Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s royal wedding appeared to the world as a fairy-tale happy ending for the couple. However, according to the resurfaced claims from one of the late Queen Elizabeth II’s closest confidantes, the months leading up to the ceremony were marked by tension, hurt feelings, and growing concern behind palace walls. The revelations paint a picture of mounting strain during the run-up to Harry and Meghan’s nuptials eight years ago.According to royal biographer Sally Bedell Smith, Lady Elizabeth Anson, a cousin and trusted confidante of the queen, shared recollections that suggest significant friction between the grandson and grandmother during wedding preparations. Anson, who passed away at 79 in 2020, provides Smith with detailed accounts of disagreements and miscommunications that upset the monarch. Smith reports these recollections in her Royals Extra Substack column in June 2025, which is excerpted in The Times of London.
Prince Harry and Queen Elizabeth II’s tense exchange
Lady Elizabeth Anson recounts to Smith that Harry had become involved in a tense 10-minute exchange with his grandmother over wedding arrangements. “Harry has blown his relationship with his grandmother,” Anson tells Smith. “She said she was really upset. I was shocked when the queen told me this, how she was so saddened. I had no idea about the conversation, that he was rude to her for 10 minutes.”
