Queen Elizabeth II ‘never stopped hoping’ Prince Harry and Meghan Markle would ‘return to fold’, a close source has revealed.
In 2020, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle made the momentous decision to step down as working royals.
At the time, the couple cited media scrutiny and the strictures of their roles as the main reasons for their departure, but more damning reasons have since come to light, with the Duchess insinuating racism played a hand.
The incendiary claim came out of an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2021. It was during this now-infamous interview that Meghan also revealed she had suicidal thoughts and claimed she received no help from the Royal Family.
The couple would go on to delve deeper into the inner workings of royal life in a Netflix series last December, which was swiftly followed by Harry’s tell-all memoir, Spare.
Many observers felt Harry and Meghan should not be entitled to the same privileges when they formally left the Firm. But, in her final days, the Queen was resolute.
The late monarch was determined to keep the Sussexes on side in the face of growing pressure to cut them off.
The Queen did not want to send any signal to her beloved grandson that there would be no path back.
“Her Majesty never stopped hoping there would be some kind of reconciliation and that the couple would return to the fold one day,” a close friend told the Daily Mail.
However, the fallout from Harry’s memoir predated the Queen’s death last September.
In his autobiography, Harry made a host of controversial claims about members of the family, detailing at one point his explosive encounter with Prince William.
The Duke of Sussex claimed his brother physically attacked him over an altercation about Meghan.
Despite flying off the shelves, Harry’s tell-all memoir turned the tide of public opinion against him.
A YouGov poll conducted shortly after the interview aired found 48 percent of the British public said they had a negative view of Harry, compared with 45 percent with a positive view – giving him a -3 net score.
It marked the first time attitudes had been more negative than positive towards him, and was a 15-point drop from March 2 of that same year.
Meghan’s popularity also took a hit after the interview, with only 31 percent of Britons holding a positive opinion of the Duchess of Sussex, while 58 percent of the survey’s 1,664 British respondents viewed her negatively.
The couple’s lot hasn’t improved much since either. They have polled consistently badly on both sides of the Atlantic since the release of the Duke’s bombshell-ridden book in January.
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