Anson’s posthumous claims, they were reported to be on good terms with Elizabeth after leaving England.
“They have kept a great relationship with [Prince] Philip and the queen,” royal expert Omid Scobie told Entertainment Tonight in 2021. “We heard Harry talking very warmly about his [grandparents] on James Corden’s show not so long ago.”
Harry appeared on The Late Late Show With James Corden in February 2021, noting that Elizabeth even sent Archie a waffle maker as a gift.
“My grandmother asked us what Archie wanted for Christmas, and Meg said a waffle maker,” the prince said at the time. “She sent us a waffle maker for Archie. So [for] breakfast now, Meg makes up a beautiful, organic mix, [puts it] in the waffle maker, flips it, out it comes. He loves it. … Archie wakes up in the morning and just goes, ‘Waffle?’”
Harry also revealed that he and Meghan had Zoom video chats with both Elizabeth and Philip, who died later that year at the age of 99.
Harry attended Philip’s funeral in April 2021 solo, while Meghan stayed home with Archie amid her pregnancy with Lilibet. The married couple later both attended Elizabeth’s funeral in September 2022.
