On November 27, 2017, the Prince of Wales joyfully announced the engagement of Prince Harry to Ms. Meghan Markle. The use of “Ms.” was particularly notable, considering that the Queen had traditionally preferred women to be introduced as either “Miss” or “Mrs.” at garden parties. However, times were changing, and Meghan, as a divorced American actress, had chosen to be addressed as “Ms.”

The introduction of Meghan to the Queen occurred the previous year when Meghan was still residing in Toronto, where her TV show, Suits, was filmed. The meeting was an impromptu affair, taking place at Royal Lodge, the Windsor residence of the Duke of York. During a casual Sunday afternoon, Harry and Meghan were on their way to visit Princess Eugenie when they discovered that the Queen had stopped by after attending church.

In the garden, Sarah, Duchess of York, quickly taught Meghan the art of curtseying before she stepped inside to greet the Queen. Despite later criticism for her light-hearted reenactment of the moment in a Netflix documentary, the brief 20-minute conversation was considered successful. The Queen was pleased to learn about Meghan’s life and career in a Commonwealth nation.

On the day of the engagement announcement, Harry and Meghan posed for formal engagement photos in the garden of Kensington Palace and participated in the traditional television interview.

From the onset, there were hints that this royal engagement would not mirror William and Catherine’s. Unlike their 2010 engagement, where they met the royal press corps over tea at St James’s Palace, Harry and Meghan kept the media at a distance, quite literally, across a pond in the garden on a dreary afternoon with no direct interaction.

In their television interview, the couple had also emphasized a ‘passion’ for ‘change’. The Queen would be more encouraged by the fact that they also talked excitedly about the Commonwealth. Overall, it felt like a very modern romance. St George’s Chapel, Windsor, was booked for May 19, 2018.

On the same day as their engagement was announced, Harry and Meghan appeared for the formal engagement photographs in the garden of Kensington Palace

Meghan wore Queen Mary’s diamond bandeau, but the loan of the tiara by the Queen led to a row when when the Sussexes rang the Palace to ask the Queen’s dresser and curator, Angela Kelly, to send over the tiara because Meghan wished to practise putting it on

While I have written previous books and documentaries on the monarchy over many years, this is my first entirely retrospective study of Elizabeth II (the others having been written while she was alive). A few weeks from now, she might have been in the delightful position of presenting herself with a 100th birthday card, though it was not to be.

Ahead of her centenary, I have decided to write an entirely new portrait, a more personal response to the eternal question: What was she really like? In doing so, I have unearthed much new material and fresh insights from every stage of her long life – such as the inside story of what has come to be known as ‘tiaragate’.

As the date grew nearer, a series of private and public dramas ensured that the marriage of Harry and Meghan would be quite unlike any previous royal wedding.

The couple had asked Princess Charlotte to be a bridesmaid, but tensions between Meghan and the Duchess of Cambridge over the bridesmaids’ dresses would reduce both women to tears.

Another pre-wedding row, which would continue to create headlines years after the wedding, concerned Meghan’s choice of tiara. The Queen much enjoyed offering a piece from her own tiara collection to a royal bride, when required.

She had not done so for Diana, who had wanted to wear the Spencer family tiara. Nor had she done so for Sarah Ferguson before her wedding to Prince Andrew, since the Queen herself commissioned a brand-new piece, known as the ‘York’ tiara, for the future Duchess of York (who continued to retain it after her divorce).

The Queen’s dressmaker, Angela Kelly

However, other brides would be invited to borrow one. ‘Her Majesty would pick out a small selection which she thought would suit that bride and ask her round to try them on and choose one,’ said a former staffer.

‘It was her lovely way of bonding with the bride. She did it with Sophie [Rhys-Jones] and with Catherine [Middleton]. But there wasn’t that bonding with Meghan because she turned up with Prince Harry.’

No one was entirely sure why the Prince had to come, too. His memoir suggests that it was a joint invitation; insiders say otherwise.

As Harry later wrote himself, it was a magical experience and Meghan had a clear favourite – Queen Mary’s diamond bandeau. However, the mood turned sour nearer the wedding when the couple rang the Palace to ask the Queen’s dresser and curator, Angela Kelly, to send over the tiara. Meghan wished to practise putting it on.

According to Spare, Prince Harry’s memoir, and also Finding Freedom, the sympathetic account of the couple’s royal woes by Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand, Kelly was proving to be aloof. ‘To my mind, Angela was a troublemaker,’ the Prince wrote, suggesting that the Queen’s dresser was being obstructive.

Matters came to a head when Meghan’s hairdresser flew in for a ‘hair trial’. ‘People were frustrated – and confused. Why was it so hard to set up a time for Meghan to try the tiara with her hairdresser?’ wrote Scobie and Durand, adding that Harry was forced to go directly to the Queen as a result.

The Prince, in his account, said that he did not. ‘I considered going to Granny, but that would probably mean sparking an all-out confrontation,’ he wrote, ‘and I wasn’t quite sure with whom Granny would side.’

Insiders have now revealed that word did, indeed, reach the Queen, who took the side of her dresser. She was not pleased that the Prince had been calling around the Royal Household demanding that the tiara be dispatched forthwith.

As the monarch told one of them: ‘It’s not a toy.’

She even recalled that, ahead of the 2011 royal wedding, Catherine Middleton’s hairdresser had practised using a plastic tiara from the accessory chain, Claire’s. Why could Meghan and her hairdresser not do the same? She told Kelly to ignore the phone calls.

There were also two reasons, said the insiders, why the tiara was not simply produced at the click of a finger to suit a visiting hairdresser (quite apart from the less-than-straightforward protocols for transporting royal gems).

First, it was Easter Court, with the Queen and her staff based at Windsor and also preoccupied with guests for the Royal Windsor Horse Show.

Second, and of greater importance, was the question of provenance. The diamond bandeau tiara had very little known history, beyond the fact that Queen Mary had commissioned it in 1932, using a diamond brooch – a wedding present from the county of Lincolnshire – as its centrepiece. It had seldom been seen in public since.

Angela Kelly and her team had been trying to verify that it had no awkward backstory – like the Timur ruby (alleged imperial loot) or the Cambridge emeralds (reclaimed at vast expense from Queen Mary’s dead brother’s mistress).

Every centrepiece of a royal wedding is subject to forensic global scrutiny. Even if the tiara had only a few offcuts from South Africa’s mighty Cullinan diamond, that could be enough to generate furious headlines about colonial theft. ‘Can you imagine how that would have gone down on the wedding day?’ asked one member of staff.

It had taken a great deal of research. Once due diligence had been done, there was great relief around the Palace. ‘Harry had been on to everyone about this. We thought Angela was like the fairy godmother who had delivered,’ said a source. ‘But when she called Kensington Palace, she was put through to Prince Harry who just said, “Get it here now”. And that was the end of the conversation.’

Harry later wrote that ‘Angela appeared out of thin air’ and asked him to sign a release for the tiara. He said that he thanked her but also added that ‘it would’ve made our lives so much easier to have had it sooner’.

Whereupon, according to his memoir: ‘Her eyes were fire. She started having a go at me.’ He had replied: ‘Angela, you really want to do this now? Really? Now?’

As would be the case with much of the Harry and Meghan story, recollections would vary.

As one staffer recalled: ‘There was already an atmosphere before Angela arrived. Meghan was nowhere to be seen. Harry poked the box and said “Is that it?” Then he stood over Angela and said he did not like her whining to his grandmother.

Meghan had a quick crash-course in curtseying from Sarah, Duchess of York, in the garden, before going inside and bobbing down before the Queen, writes Robert Hardman…

… she was later heavily criticised for her irreverent reprise of the moment in a Netflix documentary

‘Angela gave it straight back. She said that she did not like him getting all these people to push her when she was just doing her job. She tried to tell him about the history and how it was for their own sake, but he walked out. She decided to put it down to pre-wedding nerves.’

‘All Angela did,’ said a former colleague, ‘was to try to protect them’.

All royal weddings have had their glitches, but never quite like this one. Meghan would have no family present at the ceremony except her mother and her divorced father, Thomas Markle, a retired television lighting director, now living in Mexico.

He was under orders from the couple to say nothing to the Press, but was increasingly upset at media depictions of him as an oddball recluse. So he hatched a secret deal whereby a news agency would take flattering pictures of him preparing for the big day and then syndicate the images.

No sooner was the plan exposed than he was hospitalised with a heart attack and suddenly he wasn’t coming. The bride’s family was down to one, so who would walk her up the aisle?

Harry’s father asked Meghan if he might have the honour of accompanying her to the altar. According to Harry, the offer ‘very much helped’ Meghan get over the pain of her father’s no-show.

According to a friend, the Prince of Wales was somewhat surprised by Meghan’s reply: ‘Can we meet half way?’ She wanted to make her grand entrance to the chapel alone. The Prince would then wait at the entrance to the Quire for the last few yards to the altar.

Hundreds of thousands packed Windsor’s Long Walk on that cloudless May morning. Inside the castle, the guests had all arrived via a fleet of courtesy buses. Here was a collection of Harry’s friends from school, the military and his Gloucestershire childhood mixing with Meghan’s showbusiness cohorts.

One royal friend remembers spotting actor George Clooney and US talk-show host Oprah Winfrey wandering around St George’s Chapel looking at engravings and royal tombs.

‘I happened to be standing with Oprah and I said, “Hi, there”. I just thought I’d better make conversation. I think people like this couldn’t believe that they were in this old English church just wandering around. No one was giving them food or drink but no one was bothering them either, no one was taking photos, everyone was ignoring them. So it’s just me and Oprah. It was bizarre. I think they liked this weird Englishness.’

On the morning of the wedding, the Queen had made Harry the Duke of Sussex, a title last created for one of the wayward sons of King George III (it had died with him in 1843). Like the entire country, she was thrilled to see one of the monarchy’s greatest assets finally find the happiness and the family unit he had craved.

For much of the world over a certain age, the abiding image of Harry was that shellshocked little boy walking behind his mother’s coffin in 1997. He had been with his brother then. Now the warrior prince was there at the altar, blinking hard, with his brother beside him again.

On October 12, 2018, St George’s Chapel Windsor held another wedding for another of the Queen’s grandchildren. Princess Eugenie, younger daughter of the Duke of York, was marrying drinks executive Jack Brooksbank

Status-conscious as ever, Prince Andrew and his ex-wife, Sarah, had been determined that Eugenie should have a comparable wedding to Harry

Five months later, on October 12, 2018, St George’s Chapel Windsor held another wedding for another of the Queen’s grandchildren. Princess Eugenie, younger daughter of the Duke of York, was marrying drinks executive Jack Brooksbank.

Status-conscious as ever, Prince Andrew and his ex-wife, Sarah, had been determined that Eugenie should have a comparable wedding to Harry, with live television coverage, a carriage procession, celebrity guests and so on, albeit in front of a smaller audience.

The Queen happily agreed to Andrew’s demands. After all, Eugenie and Jack had been patient. After a seven-year romance, they had been thinking of marrying sooner but had been content to let Harry and Meghan go first, in line with the royal pecking order (the hierarchy did not always work against Harry and Meghan, despite some of their subsequent complaints).

Even before Meghan had selected Queen Mary’s diamond bandeau, Eugenie had already been round to see the Queen to choose her tiara – the seldom-seen Greville emerald kokoshnik. She had gone alone, without her fiance. Though some had expected her to wear the York tiara which had been made for her mother, it was not entirely surprising that she did not.

Just weeks before Harry’s wedding, the Commonwealth member states had formally declared that Prince Charles would be the next head of the organisation upon his accession to the Throne.

The Queen also wanted to strengthen family ties between the Commonwealth and the next generation, too. With that in mind, she appointed Harry as her Commonwealth Youth Ambassador.

The monarch was also keen for Meghan to learn the royal ropes (despite subsequent complaints from the Sussex camp that the Duchess was offered little training). The Queen invited her to leave Harry behind and join her, one-on-one, for an overnight trip to Cheshire in the royal train.

‘The Queen was really wanting to give it a go,’ an insider recalled. ‘She was so sweet, she had brought Meghan a present and tried so hard. The train always left at 11 o’clock at night and the Queen was on the platform to welcome her. They had breakfast together in the morning and she was always trying to do small things, to show her the ropes and bring her in.’

The Sussexes’ first official overseas trip together would be a Commonwealth tour, an extensive journey across the Pacific. It began with a happy surprise. The Duchess was expecting a baby. She made it clear that the tour would proceed as planned. And so it did.

Back at home, work was under way to help Meghan build a portfolio of patronages with meaning. The Queen was keen on two in particular. After 45 years as patron of the National Theatre, she wanted to hand it on to Meghan, given her acting credentials.

Relations soon started to cool between the Cambridges and the Sussexes… despite wildly over-optimistic talk of a new royal ‘dream team’, resentments were growing

The Commonwealth Day service in 2020, the year the Sussexes announced they would now be seeking a ‘progressive new role’, ‘stepping back’ from royal duties

The Queen wanted to strengthen family ties between the Commonwealth and the next generation. With that in mind, she appointed Harry as her Commonwealth Youth Ambassador. She was also keen for Meghan to learn the royal ropes

It was even suggested that the Duchess might have the occasional walk-on part in stage productions (a sweet idea, though one possibly unlikely to appeal to a former television star).

Another important gift from the Queen was the Association of Commonwealth Universities. ‘It would allow Meghan a platform to give speeches with substance around the world. She could talk about, say, women’s rights in Africa but without being political,’ explained a Palace aide. ‘The Queen knew it was time to hand these on and was really excited for Meghan. The Sussexes were in a good place.’

Within Kensington Palace, relations soon started to cool between the Cambridges and the Sussexes. Despite wildly over-optimistic talk of a new royal ‘dream team’ or, even more fancifully, a ‘Fab Four’, resentments were growing. The Sussexes, like any exciting new prospect, were attracting the bulk of the media attention and invitations at this stage. Yet, they had a smaller staff, a smaller budget and a very much smaller house.

In March 2019 it was announced that the brothers would be splitting their offices. The Cambridges would keep their headquarters at Kensington Palace while Harry and Meghan would move their home to Frogmore Cottage on the Windsor estate and look for a new office at Buckingham Palace.

Once there was a change of monarch, William would become Prince of Wales and inherit the Duchy of Cornwall. Harry, who would still be dependent on his father, would then have to swap cost centres and become part of the King’s operation. Hence the need to move the Sussexes to Royal HQ at some point. Why not now, while the Palace was undergoing major restoration work?

The problem, say insiders, was the way it was handled. ‘They were dealing with two brothers but they treated it like a corporate split, with Harry being farmed off to a new sales division,’ was the impression of one Palace veteran.

Internal tensions would work both ways. As Meghan’s own supporters pointed out, she had arrived from a world in which offers of clothes and discounts were an accepted trade-off for celebrity endorsement.

‘It had to be explained that, aside from official gifts, which were registered, anything else had to be paid with a proper bill to show the Keeper of the Privy Purse,’ one staff member recalled. ‘The Palace can’t take freebies. Let’s just say that did not go down well.’

Harry’s book recorded gravely that one member of staff had been fired for trying ‘to get freebies’ but then went on to praise Meghan because ‘she shared all the freebies she received’.

The rules and hierarchies would also work in the Sussexes’ favour, too. One Palace staffer was dismayed after working for weeks on a major news event for one of the Duchess of Cornwall’s charities only to be told to shelve it because it would clash with a big announcement for Prince Harry’s Invictus Games.

The couple’s dislike and distrust of the media was such that, on May 6, 2019, when the Duchess gave birth to a healthy baby boy, Archie, both were back home even as the media received a bulletin saying that she had gone into hospital.

The Palace was then accused of lying, and not only by the Press. The Metropolitan Police had gone to considerable trouble to create a strategy for crowd control around the hospital. ‘People from the Met were calling up the Palace and asking why we had lied – which we hadn’t,’ said one royal staffer caught in the middle. ‘The Sussexes just hadn’t told anyone. I think it was one area where no one could tell Meghan what to do. It was a case of “I’m going to show you who’s boss”.’

At the end of 2019, the couple left Britain for a quiet Christmas in Canada before returning to Britain early in the New Year. They then suddenly issued an unprecedented statement after the end of the working day on January 8. They would now be seeking a ‘progressive new role’, ‘stepping back’ from royal duties while supporting the Queen on both sides of the Atlantic.

They were certainly not expecting the Palace to move as swiftly and firmly as it did, with an almost immediate response from ‘Royal Communications’. It stated baldly that these were ‘complicated issues’ and would ‘take time to work through’. In fact, they would not take much time at all.

What the Press instantly branded as ‘Megxit’ had a different name within the Palace. The family talked about ‘UDI’, a reference to the Rhodesian crisis of the mid-Sixties when the minority white government there issued its ‘unilateral declaration of independence’ from Britain. That had not ended well.

The Queen and the Prince of Wales were as one on the need for speed: The longer the absence of clarity, they agreed, the greater the scope for misunderstanding.

Meghan had already returned to Canada when the Queen invited Harry to Sandringham for a family meeting a few days later. There would be no conference call dial-in from Canada either. No one could be sure who else might be listening in.

Those on the Palace side look back with some sympathy. ‘That so-called “Sandringham Summit” was quite brutal,’ said one of those present. ‘But the Queen was absolutely solid from the start: No half-in, half-out.’

Grudgingly, the couple chose out.

Keep Calm and Carry On

Elizabeth II never liked to dwell on the various terrifying events which occurred in her long life. In 1982, she awoke to find a strange barefoot man called Michael Fagan at the end of her bed holding the sharp edge of a broken glass ashtray and dripping blood on the floor. She calmly kept him talking until help arrived.

Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of the story is that, four hours later, she would go on to hold an investiture for more than 100 people. None would have the faintest idea that the Queen had just endured the stuff of horror films.

The previous year, she had gone through an equally horrific experience when a gunman opened fire (with blanks, it transpired) as she was riding down the Mall on her Birthday Parade. Onlookers applauded her cool response as she calmed her mare, Burmese, and rode on.

Now, it can finally be revealed just how troubling it actually was.

As a former close aide explained: ‘She had no idea they were blanks. And when she saw the police running past, she feared the worst. She said to me, “I saw all the attention heading behind me and I thought that someone had shot my husband”. It was unusual for her to say “husband”, which is why I remember it so well.

In 1981, a gunman opened fire (with blanks, it transpired) as the Queen was riding down the Mall on her Birthday Parade

‘And she explained that she just kept staring ahead and going forwards because that is what you do. She said to herself, “Don’t look back”, because she was afraid she might see the Duke’s body. It was her way of dealing with it.’

Grainy film footage shows the moment after she has turned the corner on to Horse Guards and realises that the parade appears to be continuing. It is only then that she allows herself a quick glance over her left shoulder. The look on her face after seeing that the Duke is trotting along behind is one of unabashed joy. Indeed, it was possibly the smiliest that Elizabeth II had ever been on a parade ground.

‘Funnily enough, it’s one of those things you often think about riding down the Mall: Who might at any minute do something crazy?’ Prince Charles reflected years later. ‘You must continue as Mama did. You can’t rush off in panic.’

Yet because there was no live ammunition, the incident tends to be downplayed or even forgotten. I mentioned it to another member of that exclusive club of world leaders who have been shot at in public – and survived. ‘I didn’t know about that,’ replied a surprised Donald Trump.

Adapted from Elizabeth II by Robert Hardman (Pan Macmillan, £22) to be published April 9. © Robert Hardman 2026. To order a copy for £18.70 (offer valid to 18/04/26; UK P&P free on orders over £25) go to www.mailshop.co.uk/books or call 020 3176 2937.