Late Queen ‘stepped in to make things easier for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’

When Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex and Prince Harry announced they wanted to step back from their official role as full-time representatives of the crown, the news came as a shock to many royal fans, who had no idea just how much the couple was struggling to manage to live in the spotlight.

Reports have also claimed that the senior royals and staff at Buckingham Palace were equally taken by surprise when the Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced on their website that they wanted to “carve out a progressive new role” for themselves inside the monarchy, eschewing public funds and becoming financially independent.

At the now-infamous Sandringham Summit, which saw the senior royals – and their staff – come together to thrash out what Meghan and Harry’s future would look like outside of their former role, the couple’s proposals were shot down and it was decided that a total break with the institution of the monarchy was necessary. However, despite this breakdown in relations, a royal expert has claimed that because of the huge amount of affection the late Queen Elizabeth had for Meghan and Harry she had previously “stepped in” with strategies to help make life easier for them.

The expert – author and historian Robert Lacey – revealed in the Daily Mail that the Queen had wanted to help find ways to make life easier for the couple, understanding that despite how well they undertook their public engagements, in private they were having some difficulties. “As Head of the Commonwealth and reigning over an ever more multicultural society in Britain, the Queen had especially welcomed the exciting new dimension that a mixed-race recruit brought to the Windsor identity — and as we shall see later in this series, she herself had spotted when things were going wrong, and had helped devise a strategy she firmly hoped would make things easier for the couple,” the expert wrote.

This strategy the royal author claimed, involved the couple’s role – bestowed on them by the Queen – as the President and Vice-President of the Queen’s Commonwealth Trust, and would have seen the couple take some time away from the UK, and the bright spotlight that was upon them here.

“The big idea was to get Harry and Meghan out of the country for a decent spell. It would give everyone a breather,” the author claimed, adding that the Queen in part had been inspired by her own experiences in the early years of her marriage when she and Prince Philip lived in Malta for a spell and she managed for a brief time to enjoy a pretty normal life. Modern South Africa, with its black-majority rule, could be just the spot — and the couple themselves seemed interested by the notion,” the author wrote. “Their relationship had taken flower in Africa after all, so maybe it, or somewhere else in the Commonwealth, might provide their next step. Johannesburg could be their Malta.”