The Queen Worried Prince Harry Was “Too Much in Love” with Meghan Markle, New Book Claims

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published 27 November 2022

Her late Majesty welcomed Meghan Markle into the royal family fold with open arms and was fond of her but did worry that her grandson Prince Harry was “a little over-in-love” with her, a bombshell new book claims.

Gyles Brandreth’s latest, Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait, drops December 8 (coincidentally the same day as Harry and Meghan’s Netflix docuseries) and lays bare many details about the Queen and Meghan’s relationship, including that Her late Majesty was delighted Meghan was marrying into the family. Her one worry?

“The only concern the Queen let slip in the early days of the Sussexes’ marriage was to wonder to a friend if Harry wasn’t ‘perhaps a little over-in-love,’” Brandreth writes, per The Mirror. “This was as far as she came—to my knowledge at least—to ever uttering a word against the new Duchess of Sussex.”

Her late Majesty was apparently so supportive of Meghan that she even suggested the former Suits star continue working as an actress, as she wanted her granddaughter-in-law to be happy.

“She liked Meghan and told lots of people so,” Brandreth writes, per Page Six. “And she did everything she could to make her future granddaughter-in-law feel welcome.”

Not even Harry and Meghan’s explosive interview with Oprah Winfrey in March 2021 put her off of the Sussexes, the book claims.

“I can tell you, because I know this, that the Queen was always more concerned for Harry’s well-being than about ‘this television nonsense,’ meaning both the Oprah Winfrey interview—which caused so much controversy—and the lucrative deal the Sussexes made with Netflix,” Brandreth writes. More than the “television nonsense,” the Queen “was anxious that Harry should ‘find his feet’ in California and ‘find really useful things to do’” after he and Meghan stepped back as working members of the royal family in January 2020, ultimately relocating to the United States.

Ample excerpts of Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait are published in The Daily Mail.

Rachel Burchfield is a writer, editor, and podcaster whose primary interests are fashion and beauty, society and culture, and, most especially, the British Royal Family and other royal families around the world. She serves as Marie Claire’s Senior Celebrity and Royals Editor and has also contributed to publications like Allure, Cosmopolitan, Elle, Glamour, Harper’s Bazaar, InStyle, People, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and W, among others. Before taking on her current role with Marie Claire, Rachel served as its Weekend Editor and later Royals Editor. She is the cohost of Podcast Royal, a show that was named a top five royal podcast by The New York Times. A voracious reader and lover of books, Rachel also hosts I’d Rather Be Reading, which spotlights the best current nonfiction books hitting the market and interviews the authors of them. Rachel frequently appears as a media commentator, and she or her work has appeared on outlets like NBC’s Today Show, ABC’s Good Morning America, CNN, and more.