When Meghan Markle and Prince Harry announced their engagement in 2017, the couple began walking an official path that included a number of public highs and lows.
Within two years of the couple’s royal wedding, they had formally split from the monarchy, with relationships with members of the royal family so broken down that Buckingham Palace issued a rare statement after Harry and Meghan gave an interview discussing them, telling the world that “recollections may vary.”
Though their relationships with members of the senior royal family such as King Charles III, Queen Camilla and the Prince and Princess of Wales may remain strained, one family member Harry and Meghan never apparently had any issue with was the late Queen Elizabeth II.
As Harry’s grandmother and the monarch, the queen played an important role in the life of her grandson and reportedly remained in contact with him and Meghan despite the family tensions that endured after their move to California.
Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images
Meghan has rarely spoken about her relationship with the queen, though what she has said reveals the same respect for the global leader and matriarch that her husband had.
Here, Newsweek looks at everything Meghan Markle has said on the record about Queen Elizabeth II.
‘She’s an Incredible Woman’
Meghan was first asked about her relationship with Queen Elizabeth during a joint interview with Prince Harry at the time their engagement was announced in 2017.
The couple met in the summer of 2016 and their short romance had resulted in global press coverage, which didn’t come without controversy.
During the interview, Meghan was asked about her introduction to the queen, who she described as an “incredible woman.”
“When I met her I had such a deep understanding and of course incredible respect for being able to have that time with her,” she said.
For her wedding day in May 2018, the queen showed her affection for Meghan by loaning her the use of one of her personal tiaras.
Engagement Interview, BBC, November 27, 2017
“It’s incredible, I think, you know, a). to be able to meet her through his lens, not just with his honor and respect for her as the monarch, but the love that he has for her as his grandmother, all of those layers have been so important for me so that when I met her I had such a deep understanding and of course incredible respect for being able to have that time with her. And we’ve had a really…she’s an incredible woman.”
‘Always Been Wonderful to Me’
In line with royal tradition, Meghan didn’t comment about family relationships while a working member of the monarchy and stuck to this point until a year after her split from the institution with Prince Harry in 2020.
The couple conducted their first joint interview since stepping down as working royals in March 2021 with Oprah Winfrey. In this, they attributed their move to issues with the British press, royal aides and with certain royal family members themselves.
Meghan made clear in her discussion with Winfrey that Queen Elizabeth had “always been wonderful to me,” and revealed previously unheard details about their first and only solo engagement together in June 2018.
“We were in the car going between engagements, and she has a blanket that sits across her knees for warmth, and it was chilly, and she was like, ‘Meghan, come on’ and put it over my knees as well…”, she said. “It made me think of my grandmother, where she’s always been warm and inviting and really welcoming.”
Interview With Oprah Winfrey, March 2021
“The Queen, for example, has always been wonderful to me. I mean, we had one of our first joint engagements together. She asked me to join her…We had breakfast together that morning, and she’d given me a beautiful gift, and I just really loved being in her company…She gave me beautiful pearl earrings and a matching necklace. And we were in the car going between engagements, and she has a blanket that sits across her knees for warmth. And it was chilly, and she was like, ‘Meghan, come on’ and put it over my knees as well…it made me think of my grand-mother, where she’s always been warm and inviting and really welcoming.”
Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images
‘The Most Shining Example’
The next time Meghan discussed the queen was in an October 2022 interview, a month after the monarch died at the age of 96.
Meghan and Harry were visiting Britain at the time of the queen’s death and were reunited with the royal family for the first time since their move to the U.S. for the state funeral events.
Paying tribute to her grandmother-in-law’s legacy, Meghan said: “In terms of female leadership, she is the most shining example of what that looks like.”
The duchess also expressed “gratitude” for the time she was able to spend with her.
Interview With Variety, October 2022
“There’s been such an outpouring of love and support. I’m really grateful that I was able to be with my husband to support him, especially during that time. What’s so beautiful is to look at the legacy that his grandmother was able to leave on so many fronts. Certainly, in terms of female leadership, she is the most shining example of what that looks like. I feel deep gratitude to have been able to spend time with her and get to know her. It’s been a complicated time, but my husband, ever the optimist, said, ‘Now she’s reunited with her husband.'”
‘My Husband’s Grandma’
Released in December 2022, Meghan and Harry’s eponymous bombshell Netflix docuseries charted the course of their relationship and their eventual split from the monarchy.
In the show, Meghan and Harry recounted the duchess’ first introduction to the queen with an exaggerated curtsy recreation earning them backlash for appearing disrespectful to the monarch.
In a later episode of the show, Meghan repeated the anecdote first told to Oprah Winfrey about her solo engagement with the queen, but going on to describe how she decided to simply treat her when alone as “my husband’s grandma.”
“I thought: ‘I recognize and respect and see that you are the queen, but in this moment, I’m so grateful that there’s a grandmother figure because that feels like family,'” she said.
Harry & Meghan, Episode 4, Netflix 2022
“I treated her as my husband’s grandma. And knowing that, of course, there has to be a completely different sense of propriety and whatnot in public. When you’re sitting and having breakfast, to just be able to talk. I mean, when we got into the car in-between engagements, she had a blanket and she put it over my knees and we’re sitting in the car with this blanket and I thought: ‘I recognize and respect and see that you are the queen, but in this moment, I’m so grateful that there’s a grandmother figure because that feels like family.’ And because I was so, so close with my grandmother and I took care of her in her final years. Yeah…It was such a good day. We laughed.”
James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek‘s royal reporter, based in London. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter) at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek‘s The Royals Facebook page.
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.