There was more to Meghan Markle and Prince Harry’s fight with Queen Elizabeth II over Markle’s wedding tiara, according to royal biographer Robert Hardman.
In his upcoming book, “Elizabeth II: In Private. In Public. The Inside Story” (out May 16), Hardman offers more clarity into the couple’s conflict with the late monarch before they tied the knot at Windsor Castle in May 2018.
Elizabeth, as Hardman explains, invited Markle to Buckingham Palace to select a piece from her own tiara collection to wear at the nuptials, which was tradition between the queen and royal brides, according to the Daily Mail’s excerpt of the book.
But Elizabeth and Markle didn’t get “bonding” time because Harry allegedly showed up with his then-fiancée.
Hardman says that while Harry wrote in his 2023 memoir, “Spare,” that he was invited to the tiara selection, insiders told Hardman otherwise.
In “Spare,” Harry said Markle picked Queen Mary’s Diamond Bandeau, but when they asked the queen’s royal dresser, Angela Kelly, if Markle could try the tiara on before the wedding, Kelly went silent.
When they finally got in touch with her, she said that the tiara could not leave the palace without “an ordinance and police escort,” Harry wrote.
“That seemed to us a little exaggerated,” he said. “It was obvious they were putting up obstacles, but why? It didn’t occur to us what motives they might have.”
The Duke of Sussex also said he considered calling his grandmother, but he wasn’t sure who she’d “side” with.
According to Hardman, insiders claimed that Elizabeth found out about the drama and sided with Kelly, because she was allegedly upset that Harry was calling Buckingham Palace demanding the tiara for Markle immediately.
“It’s not a toy,” Elizabeth said at the time, per Hardman’s book.
Insiders further detailed how Harry allegedly acted when he was trying to get the tiara for his now-wife.
“Harry had been on to everyone about this. We thought Angela was like the fairy godmother who had delivered,” a source told Hardman.
“But when she called Kensington Palace, she was put through to Prince Harry who just said, ‘Get it here now.’ And that was the end of the conversation.”
In “Spare,” Harry claimed that Kelly asked him to sign a release for the tiara. After he did so, he told her, “It would’ve made our lives so much easier to have had it sooner,” which sparked a fight between the two of them.
A staffer told Hardman that during the fight, Harry allegedly told Kelly he “did not like her whining to his grandmother.”
But Kelly “gave it straight back” to the prince, Hardman writes, adding that the royal dresser told off Harry for “getting all these people to push her when she was just doing her job.”
“All Angela did was to try to protect them,” a former colleague told Hardman.
Page Six has reached out to Harry and Markle’s reps for comment.
For her royal wedding, Markle, 44, ultimately wore Queen Mary’s Diamond Bandeau, centerpiece of which is a 10-diamond brooch that Mary of Teck received as a wedding gift from the County of Lincoln in 1893.
The “Suits” alum and Harry, 41, got married in front of around 600 guests at St. George’s Chapel.
Elizabeth died over four years after the wedding at age 96.
