Prince Harry was reportedly “reluctant” to leave the royal family, but wasn’t given much choice by his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, after she issued a harsh ultimatum to him.
Hugo Vickers, a writer who’s a longtime friend of the royal family, recounts Prince Harry’s mounting frustrations with his family before his and his wife Meghan Markle’s resignations as royals in his new book, “Queen Elizabeth II.”
When the Duke and Duchess of Sussex fled London to Canada in 2019, Harry was “keen to discuss a way forward with the Queen” upon his return, Vickers writes. Though, things didn’t go as planned for the prince.
“He wanted a half-in, half-out arrangement, whereby he would be self-financing but could still work for the Royal Family. In the new year of 2020, the three Private Secretaries, Sir Edward Young, Sir Clive Alderton and Simon Case, went into summit mode on the Sandringham estate and drafted their proposal,” Vickers writes.
“Prince Harry went to Sandringham for the meeting and was told it was either all in or all out. He returned to Canada — reluctantly out.”
In January 2020, the Sussexes announced they would be departing their official roles as working royals and moved to live in California full-time three months later, leaving their Frogmore Cottage home gifted to them by the Queen behind.
After Prince Harry released his bombshell-loaded memoir, “Spare,” in 2023, he and Markle were requested to officially vacate the cottage.
Prior to Queen Elizabeth’s death, the couple made one last trip to London in June 2022 to bring their children Prince Archie, 6, and Princess Lilibet, 4, to spend time with their great-grandmother to fulfill her final wishes.
As Page Six previously reported on Tuesday, royal biographer Robert Hardman shared Queen Elizabeth’s last wishes for all of her great-grandchildren in his forthcoming biography, “Elizabeth II: In Private. In Public. The Inside Story.”
“The Queen wanted all the great-grandchildren to come up to Balmoral at some point over that summer, even if the Sussexes might not be able to make it,” Hardman writes.
“She wanted to make sure that they all had a really happy memory of her,” a friend of the family claims in the book, per an excerpt published by the Daily Mail on Monday.
The last time the Sussexes — who remain largely estranged from several members of the royal family, namely Prince William and his wife, Kate Middleton — were publicly seen at Windsor was to mourn the loss of Queen Elizabeth in September 2022.
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