Royals ‘hopping mad’ over the Sussex walkout
William ‘so furious with Harry he wouldn’t meet him before summit’
AN explosive new biography today lays bare the depth of the Royal Family’s anger and frustration at Harry and Meghan’s decision to quit.
Written by respected royal biographer Robert Lacey, Battle of Brothers forensically charts the catastrophic breakdown of Prince William’s once rock- solid relationship with Harry – and reveals how the acrimonious fallout has infiltrated every aspect of royal life.
The book, which is serialised from today in the Daily Mail, claims the future king was so infuriated by Harry’s behaviour that when the Queen called them together for January’s ‘ Sandringham Summit’, he refused to have lunch with his brother beforehand. Instead, Harry dined with their grandmother alone.
Even the elderly monarch, who has always had a soft spot for her wayward grandson, felt Harry and Meghan were ‘erratic and impulsive’ in their behaviour, leading her to strip them of their Sussex Royal moniker, Mr Lacey says. The book also alleges: The Royal Family were ‘hopping mad’ over Harry and Meghan’s trademarking of Sussex Royal products and services, which was regarded as the ‘commercialising of the crown’.
The Queen, Prince Charles and Prince William were not consulted over the multiple legal acti ons against t he media announced by Harry and Meghan on their Africa tour a year ago, which they believe have affected the image of the monarchy.
A ‘powerful constituency’ inside Buckingham Palace, headed by the Queen’s right-hand man, her private secretary Sir Edward Young, believed Meghan’s interview with ITV’s Tom Bradby during their tour of Africa last year – in which she bemoaned her life – showed a ‘bizarre tone- deafness’ and was ‘miserably self-indulgent’.
Harry saw a charming official picture of his nephew Prince George with William, Charles and the Queen, released by Buckingham Palace in early 2020, as a signal from his brother and the rest of the family about his place in the order of succession.
Dealing with Harry and Meghan over ‘Megxit’ was like negotiating with ‘a hard-nosed Hollywood lawyer’, according to one senior palace source. ‘ The Sussexes wanted guarantees on every single point as if it were a contractual negotiation,’ they said.
Mr Lacey has previously written well-received biographies of the Queen, Sir Walter Raleigh and modelling entrepreneur Eileen Ford. He is also known for consulting on Netflix’s hit royal series The Crown.
His new book – for which he spent months speaking to royal insiders, he says – will be seen as an antidote to Finding Freedom, the detailed but ultimately slavishly flattering biography of Harry and Meghan that was published earlier this summer.
Battle of Brothers promises to lay bare the events of the Sandringham Summit, as well as revealing the truth of the relationship between Harry and William from the cradle to Megxit.
No one is spared from his critical eye and even Buckingham Palace comes under scrutiny for mishandling the crisis, not to mention misjudging a self-pitying and oversensitive Harry and Meghan.
Mr Lacey maintains that the illfeeling between all of the parties involved became so bad that the Queen deliberately chose not to include a picture of Harry and Meghan with their son Archie, her eighth great-grandchild, on the table during her Christmas broadcast last December as a slapdown to her grandson.
‘There were some matters on which Elizabeth II would not compromise – and chief among them was the authority of the crown,’ he writes.
‘The Sussex family had been “non-personed” as effectively as the Soviets non-personed Trotsky and Khrushchev – another charming custom, of course, that had been developed by the Kremlin.’