Prince Harry’s comments about the Queen slammed by Palace insiders

Palace insiders have labelled a comment Harry made about his late grandmother “another manipulation of the narrative”.

The Right Reverend Dr Iain Greenshields might not be a name most people recognise but he was one of the last people outside of royal and Westminster circles to see the late Queen alive.

A minister, Greenshields had been invited to spend what would be Her Majesty’s last weekend at Balmoral.

“Her memory was absolutely amazing and she was really full of fun,” Kirk told the Times just after her passing in September.

The pair talked about (what else?) horses and she was “naming them from 40 years ago”, the war in Ukraine, and the church (“she was very apprised of everything going on”). Overall, to Greenshields, “she was in amazingly good form”.

The Queen was described as in ‘amazingly good form’ before she died. Picture: Daniel Leal / AFP.

Now this is nice and all but the reason that the Reverend’s impression of Her Majesty – unequivocally compos mentis – matters is because of Prince Harry and something that he told the Netflix cameras about his grandmother; a particular something that courtiers have now reportedly called “outrageous” and “another manipulation of the narrative”.

Since the second lot of episodes of he and wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex’s Netflix TV series dropped last week, the hubbub has been relentlessly focused on the duke’s revelations about his closest relatives. His father King Charles “[said] things that just simply weren’t true” while his brother Prince William ‘screamed and shouted’ at him, “terrifying” him, and briefing the media against the Sussexes.

Broadly speaking it’s all pretty gory stuff, the brutal inner workings of regal sausage-making laid bare by one of their own.

Harry discussed his top secret summit with the Queen, known at Sandringham Summit, in the bombshell series. Picture: Netflix

But, the question is, while the world has been focused on yelling brothers and the royal houses leaking to the press like a $2 shop sieve, did Harry deal the late Queen something of an unjust blow and no one really noticed?

In episode five, we get to the events of January 2020’s Sandringham Summit, the meeting where Charles, William, Harry and Her Majesty got together on a nippy Norfolk day to hash out the details of Megxit.

In Harry & Meghan, he says of that gathering: “It was terrifying to have my brother scream and shout at me, and my father say things that just simply weren’t true, and my grandmother, you know, quietly sit there, and sort of take it all in.”

It’s an arresting image – of the then 93-year-old Queen watching this tense and emotional- sounding scene play out as if from the sidelines.

Harry recalled his grandmother ‘quietly sitting’ at the explosive family meeting. Picture: Netflix

However that image of the monarch, according to the Times’ Royal Editor Roya Nikkhah, “doesn’t tally with anyone else’s experience of the Queen, who was ‘sharp as a tack’ and calling the shots until the day she died.”

“It’s outrageous,” a courtier told Nikkhah. “Harry never wanted to admit to himself that it was the Queen who said, ‘no, you’re out’. He couldn’t fathom that he wasn’t the cheeky chappy who was going to sweet-talk grandma into getting what he wanted.”

Another courtier has said: “Advisers made recommendations to Her Majesty, but there was only one person making the decisions.

One of those courtiers, speaking to the Times, offered up something of a theory: “To look the truth squarely in the eye, to realise your relationship has been damaged and to know it was his commander-in-chief who decided he couldn’t have the half-in, half-out role he wanted, is probably too painful for him to accept.”

Queen Elizabeth was likely still ‘calling the shots’ up until her death, insiders say. Picture: Alastair Grant / POOL / AFP.

Valentine Low, writing in his recent Courtiers: The Hidden Power Behind The Crown, offers a very similar telling of events during the climactic summit, saying that “Compromise was off the table, removed by the Queen” and that “it was the Queen who took the final decision.”

This is not the first time that the duke has cast this sort of picture of the late Queen. In April this year he and Meghan made a lightning stopover in Windsor on their way to the Netherlands where they met with his grandmother.

Days later, Harry did what any loving grandson does and then sat down with an American breakfast TV host to answer questions, in part, about that private family moment.

The duke told host Hoda Kotb that he had “a really special relationship” with Her Majesty, saying, “We talk about things that she can’t talk about with anybody else.”

However the kicker came when he said that the couple had visited her to “make sure she’s protected and she’s got the right people around her”.

Again, here we have that same image of Her Majesty, not as the head of state and head of the armed forces, a woman who spoke weekly to the UK’s prime minister and who attended the G7 meeting last year, but as a feeble old lady in need of ‘protection’ from the wrong people.

Who were these malign figures? Harry never said.

It’s easy to see why a version of Queen Elizabeth as an enfeebled, vulnerable figure might appeal to Harry.

As a courtier has told the Times: “The narrative has shifted from Prince Harry on the Queen. It was always ‘my commander-in-chief, the boss.’

But when he was not getting the support from her he wanted, she is represented as a diminutive figure sat in the corner. That is another manipulation of the narrative to suit the outcome as felt by Harry.”

Harry has been accused of ‘manipulating the narrative’ about the Queen’s role in the saga. Picture: Yui Mok / Pool / AFP.

For years, even when the Sussexes were lobbing grenades at the royal house, they were always careful to hive off the Queen from criticism, separating her out but that’s an illogical distinction.

There has never been any indication in recent years that in the midst of turbulence of not only Megxit but the wholesale car crash that is Prince Andrew, that the nonagenarian was anything but firmly in charge.

When Andrew was once and for all officially defenestrated in January this year – his honorary military titles and roles yanked, his HRH mothballed – the Queen was “swift and ruthless” the Times reported. While Charles and William were “consulted” about the move, reportedly, “the final decision … was hers.”

“Never assume she just rubberstamps stuff,” a courtier told the London paper back then.

It was the Queen’s order to have Prince Andrew stripped of his military titles. Picture: Kirsty O'Connor – WPA Pool/Getty Images.

On some level, it’s hard to square those adorable pictures of her, a teeny old lady in lime green or sweetly talking marmalade sandwiches with Paddington Bear but at the end of the day, the Queen had an unenviable job.

Her responsibility, as the 41st monarch since Harold Godwin managed to lose part of what is now England to William of Normandy, was to ensure that the monarchy survived, no matter what feelings she might have felt as a mother and grandmother.

And as Nikkhah, Low and the Right Reverend make clear, while her physical health might have been failing, mentally she was completely on the ball.

In a matter of weeks, Harry’s autobiography, Spare, will hit shelves and which includes “more incendiary than those made in the Netflix series,” according to the Times, while elsewhere it has been reported he will also do an interview with American 60 Minutes’ Anderson Cooper.

You know what they say – with family like this …

Daniela Elser is a writer and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.

Originally published as Prince Harry’s comments about the Queen slammed by Palace insiders