Another week, another royal biography. Another round of “sources” crawling out of the woodwork to tell us, with certainty, exactly what the late Queen Elizabeth II really thought about Meghan Sussex. And another opportunity for the British press to recycle the same tired narratives while conveniently ignoring the elephant, or rather, the former Prince, still very much in the room.

The latest entry in the “We Hate Meghan” industrial complex comes courtesy of Hugo Vickers. This is a man who met the Queen forty times and has now condensed those encounters into a 400-page book designed to do exactly what royal biographies do best. That is to generate headlines, sell copies, and remind everyone that the Sussexes remain the monarchy’s favorite punching bag, even six years after they left the country and stopped taking taxpayer money.

In extracts serialized by the Daily Mail, because, of course, Vickers makes a series of explosive claims. The distress Harry and Meghan caused the Queen in her final years “cannot be overestimated,” he writes. They were demanding as they broke protocol. Meghan allegedly refused to consult the Queen about her wedding veil. Prince Philip called her “the American.” Prince William warned Prince Harry to take more time. The christening was handled badly. The Oprah interview was “sickening.” The naming of Lilibet was “insensitive to say the least.”

It’s a greatest hits album of Sussex criticism, packaged as revelation, wrapped in the authority of a man who once had tea with the monarch. But here’s the thing about dead people: they can’t defend themselves. And here’s the thing about royal biographers: they have a nasty habit of making the dead say whatever sells.

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So Was Meghan Welcomed With Open Arms?

Pausing for a moment and actually reading what the Queen herself said, not what Hugo Vickers claims she said to unnamed confidantes, but the words that came out of Buckingham Palace under her authority.

On January 18, 2020, after months of negotiations following Harry and Meghan’s decision to step back as senior royals, the Queen issued a statement:

“Harry, Meghan and Archie will always be much loved members of my family. I recognise the challenges they have experienced as a result of intense scrutiny over the last two years and support their wish for a more independent life. I want to thank them for all their dedicated work across this country, the Commonwealth and beyond, and am particularly proud of how Meghan has so quickly become one of the family.”

Statement from Her Majesty The Queen

Those are the Queen’s own words. Now, either Elizabeth II was a woman of her word, a constitutional monarch who understood the weight of her statements, or, according to Vickers and his ilk, she was a two-faced liar who spent her final years privately despising the woman she’d publicly praised while smiling for the cameras.

Which is it? Because the pattern here is unmistakable. Every time a new royal book drops, we’re told that behind closed doors, the Queen was actually furious about the veil, actually upset about the dress being too white, actually hurt by the christening, actually seething about the name Lilibet. And each time, people point to the Queen’s own words, warm, generous, supportive, so one has to ask a very simple question:

Are you calling the Queen a liar?

Because if she was saying one thing publicly and doing another privately, trashing her granddaughter-in-law to servants and biographers while smiling in photographs, that doesn’t make Meghan the problem. That makes Elizabeth something far less flattering than the sainted grandmother the British press wants us to remember.

The Distraction Machine

But here’s where the narrative becomes not just hypocritical, but actively obscene. In Vickers’ book, and in the Daily Mail’s gleeful promotion of it, we’re told that the Sussexes’ behavior caused the Queen “distress” that “cannot be overestimated.” We’re told that the Royal Family was more concerned about “what was going on in the Sussex Household” than about Prince Andrew, “whose own troubles were mounting.”

“The Royal Family became concerned about what was going on in the Sussex Household – more so than about Prince Andrew, whose own troubles were mounting…Despite his car-crash interview on Newsnight, and other apparent revelations, the Queen did not believe he had behaved improperly. It is fortunate that she did not live to witness the dénouement…On top of that, with no admission of liability, a considerable sum of money was donated to Virginia Giuffre – with whom Andrew had allegedly had sex when she was 17 – and her charities. This was done so as not to overshadow the Jubilee.”

— Hugo Vickers, in excerpts from his book “Elizabeth II” serialized by the Daily Mail

That same Andrew, who maintained a decades-long friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, a convicted sex offender. He was a regular passenger on Epstein’s private jet, the so-called “Lolita Express”, and made multiple visits to Epstein’s private island. Then came the car-crash BBC interview, during which Andrew sweated through a suit while trying to explain why he had stayed at a sex offender’s mansion. By January 2022, the situation had become so dire that a settlement was reached with Virginia Giuffre, a woman who alleges Epstein trafficked her to Andrew when she was just 17. The price tag? Reportedly £12 million.

She made no admission of liability, of course. She simply paid a very large sum of money to make the problem go away before the Platinum Jubilee. The Queen, by all accounts, felt “furious” about the toe-sucking photos of Sarah Ferguson in 1992. She felt “hurt” about the Oprah interview in 2021. But how did she feel about her son facing accusations of raping a teenager whom a convicted paedophile had trafficked? Apparently, according to Vickers, the answer is: she felt less distressed about that than she did about a wedding veil.

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The Lilibet Question

Perhaps the most telling moment in Vickers’ book is his discussion of the naming of Lilibet. “To use the intimate family nickname for the Queen, used only by close members of the family, was insensitive to say the least,” he writes. Lilibet was the Queen’s childhood nickname, coined because she couldn’t pronounce “Elizabeth”. Which then became a private name used only by her father, King George VI, and her husband, Prince Philip. But here’s what Vickers doesn’t mention: when Harry and Meghan named their daughter Lilibet Diana in 2021, they reportedly asked the Queen for permission, and she gave it.

According to multiple sources, the Queen was “supportive” and “delighted.” Within hours of the name being revealed, however, the royal biographer machine swung into action to contradict that narrative. Appearing on Good Morning Britain after the announcement, Angela Levin declared: “I think it’s quite rude to Her Majesty the Queen. Using her private nickname is quite demeaning.”

So which is it? Was the Queen supportive and delighted, as reported at the time? Or was she privately seething, as biographers now claim? Or did the “We Hate Meghan” Industrial complex find the name rude, as it scrapped any notion that there was a rift between the Sussexes and the Queen?

The biographers ask us to believe that a woman famous for her discretion blessed the name to Harry’s face while she nursed a grievance for the rest of her life. Perhaps the biographers are simply telling us what they want us to hear.

The Real Distress

Here’s the thing about Queen Elizabeth II: she was a complicated woman presiding over a complicated family. She almost certainly had moments of frustration with the Sussexes. She almost certainly wished things had gone differently, as their departure was a rupture she would have preferred to avoid.

But to suggest they were the primary source of her distress, to claim, as Hugo Vickers does, that the Royal Family was more concerned about “what was going on in the Sussex Household” than about Prince Andrew, is morally grotesque.

Because here’s what we know for certain: in the last years of her life, the Queen paid £12 million to a woman who accused her son of rape. She watched that son give a car-crash interview widely condemned as a PR disaster. She saw his charitable associations dissolve, his military titles stripped, his reputation reduced to a punchline. And through it all, she continued to support him, privately, financially, in ways that suggest she was far more distressed about his fate than about anything Harry and Meghan ever did.

If anything distressed the Queen in her final years, this likely did: a beloved son had become a national embarrassment and royal liability. Further evidence of this distress emerges constantly, as the public repeatedly asks several of the taxpayer-funded royals what they knew about Andrew and Epstein. No amount of money or Palace spin could fix that. But that truth does not sell books. It does not generate headlines. It does not give the Daily Mail another opportunity to run 47 stories about a wedding veil.

So instead, we get Vickers. We get Bower. We get a steady stream of “revelations” about a woman who left the country six years ago, takes no taxpayer money, and has built a life far removed from the Palace gossip mill that still can’t stop talking about her.

And every time one of these books drops, we’re supposed to act surprised. But the Queen’s own words are still there: “I am particularly proud of how Meghan has so quickly become one of the family.” Perhaps the real story isn’t that Meghan caused the Queen distress. Perhaps this is the truth: a group of biographers and tabloid journalists have spent six years trying to convince us that a woman who publicly praised her granddaughter-in-law actually privately loathed her, and they expect us to believe them instead of her. If that is the case, then the Queen caused Meghan distress, too, by allowing this narrative to flourish, by never contradicting it. That distress we cannot overestimate either.

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