Everyone knows there are certain ways you do and do not address royalty — the dos include bowing, curtsying, and saying things like “Your Royal Highness” and the don’ts definitely include getting furious at them, especially when they’ve just become the ruling monarch. If anyone has any leeway on this, however, it’s a prince, but even then it’s a serious breach of royal respect.
And yet many can perhaps understand why Prince Harry got so furious with his own father when he made some offensive comments about Meghan Markle — in the immediate aftermath of the late Queen Elizabeth’s death, no less. It was an emotional time for everyone — especially the now King Charles, who had just lost his mother — but even so, Harry didn’t appreciate the way his dad was treating his wife at a time when the family should’ve been coming together.
Prince Harry didn’t hold back when King Charles made shocking Meghan Markle request after late Queen’s death
One of the many family secrets spilled in Harry’s memoir Spare (re-releasing in paperback form this October) is the heated exchange between himself and his father in the wake of the Queen’s passing in September 2022. Even though the Duke and Duchess of Sussex had already separated from the Royals at this point, having rescinded their Royal duties in January 2020, the couple actually were in the U.K. at the time of her death.
The prince was on a plane traveling from Luton Airport to Aberdeen when the tragic moment happened, so he only found out a little after everyone else once he got his phone reception back. In fact, it was Meghan herself who told him. “When the plane started to descend I saw that my phone lit up,” Harry recalled in his book. “It was a message from Meg: ‘Call me when you get this.’ I looked at the BBC website. My grandmother had died. My father was King.”
With the Queen passing away in Scotland’s Balmoral Castle, Harry was not too far away and so messaged his father to arrange for himself and Meghan to get there so as to pay their respects. Charles’ response shocked and angered Harry, however, as the new king suggested that it would be better if only Harry came to the family’s estate and left Meghan behind. The prince didn’t hold back in his reply. According to Harry himself, he sent back a blistering eight-word message: “Don’t ever speak about my wife that way.”
That was not the first spat between Harry and his dad, and it wouldn’t be the last, but it was likely the first time in his life that Harry had gotten furious with a reigning monarch — the prince was famously close to his grandmother and maintains that she supported him in his controversial decisions, even when his father and brother didn’t. Incidents like this are the reason why, despite all the rumors surrounding the possibility, neither the Sussexes nor the Royals are keen to bury the hatchet just yet.
