The Queen’s secret plan for Harry and Meghan to live in Africa
. . . andfind happiness just as she had as a newlywed in Malta
particular, what a mistake it had been to get rid of Sir Christopher Geidt — the Queen herself. She’s a realist, Her Maj.
Elizabeth II does not often put a foot wrong, but when she does she is ready to admit it.
Young kept his COO job. But the Queen lost no time in bringing Geidt back. Early in 2019, just 18 months after his hustled departure, it was announced that Elizabeth II had invited her former private secretary to return to her side as her Permanent Lord-in-Waiting.
It also gave Geidt a special position in connection with Meghan, whom Elizabeth II had recently invited to team up with Harry as vice-president of the Queen’s Commonwealth Trust.
The Queen had already made Harry the president, with Geidt the chairman of trustees — the trust existing to champion ‘young leaders around the world who are driving positive social change’.
The idea was for Meghan to do special work ‘supporting women and girls’.
This was all part of a new strategy to integrate the young Duchess more fully into royal life — ‘Lord Geidt will be Her Majesty’s eyes and ears,’ explained a courtier.
Geidt and the Queen sat down to frame a plan with Sir David Manning, a respected and well liked former diplomat — ambassador to the United States from 2003-7 and since 2009 a part-time adviser to the joint household of William and Harry.
The big idea was to get Harry and Meghan out of the country for a decent spell. It would give everyone a breather.
The Queen wanted to offer both honour and responsibility to the couple by handing them some role in her beloved British Commonwealth of Nations — a highly personal token of trust. AND
by handing the recently ennobled Duke and Duchess a semiregal role visiting and being honoured ceremonially around the Commonwealth, the plan also surely offered the best route yet devised to give a British ‘spare’ self- sufficient status that truly matched, but did not threaten, that of the heir.
The Queen added a personal touch. She had heard and read much of Harry and Meghan’s wish to live an ‘ordinary’ existence. Well, she could recall such a period in her own life — her ‘Malta Moments’ between 1949 and 1951, when Philip was serving as a naval officer on the Mediterranean island and she would fly out to stay with him.
In Malta, Elizabeth had tasted ‘normal’ life as a young naval officer’s wife, not a king’s daughter. It had set her up well to come back home and do her duty.
Modern South Africa, with its black-majority rule, could be just the spot — and the couple themselves seemed interested by the notion.
Their relationship had taken flower in Africa after all, so maybe it, or somewhere else in the Commonwealth, might provide their next step. Johannesburg could be their Malta.
Who knows what a different turn events might have taken had Geidt rather than Sir Edward Young been involved in the negotiations at Sandringham earlier this year?
‘ The tragedy,’ says a palace insider, ‘was that the Queen’s broader objective was actually to bring everyone back together, not to split them apart.
There were obviously points of principle to defend, but Edward got stuck in the detail. He could not see the bigger picture.
‘This sort of family negotiation requires trust, along with the accepting of uncertainties and ambiguities. There can be no absolute guarantees for either side.
Christopher Geidt would have handled it so differently — he had the skills. Geidt might even have landed that classic royal compromise in which nobody loses.’
ExtractEd from Battle Of Brothers: William, Harry and the Inside Story Of a Family In tumult by robert Lacey, to be published by William collins on October 15 at £20. © 2020 robert Lacey. to order a copy for £14 (a 30 per cent discount) go to mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3308 9193. Free UK delivery on orders over £15. Promotional price valid until 17/10/2020.
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