Meghan Markle and Prince Harry's Relationship Caused Much 'Distress' to Late Queen Elizabeth, New Book Claims

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry reportedly gave the late Queen Elizabeth II much anguish during her latter years.

According to royal biographer Hugo Vickers' new book about the monarch, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's 2018 marriage caused the sovereign some heartache.

The Queen — who died in September 2022 after seven decades on the throne — "had much on her mind" during the last few years of her long life.

According to the book, "family problems with Prince Harry and the then-Prince Andrew, and an increasingly maverick Prime Minister in Boris Johnson" clouded the Queen's brain at the time.

"Whenever Prince Harry called his grandmother, she asked her lady-in-waiting to stay with her. The distress the Sussexes caused the Queen in the last years of her life cannot be overestimated," Vickers wrote.

Vickers' biography of the Queen stemmed from meeting with her over 40 times in the last 55 years.

He also noted how Meghan's introduction into her royal family when she began dating Harry, 41, in mid-2016 was a pivotal moment for the sovereign.

"The Queen herself suggested that Harry should wait a year [before his marriage]," Vickers penned. "He did not take her advice. Instead, as we know, the wedding went ahead just over six months after the couple's engagement."

The Suits star, 44, and the Invictus Games founder announced their engagement in November 2017 and tied the knot in May 2018.

The grand nuptials took place at St. George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle with a slew of celebrity guests and many members of The Firm in attendance.

Harry wrote in his 2023 memoir Spare how he had to ask his grandmother's permission to pop the question to the former actress.

He asked the Queen for her blessing in the middle of a field where she was with her hunting dogs.

"I saw her waiting for me to speak, and not waiting patiently. Her face radiated: 'Out with it,'" Harry noted in his book. "I coughed. 'Granny, you know I love Meg very much, and I've decided that I would like to ask her to marry me, and I've been told that, er, that I have to ask your permission before I can propose.'"

"You have to?" he recalled the monarch saying. "'That's what your staff told me, and my staff as well. That I have to ask your permission,'" Harry wrote. "At last she replied, 'Well, then, I suppose I have to say yes.'"

"At long last I realized: She's saying yes, you muppet! She's granting permission. Who cares how she words it, just know when to take yes for an answer," he said.