Prince Harry’s CRUCIAL advice to Meghan Markle just moments before she met the Queen for the very first time (And how his wife-to-be regarded Prince Andrew as a servant!)
- Before their first meeting, Meghan said ‘Fun! i love grannies’
- Fergie was there too – and gave exactly the same advice
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It was, as Prince Harry himself put it, one of the most consequential moments of his life: the day future wife Meghan Markle met the late Queen, his grandmother.
Not that Meghan seemed deterred, responding to news of the encounter with the words ‘Fun! I love grannies.’
Of course, there will be just that little bit more than that, as the prince explains in his magnum opus, Spare.
And there was one pitfall in particular that he urged Meghan to avoid.
Meghan met Queen Elizabeth for the first time in October 2016. They are pictured here together in June 2018 in Widnes, the month after Meghan’s marriage to Prince Harry
The meeting took place at Royal Lodge, Prince Andrew’s home in Windsor Great Park
Meghan Markle spotted running up to the Queen at Sandringham on Christmas Day 2017
According to Harry, the meeting took place in October 2016, not long after their budding relationship became public.
The prince and Meghan had planned to visit Sarah Ferguson, Duchess of York, at Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park – the home she still shares with ex-husband Prince Andrew – but were surprised to learn his grandmother would also be there . visited on the way back from church.
When they arrived, Harry writes, Sarah Ferguson demonstrated how to do a short while before Meghan met the Queen.
Harry explained that she should be addressed as ‘Your Majesty’ on the first exchange, then ‘Madam’ to rhyme with ‘ham’ afterwards.
But what really mattered was, as the prince and Sarah simultaneously told her: ‘Just whatever you do, don’t talk about her’ – a sensibility rarely discussed, perhaps, but one that is important enough to be at the forefront of her grandson’s thoughts.
Needless to say, Meghan didn’t talk about the Queen and, according to Harry, shied away beautifully – something she demonstrated on their Netflix documentary.
‘Everyone complimented Meg on her short head. So good!’ Harry writes in Spare. ‘So deep!’
Duke and Duchess of Sussex sit with Prince Andrew during the Commonwealth Day service. She initially thought that Prince Andrew was the Queen’s assistant
When it came to an end, there was one more memorable aspect of the 20-minute encounter, as he explains:
“After a moment, Meg asked me something about the Queen’s assistant.
“That man holding the wallet. The man who walked her to the door.’
‘It wasn’t her assistant. It was her second son, Andrew.
‘She certainly didn’t google us,’ he writes – an apparent reference to claims that his wife-to-be did extensive research on the royal family before meeting the Prince (a claim she denies).