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In the months leading up to her passing in September 2022, Queen Elizabeth II expressed a heartfelt desire to reunite with all her great-grandchildren, including Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s offspring.
Royal biographer Robert Hardman reveals in his upcoming book, “Elizabeth II: In Private. In Public. The Inside Story,” that the Queen hoped to gather all her great-grandchildren at Balmoral that summer, regardless of whether the Sussex family could attend.
According to an excerpt from the Daily Mail, a family friend shared that the Queen wanted to ensure her great-grandchildren would have cherished memories of her.
Hardman highlights the context of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s children, Prince Archie, 6, and Princess Lilibet, 4, emphasizing that the couple’s relationship with the royal family was reportedly strained during that period.
The tension within the royal family notably escalated in 2020 when Prince Harry and Meghan Markle stepped back from their royal duties and relocated to the United States.
The divide between Prince Harry, his brother Prince William, and his father, now-King Charles II, was worsened after the Duke and Duchess of Sussex made bombshell claims in their 2021 Oprah Winfrey interview that Harry’s family had concerns over their son Prince Archie’s skin color.
Despite the debacle, the family made their way to London for one final trip where the queen was able to meet the young princess, who was named after the monarch, in June 2022 — nearly a year after the couple welcomed their daughter.
Harry, Markle and their two children were reported to have spent some time with the Queen at Windsor Castle in the hours just before Lilibet’s first birthday.
At the time, Page Six reported that the royal family celebrated the birthday girl with a private birthday party the following day.
In addition to Prince Harry’s children, Queen Elizabeth was a great-grandmother to 10 other great-grandchildren including Prince William and Kate Middleton’s kids, Prince George, 12, Princess Charlotte, 10, and Prince Louis, 7.
Since her death, two more great-grandchildren have been welcomed into the family: Princess Eugenie’s second son, Ernest Brooksbank, and Princess Beatrice’s second daughter, Athena.
According to Hardman, the queen was said to have started slowing down and had grown weaker during the summer of 2022.
While her exact medical condition was not revealed by the palace, those with close ties to the late monarch only told the biographer that she suffered from “a number of things,” Hardman writes.
“Whatever the exact cause, she was well aware of her medical prognosis, and it had been enough to encourage her to tie up various loose ends,” the book reads.
The queen died on September 8, 2022, at age 96 following a 70-year reign. According to her death certificate, the late royal died from “old age.”