Sally Bedell Smith is a “royal historian,” in that she writes whatever the highest-ranking courtier tells her to write. Bedell Smith has a Substack and her latest column was a doozy, full of stale tea straight from Lady Elizabeth Anson, also known as Queen Elizabeth II’s cousin and confidante. Anson – who went by Liza – passed away in November 2020. It’s taken nearly five years for Liza to speak from the grave. This whole thing reminds me so much of when we finally got a glimpse of what Lady Susan Hussey was really like – remember, Hussey interrogated Ngozi Fulani at a palace reception in 2022 and Hussey was soon fired (but not really). We put it together that Hussey was one of several old racists around QEII who loved to call up royal reporters and bitch about the Duchess of Sussex. Well, Liza was another one. We know because not only did Liza have Sally Bedell Smith on speed-dial, but she also kept Robert Jobson in the loop as well. Jobson added more to Bedell Smith’s coverage of the late Lady Elizabeth Anson’s bitching and moaning about Harry and Meghan:
The quote is one of the most revealing I’ve come across about the emotional cost to the late Queen Elizabeth of Prince Harry and Meghan’s departure from royal life. ‘She was really upset,’ Lady Elizabeth Anson confided to the biographer Sally Bedell Smith. ‘I was shocked when the Queen told me this, how she was so saddened.’
For years, there has been speculation and spin about how the late Queen felt about ‘Megxit’. But now, thanks to Bedell Smith’s quietly explosive new disclosures on her Royals Extra Substack blog, it is part of the public record. This isn’t embellished tittle tattle. Bedell Smith is a rigorous royal biographer with decades of access to top sources, a biographer who exercises considerable restraint about what she publishes.
And Lady Elizabeth? She was the late Queen’s cousin – born at Windsor Castle in 1941 and the granddaughter of the late Queen Mother’s brother. She was also King George VI’s goddaughter. She moved easily through Queen Elizabeth’s inner circle. She was part of her private world, a trusted aide and sounding board. The late Queen affectionately called her ‘Number One Lady’. Lady Elizabeth, in turn, called her ‘Jemima’ for reasons she never explained. Lady Elizabeth died in November 2020, aged 79. But in her final years, she documented the private conversations she’d had with the Queen. Her notes now reveal a deeply personal portrait of a monarch shaken and quietly wounded. Her telling observations shed an extraordinary new light on the late Queen’s views on Harry and Meghan.
‘She said she was not at all content,’ wrote Anson at one point. ‘Harry was rude to her for ten minutes,’ at another.
‘Meghan wouldn’t tell her about the wedding dress,’ Lady Elizabeth revealed.
‘The jury is out on whether she likes Meghan,’ she declared. And perhaps most tellingly: ‘My Jemima is very worried.’
These were the words of a grandmother hurt, confused and heartbroken rather than those of a sovereign. As a monarch she knew exactly what to do, as a grandmother she found it all very painful. Having reported on the royals for well over three decades, I can say with confidence that Lady Elizabeth notes mirrored what many in the palace were saying at the time. While the couple’s departure was wrapped in carefully managed press statements, behind the scenes the late Queen felt isolated, excluded. She didn’t understand Meghan’s obsession with fame, or Harry’s rash choices – especially when they lacked the ballast of service and duty. And she worried that Harry, once so cheerful and grounded, had ‘lost his way’.
‘She has blown his relationship with his grandmother,’ Lady Elizabeth wrote about Meghan. A line that still cuts like a shard of glass. Spot on. The late Queen found the chaos around the wedding baffling. Tantrums about tiaras, the insistence of having a veil when she had already been divorced. She had hoped that Harry and Meghan’s wedding in May 2018 would be a moment of family unity. Instead, there were rumblings of discord from the start. Protocol was sidestepped, staff were distressed, and the Queen’s efforts at connecting with the bride-to-be, particularly around the choice of wedding dress, were apparently rebuffed.
‘She was trying to find out about the wedding dress,’ Lady Elizabeth noted, ‘and Meghan wouldn’t tell her.’
It wasn’t just about the dress. It was about inclusion. It was about tradition. In the Queen’s eyes, it was about respect. Lady Elizabeth was blunt in her assessment of Meghan. ‘We hope but don’t quite think she is in love. We think she engineered it all.’ And of Harry: ‘The problem, bless his heart, is that Harry is neither bright nor strong, and she is both.’
This wasn’t idle family gossip. It was an unvarnished view from someone who had known the late Queen since girlhood and knew the dynamics of the Royal family better than most. What makes these revelations so powerful is their intimacy. There was no palace PR behind them. No agenda. Just the quiet grief of a monarch who had spent her life serving others suddenly being rejected by a grandson she had always cherished.
In early 2019, not long after the wedding, a senior courtier shared something that has stayed with me ever since. ‘The Boss is not happy,’ he said. ‘She doesn’t get all the celebrity stuff. She thinks Harry is throwing it all away, for what?’
“There has been speculation and spin about how the late Queen felt about ‘Megxit’. But now, thanks to Bedell Smith’s quietly explosive new disclosures on her Royals Extra Substack blog, it is part of the public record.” Robert Jobson has literally written multiple books where he made explicit claims about QEII’s state of mind, her feelings on Harry and Meghan, her incandescent rage at her great-granddaughter’s name and more. Were all of those disclosures not a part of the public record? Is Jobson admitting that it was all just gossip, force-fed to him by King Charles’s people?
As for the earth-shattering disclosures made by Liza… Meghan wouldn’t tell Harry’s grandmother about her wedding gown which led to a months-long beef? What are we doing here? “It wasn’t just about the dress. It was about inclusion. It was about tradition. In the Queen’s eyes, it was about respect.” We’re hearing a third-hand account from a dead woman via royal reporters about QEII throwing a tantrum because Meghan wouldn’t give her details about her wedding gown? This is probably the root of all of that BS about “QEII was mad that Meghan wore white” and the new wrinkle of “QEII was mad about Meghan’s veil.” At some point, some of these people need to acknowledge that they were going to have big, loud nervous breakdowns over every single choice Meghan made for her own wedding.
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Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Cover Images.
