The Right Reverend Dr Iain Greenshields may not be a reputation most individuals recognise however he was one of many final folks outdoors of royal and Westminster circles to see the late Queen alive.
A minister, Greenshields had been invited to spend what could be Her Majesty’s final weekend at Balmoral.
“Her memory was absolutely amazing and she was really full of fun,” Kirk instructed the Times simply after her passing in September.
The pair talked about (what else?) horses and she or he was “naming them from 40 years ago”, the battle in Ukraine, and the church (“she was very apprised of everything going on”). Overall, to Greenshields, “she was in amazingly good form”.
Now that is good and all however the cause that the Reverend’s impression of Her Majesty – unequivocally compos mentis – issues is due to Prince Harry and one thing that he instructed the Netflix cameras about his grandmother; a selected one thing that courtiers have now reportedly referred to as “outrageous” and “another manipulation of the narrative”.
Since the second lot of episodes of he and spouse Meghan, Duchess of Sussex’s Netflix TV collection dropped final week, the hubbub has been relentlessly centered on the duke’s revelations about his closest kinfolk. His father King Charles “[said] things that just simply weren’t true” whereas his brother Prince William ‘screamed and shouted’ at him, “terrifying” him, and briefing the media towards the Sussexes.
Broadly talking it’s all fairly gory stuff, the brutal internal workings of regal sausage-making laid naked by one in every of their very own.
But, the query is, whereas the world has been centered on yelling brothers and the royal homes leaking to the press like a $2 store sieve, did Harry deal the late Queen one thing of an unjust blow and nobody actually observed?
In episode 5, we get to the occasions of January 2020’s Sandringham Summit, the assembly the place Charles, William, Harry and Her Majesty acquired collectively on a nippy Norfolk day to hash out the main points of Megxit.
In Harry & Meghan, he says of that gathering: “It was terrifying to have my brother scream and shout at me, and my father say things that just simply weren’t true, and my grandmother, you know, quietly sit there, and sort of take it all in.”
It’s an arresting picture – of the then 93-year-old Queen watching this tense and emotional- sounding scene play out as if from the sidelines.
However that picture of the monarch, in keeping with the Times’ Royal Editor Roya Nikkhah, “doesn’t tally with anyone else’s experience of the Queen, who was ‘sharp as a tack’ and calling the shots until the day she died.”
“It’s outrageous,” a courtier instructed Nikkhah. “Harry never wanted to admit to himself that it was the Queen who said, ‘no, you’re out’. He couldn’t fathom that he wasn’t the cheeky chappy who was going to sweet-talk grandma into getting what he wanted.”
Another courtier has mentioned: “Advisers made recommendations to Her Majesty, but there was only one person making the decisions.
One of those courtiers, speaking to the Times, offered up something of a theory: “To look the truth squarely in the eye, to realise your relationship has been damaged and to know it was his commander-in-chief who decided he couldn’t have the half-in, half-out role he wanted, is probably too painful for him to accept.”
Valentine Low, writing in his current Courtiers: The Hidden Power Behind The Crown, presents a really related telling of occasions throughout the climactic summit, saying that “Compromise was off the table, removed by the Queen” and that “it was the Queen who took the final decision.”
This is just not the primary time that the duke has solid this form of image of the late Queen. In April this 12 months he and Meghan made a lightning stopover in Windsor on their option to the Netherlands the place they met together with his grandmother.
Days later, Harry did what any loving grandson does after which sat down with an American breakfast TV host to reply questions, partially, about that personal household second.
The duke instructed host Hoda Kotb that he had “a really special relationship” with Her Majesty, saying, “We talk about things that she can’t talk about with anybody else.”
However the kicker got here when he mentioned that the couple had visited her to “make sure she’s protected and she’s got the right people around her”.
Again, right here we’ve that very same picture of Her Majesty, not as the top of state and head of the armed forces, a lady who spoke weekly to the UK’s prime minister and who attended the G7 assembly final 12 months, however as a feeble outdated woman in want of ‘protection’ from the unsuitable folks.
Who had been these malign figures? Harry by no means mentioned.
It’s simple to see why a model of Queen Elizabeth as an enfeebled, weak determine may attraction to Harry.
As a courtier has instructed the Times: “The narrative has shifted from Prince Harry on the Queen. It was always ‘my commander-in-chief, the boss.’
But when he was not getting the support from her he wanted, she is represented as a diminutive figure sat in the corner. That is another manipulation of the narrative to suit the outcome as felt by Harry.”
For years, even when the Sussexes had been lobbing grenades on the royal home, they had been all the time cautious to hive off the Queen from criticism, separating her out however that’s an illogical distinction.
There has by no means been any indication lately that within the midst of turbulence of not solely Megxit however the wholesale automotive crash that’s Prince Andrew, that the nonagenarian was something however firmly in cost.
When Andrew was as soon as and for all formally defenestrated in January this 12 months – his honorary army titles and roles yanked, his HRH mothballed – the Queen was “swift and ruthless” the Times reported. While Charles and William had been “consulted” concerning the transfer, reportedly, “the final decision … was hers.”
“Never assume she just rubberstamps stuff,” a courtier instructed the London paper again then.
On some stage, it’s onerous to sq. these lovely footage of her, a teeny outdated woman in lime inexperienced or sweetly speaking marmalade sandwiches with Paddington Bear however on the finish of the day, the Queen had an unenviable job.
Her duty, because the forty first monarch since Harold Godwin managed to lose half of what’s now England to William of Normandy, was to make sure that the monarchy survived, it doesn’t matter what emotions she may need felt as a mom and grandmother.
And as Nikkhah, Low and the Right Reverend clarify, whereas her bodily well being may need been failing, mentally she was fully on the ball.
In a matter of weeks, Harry’s autobiography, Spare, will hit cabinets and which incorporates “more incendiary than those made in the Netflix series,” in keeping with the Times, whereas elsewhere it has been reported he will even do an interview with American 60 Minutes’ Anderson Cooper.
You know what they are saying – with household like this …
Daniela Elser is a author and a royal commentator with greater than 15 years’ expertise working with numerous Australia’s main media titles.
Originally revealed as Prince Harry’s feedback concerning the Queen slammed by Palace insiders
