Queen Elizabeth II delayed her response to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2021 because she was "adamant" on waiting until it aired in the U.K. so she could watch it with the rest of the British public, according to a newly updated book charting life behind palace walls.
Valentine Low, a royal correspondent and author who first broke the 2021 story that royal staff had accused Meghan Markle of bullying, made the claim in a new chapter of his hit 2022 book Courtiers, which will hit stores July 6.
In an extract published by the Times of London, Low revealed the royal household's frantic reaction to Harry and Meghan's sit down with Winfrey, and the various decision-makers behind their now infamous "recollections may vary" response.
The Oprah interview stands as one of the most damaging chapters in the royal family's recent history, with Harry and Meghan's (later disputed) inference that there was a racist member of the royal family who commented on the skin color of the couple's future children, sparking a wave of race-related backlash against the family and the monarchy.
The interview aired in the U.S. on Sunday, March 7, 2021. It was then not due to air in Britain until the next day leaving palace courtiers eager to launch into damage control as soon as possible.
"A palace team had watched the interview overnight," Low wrote in the new Courtiers extract. "Senior officials had spent the morning locked in conference calls as they debated how to respond. A draft statement was ready by 2pm on Monday. Much to the frustration of the media, however, the palace remained silent."
The reason for this silence, Low wrote, was, for once, not palace bureaucracy, but instead the head of the institution herself, the queen.
Low explained: "One insider said, 'One of the reasons was that the late Queen was adamant that she was going to watch the programme first.' And she was going to watch it with the rest of the population, on [television network] ITV on Monday evening."
The morning after the queen had watched the 85-minute interview, in which Harry and Meghan revealed tensions with William and Kate, Charles and Camilla, the tabloid media and royal aides, Low claims that the drafted statement of response was debated by the senior royal households.
While the queen's courtiers proposed an open statement, acknowledging Harry and Meghan's claims with a spirit of reconciliation, according to Low, this received pushback from an unexpected source, Kate, the then-Duchess of Cambridge.
"While they were as concerned as anyone about not getting into a tit-for-tat with Harry and Meghan, William and Kate were clear which side of the debate they were on," said Low.
"'They wanted it toughened up a bit," the author cites a palace insider as saying. "'They were both of one mind that we needed something that said that the institution did not accept a lot of what had been said. He [William] said, 'It is really important that you guys come up with the right way of making sure that we are saying that this does not stand.' She [Kate] was certainly right behind him on it.'"
Eventually the line "recollections may vary" was proposed to add into the draft statement, which would show that the royals were unwilling to let Harry and Meghan's Oprah narrative become the definitive version. When this was resisted by Buckingham Palace, Low writes that Kate stepped in.
"At least two senior officials in other households were against its inclusion, because they feared that it would rile Harry and Meghan," he wrote. "But once the phrase had been added to the draft, it was—according to another source—the Duchess of Cambridge who pressed home the argument that it should remain. It was Kate who clearly made the point, 'History will judge this statement and unless this phrase or a phrase like it is included, everything that they have said will be taken as true.'"
Finally, on Tuesday March 9, the courtiers working for the queen, Charles, Camilla and William and Kate all agreed on the statement, with the queen having final approval. The resulting announcement was then made.
"The whole family is saddened to learn the full extent of how challenging the last few years have been for Harry and Meghan," it said. "The issues raised, particularly that of race, are concerning. While some recollections may vary, they are taken very seriously and will be addressed by the family privately.
"Harry, Meghan and Archie will always remain much loved family members."
For the queen, this was her final word on the matter. As it has been for the other senior royals, with only Prince William publicly breaking his silence in the days afterwards to respond to a reporter's question asking if his family was racist with the response: "We are very much not a racist family."
Five months prior to her death in September 2022, Harry and Meghan made their first joint-visit to Britain since the Oprah interview to see the queen who was at the time days away from celebrating her 96th birthday.
The visit went well, Harry later said, with the three having tea together in good spirits. It would take the queen's eventual death to see a reunion between the couple and the rest of the royal family.
Harry, William, Meghan and Kate surprised mourners outside Windsor Castle on September 10, 2022, appearing together for the first time in two years to view floral tributes to the monarch, a symbolic gesture of unity that has not been repeated in the year since.
Today the public knows more about the widening rift between the Sussexes and the U.K.-based royals than ever before, thanks to the release of the couple's six-part Netflix docuseries and Harry's 410-page memoir. A thawing in these relations did not seem apparent at King Charles' coronation in May, which Harry attended alone.
With no further large-scale royal events on the immediate horizon to signal a royal reunion and with the peacemaker queen no longer at the helm, the house of Windsor remains fractured with the "recollections may vary" statement the only official acknowledgment of this from the institution itself.
Courtiers: The Hidden Power behind the Crown by Valentine Low, published by Headline, is available in paperback in Britain from July 6.
James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek's royal reporter based in London. You can find him on Twitter at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.
Do you have a question about King Charles III, William and Kate, Meghan and Harry, or their family that you would like our experienced royal correspondents to answer? Email royals@newsweek.com. We'd love to hear from you.
