The late Queen feared she was being recorded secretly by Harry and Meghan for Netflix, her biographer has claimed.
Hugo Vickers, who met Elizabeth II on more than 40 occasions, has written a biography in which he claims the monarch would ask her lady-in-waiting to stay with her during calls with her grandson.
The author of Queen Elizabeth II: A Personal History says: “The distress the Sussexes caused the Queen in the last years of her life cannot be overestimated.”
Now, in an interview with the Daily T, Mr Vickers has claimed the Queen, who died in 2022 aged 96, worried about having face-to-face conversations with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex for fear of the discussions being leaked.
Her grandson and his wife stepped down as working members of the Royal family in 2020. They gave a revealing interview to Oprah Winfrey and recorded a six-part docuseries for Netflix, in which they discussed the intimate details of “Megxit”. The Duke released an autobiography, Spare, in 2023.
Mr Vickers said: “Trust had been broken, basically. So I think, as far as having somebody in the room, it was … to stop them taking photographs or being wired or God knows what.”
Asked if he believed the late Queen feared they were wearing secret microphones, potentially to record footage for Netflix, he added: “Yes, wired for recording. It’s always a possibility. I’m not saying it happened.”
Hugo Vickers’s new book is based on meetings with Elizabeth II and conversations with staff and other sources
The Sussexes have been accused of leaking information from private meetings with royal relatives in the past, which they have denied.
In his biography of Elizabeth II, which chronicles her 75-year reign, Mr Vickers reveals what the late Queen thought about Harry and Meghan. He claims she told a confidante after the Duke decided to leave the Royal family: “And now Harry has opted out, and for what? To be a carer for Archie.”
He says some royals were “sickened” by the timing of the broadcast of the Oprah interview, six days after Prince Philip had a heart operation at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, London.
The Duke of Edinburgh apparently referred to Meghan as “the American” while staff at the Sandringham Estate in Norfolk nicknamed her “Sparkle”, rhyming with Markle, her maiden name.
Mr Vickers claims King Charles and Prince William expressed their doubts about Meghan, claiming Harry’s father “took the line that Lord Mountbatten had taken with him before he started courting Diana: have fun, but don’t marry her”.
The author claims the late Queen suggested Harry should wait a year before marrying the actress. When they married at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, in 2018, Mr Vickers claims “someone close to the monarch told me her attitude … was: ‘You get on with it. It’s nothing to do with me.’”.
According to the author, the late Queen did not like Meghan’s wedding dress, designed by Clare Waight Keller, believing it to be “too white with ungainly shoulders”.
When the newlyweds moved into Frogmore Cottage on the Windsor Great Park estate, the late Queen reportedly took Meghan to task over allegedly being rude to the gardeners there.
Mr Vickers claims: “When one of the head gardeners mentioned this to the Queen, she got in her car and drove over and ticked off Meghan for being rude to the staff.”
He adds that the Duke and Duchess’s decision to name their daughter Lilibet also went down badly, writing: “To use the intimate family nickname for the Queen, used only by close members of the family, was insensitive to say the least.”