From a grandfather’s perspective. Prince Philip allegedly did not sympathize with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle before they relinquished their roles within the royal family. In fact, he did not recognize the issues with their lives in the U.K.
“He can’t understand what was so awful about being a member of the royal family,” Ingrid Seward, author of Prince Philip Revealed: A Man of His Century, exclusively told Us Weekly on Monday, October 26. “They had a beautiful house. They had a huge influence, and Harry was really enjoying helping the military. And Meghan had got the beginnings of a place for herself in the Commonwealth and then they had a beautiful child [Archie]. So, beautiful house, beautiful child, looked after — what was so awful about that?”
Philip, 99, failed to grasp his grandson’s reasoning for stepping back. “I don’t think Philip can understand what he calls Harry’s dereliction of duty. All Harry could say [was], ‘I didn’t want to be a prince,’” she explained, noting that the Duke of Edinburgh was “hands off” when it came to the couple’s decision. She claimed: “He just couldn’t fathom it and can’t fathom it.”
Harry, 36, and Meghan, 39, announced in January that they would no longer be senior members of the royal family. They completed their official duties in March and relocated to her native California. The move occurred after tension between the pair and other members of the family, including Prince William.
However, Philip had no problem with the former actress when she wed the Duke of Sussex in May 2018, though the in-laws were not exactly close. “He was very welcoming to Meghan because of course she was a newcomer and a very different newcomer, but of course at the time of Meghan and Harry’s romance, he wasn’t around nearly as much because he’d retired,” Seward told Us. “So he didn’t see very much of Meghan at all. So he didn’t really have a chance to form a relationship with her.”
Still, Philip was excited to attend the nuptials, despite undergoing hip surgery one month earlier. “He was determined that he was going to go to the wedding because he literally just had a hip operation six weeks before, which is a really good example of him being absolutely determined that whatever happened, he was gonna walk down that aisle at the wedding and take his seat and he was not gonna have a [cane] and he was not going to have a wheelchair,” the writer recalled. “But he didn’t go to the reception after that whole marriage ceremony and the long sermon and everything else was pretty uncomfortable but he’d never let it show.”
When Harry and Meghan’s marriage began, Philip was optimistic. “I would say that he had very high hopes for Meghan,” Seward claimed. “And then I think he would have been very, very disappointed at how it panned out.”
Prince Philip Revealed is available in bookstores now.
With reporting by Christina Garibaldi