Harry and Meghan Documentary: Harry’s comments on the Queen are heavily criticized by Palace insiders

Minister, Greenshields has been invited to spend Her Majesty’s last weekend at Balmoral.

“Her memory was absolutely amazing and she was very funny,” Kirk said. once immediately after her departure in September.

The couple talked about (what else?) horses, and she “called them 40 years old”, the war in Ukraine and the church (“she was aware of everything that was happening”). Overall, according to Greenshields, “she was in remarkably good shape.”

Now that’s sweet and all, but the reason the Reverend’s impression of Her Majesty – unequivocally compos mentis – matters is because Prince Harry and something he told the Netflix cameras about his grandmother; what courtiers now reportedly called “outrageous” and “another manipulation of the narrative”.

Ever since the second batch of episodes of the Netflix series about him and his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex aired last week, the buzz has been relentlessly focused on the Duke’s revelations about his next of kin. His father is King Charles[said] things that just weren’t true”, while his brother Prince William “screamed and yelled” at him, “horrifying” him and informing the media against the Sussexes.

Generally speaking, it’s all pretty bloody stuff, the brutal inner workings of the regal sausage industry revealed by one of their own.

But the question is, while the world was focused on screaming brothers and royal houses seeping into the press like a two-dollar sieve, did Harry deal the late queen some kind of unfair blow without anyone noticing?

In episode five, we get to the events of the Sandringham Summit in January 2020, a meeting where Charles, William, Harry and Her Majesty have gathered on a chilly Norfolk day to discuss the details of Megzit.

AT Harry and Meganhe says of the meeting, “It was terrible when my brother was yelling and yelling at me, and my dad was saying things that just weren’t true, and my grandma, you know, was sitting there quietly and sort of taking it in. all in.”

It’s a breathtaking sight to see the then 93-year-old queen watching this tense and emotional-sounding scene as if from the sidelines.

However, this image of the monarch, according to onceRoyal editor Roya Nikha “doesn’t match anyone else’s experience of a queen who was ‘sharp as nails’ and in charge until the day she died.”

“This is outrageous,” said Nikkha the courtier. “Harry never wanted to admit to himself that it was the queen who said, ‘No, you’re gone.’ He couldn’t understand that he wasn’t a sassy guy who was going to talk his grandmother into getting what he wanted.”

Another courtier said: “Advisors made recommendations to Her Majesty, but only one person made the decisions.

One of those courtiers, addressing once, put forward something like a theory: “To face the truth, to realize that your relationship is damaged, and to know that it was his commander in chief who decided that he could not tolerate the role that he wanted, is probably too painful for him.”

Valentine Lowe in his recent Courtiers: the hidden power behind the crown, offers a very similar account of events during the crucial summit, saying that “the compromise was dropped from discussion, taken down by the queen” and that “the final decision was made by the queen”.

This is not the first time the duke has created a similar portrait of the late queen. In April of this year, he and Meghan made a lightning-fast stop in Windsor on their way to the Netherlands, where they met up with his grandmother.

A few days later, Harry did what any loving grandson does and then sat down with an American TV host over breakfast to partly answer questions about this private family moment.

The Duke told host Hoda Kotb that he had a “really special relationship” with Her Majesty, saying, “We’re talking about things she can’t talk about with anyone else.”

However, the joke came when he said that the couple visited her to “make sure she was protected and had the right people by her side.”

Again, here we have the same image of Her Majesty, not as Head of State and Head of the Armed Forces, the woman who spoke to the British Prime Minister weekly and attended last year’s G7 meeting, but as an infirm old woman. needs “protection” from the wrong people.

Who were these sinister figures? Harry never spoke.

It’s easy to see why a weakened and vulnerable version of Queen Elizabeth might appeal to Harry.

As a courtier told the Times: “The narrative has shifted from Prince Harry to the Queen. It was always “my commander in chief, boss.”

But when he didn’t get the support he wanted from her, she was depicted as a miniature figure sitting in a corner. It’s another manipulation of the narrative to suit the outcome that Harry felt.”

For years, even when the Sussexes pelted the royal house with grenades, they always tried to shield the queen from criticism by separating her, but this is an illogical distinction.

In recent years, there has never been any indication that in the midst of the turbulence not only of Megzit, but of Prince Andrew’s mass car crash, that the ninety-year-old man was anything but a firm leader.

When Andrew was formally defenestrated once and for all in January of this year – his honorary military titles and roles were revoked, his Royal Highness mothballed – the queen was “quick and ruthless,” according to the Times. While Charles and William were “consulted” about the move, “the final decision…was hers” reportedly.

“Never think she’s just churning out stuff,” one courtier told a London newspaper at the time.

On some level, it’s hard to match these adorable photos of her, the little old lady in light green or sweet-talking marmalade sandwiches, with Paddington Bear, but in the end, the Queen had an unenviable job.

Her responsibility as the 41st monarch since Harold Godwin managed to cede part of what is now England to William of Normandy was to ensure the monarchy’s survival, no matter how she might feel as a mother. and grandmother.

And, as Nikkha, the Lowly and the Most Reverend, explain, although her physical health may have faltered, mentally she was in perfect order.

A few weeks later, Harry’s autobiography, Sparewill hit shelves and include “more rousing than those made in the Netflix series,” according to the Times, while it was reported elsewhere that he would also be interviewed by the American 60 minutes‘Anderson Cooper.

You know what they say – with such a family …

Daniela Elser is a writer and royal commentator with over 15 years of experience working with a range of leading Australian media outlets.