Queen Elizabeth 'Ached' Over Prince Harry's Decision to Marry Meghan Markle, Hugo Vickers Claims

A new royal claim centred on Queen Elizabeth and Meghan Markle emerged in the US on 27 March, when OK! Magazine reported that biographer Hugo Vickers says the late monarch was deeply troubled by Prince Harry's decision to marry Meghan and by the couple's conduct in her final years.

Vickers presents the 2018 marriage of Harry and Meghan not as a passing family upset but as part of a heavier private burden carried by the monarch before her death in September 2022. The account is based on Vickers' interpretation of her inner life rather than newly released palace records, asking readers to weigh his access and judgement rather than treat every claim as settled fact.

Queen Elizabeth and Meghan Markle in Vickers' Account

Vickers writes that Queen Elizabeth 'had much on her mind' in her last years, with trouble involving Prince Harry, the then Prince Andrew and what he describes as an increasingly maverick Boris Johnson all pressing in at once. He goes beyond broad palace unease, claiming that whenever Harry phoned his grandmother, she asked her lady-in-waiting to remain with her and that 'the distress the Sussexes caused the queen in the last years of her life cannot be overestimated.'

That statement gives the report its force. It also relies most heavily on Vickers' authority and access, which the magazine notes comes from meeting the queen more than 40 times over the past 55 years. In royal publishing, proximity is often treated as proof, though it is not that simple, which helps explain why such claims spread quickly.

Meghan's arrival into royal life is presented as central to that shift. Vickers reportedly viewed her introduction to the family, after she began dating Harry in mid-2016, as a pivotal moment for the queen. He writes that the monarch advised Harry to wait a year before marrying, but he did not, and the wedding took place just over six months after the engagement.

Queen Elizabeth, Meghan Markle and Harry's Own Account

The chronology is familiar, but it remains significant. Harry and Meghan announced their engagement in November 2017 and married in May 2018 at St. George's Chapel in Windsor Castle, with celebrity guests and senior royals in attendance. Meghan, known to many viewers from Suits, was 44 in the article, while Harry was listed as 41.

OK! Magazine then folds in Harry's own version from his 2023 memoir Spare, which gives the story a slightly different texture. There, the friction is not open disapproval so much as the clipped, dry ambiguity that often follows Harry around when he writes about family. He recalled approaching the Queen in a field while she was with her hunting dogs and telling her he wanted to ask Meghan to marry him.

Harry wrote that the queen first responded with, 'You have to?' after he explained that palace staff had told him permission was required. He then quoted her answer as, 'Well, then, I suppose I have to say yes.' It is a striking detail because it can be read two ways at once, either as dutiful consent or as reluctant resignation, and the OK! piece leans toward the latter by placing it beside Vickers' broader claim of anguish.

Vickers says the queen suffered. Harry's memoir records a coolly phrased blessing. Somewhere between those two versions sits the private reality of a monarch who, if this account is right, found the final chapter of family life far less serene than the public pageantry ever suggested.