Queen’s shocking one-word Meghan Markle insult

Months before she died the Queen is said to have called Meghan Markle one word and it’s quite extraordinary.

COMMENT

As far as the newest crop of rebels go, they don’t have a beret between them, probably think the Little Red Book is the drinks list at The Wolseley and the only thing they have ever protested was Tony Blair’s fox-hunting ban.

Because something curious would seem to be afoot in the UK right now: A crop of unbelievably well-connected sorts, the most upper of the upper crust and people who belong to the royal family’s inner circle, have started giving interviews.

Not because they have gone rogue or the Daily Mail has waved a big fat chequebook in front of their pasty faces or because they had a few too many glasses of claret and got on the blower to some Private Eye columnist.

Instead, a few of the sorts of people who probably know all too well how competitive Queen Camilla gets at after-dinner charades have popped up in the press and, in between lots of lovely platitudes about their regal chums, they have slipped in a few truly eye-popping barbs about Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

Might The Firm be perhaps staging something of a fightback against Team Montecito?

The most extraordinary of these came on Friday when a report from the Spectator landed online, which claims that, only weeks before her death, during a dinner party at Balmoral, Queen Elizabeth had said that Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex was “evil”.

Yes, “evil”.

It was out of character for the Queen to use such a word, Picture: James Whatling – WPA Pool/Getty Images

Holy hell. Consider no bushes being beaten around here.

A source has told the Spectator’s Kara Kennedy: “At the drinks before the dinner, a small group were talking to the monarch and she explained that Harry meeting Meghan had become a complete catastrophe and described her as evil. By this point we all knew the Queen’s health was in decline and she had months left, she seemed regretful about how things had panned out.”

“Everybody’s eyebrows hit the ceiling. It was out of character for the Queen to use such a word as ‘evil’ to describe Meghan, but she saw straight through her. It was a startling sentence to hear from the most forgiving woman on earth.”

However, there are other voices with the crispest of vowels and plummiest of accents who have been lobbing other anti-Sussex grenades about the place.

Also this week, Lord Nicholas Soames, one of Charles’s lifelong mates and Winston Churchill’s grandson, gave a radio interview and described Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex’s decision to write his take-no-prisoners, todgers-and-all memoir Spare as the “cruellest” behaviour.

Lord Soames told Times Radio: “Well, in respect of Prince Harry, I just think it’s the most tragic. I mean, I can’t put myself in the position where my own son, if he did something like that to me, it would just be the cruellest and one would mind.

“Of course, the King was very, very sad, tragic … it was a terrible blow.”

“She saw straight through her.” The late Queen and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex in 2018. Picture: Jim Clarke / POOL / AFP

This all comes on the heels of the Queen’s closest friend Fiona Shelburne, the Marchioness of Lansdowne, speaking on the record about Camilla to the Sunday Times, something she only would have done if she had been signed-off in triplicate and received verbal approval over a quick afternoon whisky from the woman herself.

Asked about Spare and Harry’s attacks on his stepmother, the marchioness did not shy away from sharing her, cough, Camilla’s reaction saying: “Of course it bothers her, of course it hurts. But she doesn’t let it get to her. Her philosophy is always, ‘Don’t make a thing of it and it will settle down – least said, soonest mended.’”

Which leaves us here: in the space of only a handful of weeks we have had three insiders, two named and one anonymous source, all people have been given entrée into the House of Windsor’s inner sanctum, each giving the King and Queen’s side of things in the Sussex civil war.

Call it stealthy, call it a guerrilla campaign but can we really call it a coincidence?

Maybe these friends all just wanted to defend their bosom pals, two people who have had quite a rough time of it lately and are now hampered and hamstrung by the imperial muteness that is part and parcel of landing on the throne.

After all, when Spare landed with a thud in January this year, it was not as if Buckingham Palace was ever going to put out a point-by-point rebuttal and Charles was going to turn up on the Palace’s official Instagram account to offer a red-faced, finger-waving pushback against his son.

When Spare landed in January this year, the Palace had to take the high road. Picture: Justin Tallis / AFP

Charles and Camilla have not really had much option but to take the high road and hope that all the reporting about their zip-lipped response would paint them as dignified.

However, based on the Marchioness of Lansdowne and Lord Soames’ comments, the duke’s book really must have left something of an emotional mark on his father and stepmother.

Even people about to be anointed with holy oil in a deeply sacral moment can have their feelings badly hurt and want to go and wallow in the bath for a bit.

If Their Majesties have been using their friends to covertly get the word out about the toll that Harry’s book really had on them, then they would not be alone.

For months now, Tom Sykes in the Daily Beast has had the inside track on how Prince William has been feeling about his brother’s bookish outburst with an unnamed friend or friends of the Prince of Wales sharing his explosive anger and that he feels “utterly betrayed.”

In January, a friend told Sykes: “It’s impossible to exaggerate the extent of [William’s] contempt for Harry and Meghan now. He absolutely hates them” while only last week a friend said: “William will never trust Harry again. How could he? The truth is William absolutely hates Harry now and will never forgive him for the damage he has done to the family.”

The Marchioness of Lansdowne will attend Camilla during the coronation. Picture: Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty Images

Really sensing a theme here.

While we should retain a healthy dose of scepticism about the Queen allegedly calling Meghan “evil”, the other two can be taken as coming straight from the horse-lovers’ mouths. (I would have thought the only things Her late Majesty thought were “evil” were vegetarians and whoever made the decision to change Songs of Praise’s timeslot.)

What is interesting about Charles and Camilla’s friends all of a sudden breaking the lifetime habit of loyal silence is not just what they are doing but what they are saying – and not saying. It is impossible to detect a single solitary note of contrition or suggestion that Charles is actively looking for ways to mend broken bonds or to come to the negotiating table with Harry.

Instead both of these interviews frame the King and Queen as victims, people who have suffered and been left hurt by Harry’s eruptions.

At some point on Friday, Harry will land in the UK for his whistle stop, blink-and-you-might-miss-it coronation trip. One of the biggest unknowns about the events of this weekend is what sort of reception he might be facing from the King – conciliatory or the coldest of cold shoulders?

However, on Saturday, while Harry is left to watch from the sidelines, the Marchioness of Lansdowne will be making history. After that Sunday Times piece came out she was named as one of two ‘Queen’s Companions’ who will attend Camilla during the coronation. Says it all no?

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 Queen’s shocking one-word Meghan Markle insult