Queen ‘saw through Meghan Markle’ and said she was ‘evil’ at drinks reception
Queen Elizabeth “saw through Meghan Markle”, branding the Duchess of Sussex “evil” during a drinks reception at a dinner the late monarch hosted at Balmoral in August last year, a source close to the family said.
The comments were allegedly made during a drinks reception at a dinner the late monarch hosted at Balmoral in August last year, one month before she died at the age of 96.
The Queen’s alleged remarks came out at a time when Meghan and Prince Harry’s relationship with the Firm had hit an all time low after Meghan has insinuated someone in the Royal Family had subjected her to racism.
Speaking exclusively to The Spectator‘s Kara Kennedy, the source close to the family claimed “everybody’s eyebrows hit the ceiling” when the Queen made the frank remarks about Meghan.
“It was out of character for the Queen to use such a word as ‘evil’ to describe Meghan, but she saw straight through her. It was a startling sentence to hear from the most forgiving woman on earth”.
“At the drinks before the dinner, a small group were talking to the monarch and she explained that Harry meeting Meghan had become a complete catastrophe and described her as evil.”
The source added: “By this point we all knew the Queen’s health was in decline and she had months left, she seemed regretful about how things had panned out.”
A royal rift had opened up between the Sussexes and the family after Harry and Meghan stepped down from royal duties to pursue a series of media opportunities in the US.
The most infamous incident came in 2021, when the Royal Family found themselves at the heart of a race row after Meghan insinuated she had been subject to racism during an interview with Oprah Winfrey.
Asked by Oprah whether she believed the Royal Family allegedly hadn’t wanted their son Archie to be a prince “because of his race”, Meghan replied: “But I can give you an honest answer.
“In those months when I was pregnant … we have in tandem the conversation of, ‘He won’t be given security. He’s not going to be given a title’, and also concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he’s born.”
Telling a dismayed Oprah that “there were several conversations about it”, the Duchess said that she would not reveal who had made the remarks, on the grounds that: “I think that would be very damaging to them”.
Pressed further, she added: “That was relayed to me from Harry. Those were conversations that family had with him … It was really hard to be able to see those as compartmentalised conversations.”
Asked by Oprah whether the question about Archie’s skin colour was allegedly raised “because they were concerned that if he were too brown, that that would be a problem”,
Meghan said: “I wasn’t able to follow up with why, but that – if that’s the assumption you’re making, I think that feels like a pretty safe one, which was really hard to understand.”
Harry later qualified Meghan’s remarks in an interview with journalist Tom Bradby in January.
Pressed on his wife’s remarks to Oprah in March 2021, the duke said: “Yeah, there were concerns about his skin colour.”
Asked whether he would not describe that as “essentially racist”, Harry said: “I wouldn’t. Not having lived within that family.”
However, the damage appeared to be done. Following the explosive Oprah interview, Harry and Meghan’s popularity in the UK nosedived.
