Prince Harry Reportedly Had a 10-Minute Meltdown Before Marrying Meghan Markle, Source Claims

Newly resurfaced claims from royal biographer Sally Bedell Smith suggest that the months before Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s May 2018 wedding were marked by friction inside the royal family, including tension between Harry and Queen Elizabeth II. Smith said her source, Lady Elizabeth Anson, a cousin and close confidante of the late queen, described the monarch as deeply upset by parts of the planning process and by what she saw as a lack of consultation and communication. Anson died in 2020.

According to the account, one of the most serious disputes involved Harry’s handling of wedding arrangements, including the choice of officiant for the ceremony at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle. Anson said Harry had asked the Archbishop of Canterbury to officiate without first getting approval from the Dean of Windsor, whose role covers the religious side of the ceremony. She also claimed the queen was frustrated by being left out of discussions about details such as Meghan’s wedding dress.

Smith’s June 2025 Substack column, later excerpted by The Times of London, quoted Anson as saying Harry had “blown his relationship with his grandmother” after a rude 10-minute exchange. A separate report from RadarOnline.com described a similar incident as a “10-minute meltdown” during a tense meeting with the queen. While the accounts differ in tone, both portray a period of strain that later eased.

Anson said the queen felt excluded as wedding plans moved forward and believed decisions were being made without the level of respect and consultation she expected. She recalled Harry saying that he and Meghan had chosen a different direction for the wedding and that the queen was content with it. But when Anson later spoke with Elizabeth, she said the queen told her the opposite: she was “not at all content.”

Despite the reported tension, Anson said relations improved by late April 2018, just weeks before the wedding. She said Harry visited the queen on his own and wrote her a letter explaining what was happening, after which the two “patched things up.” Even so, Anson suggested the queen still had reservations about Meghan and was uncertain about how well the marriage would work.

Anson’s recollections also touched on Meghan’s early impression of the royal family. After watching Harry and Meghan’s engagement interview in November 2017, she described Meghan as poised, intelligent and thoughtful, and said the couple appeared genuinely loving. She later met Meghan and found her charming, but said her view changed as planning progressed. Anson ultimately concluded that Meghan could become “nothing but trouble” and believed she saw events differently from the rest of the royal household.

She also said the queen sensed tensions between Meghan, Prince William and Kate Middleton, suggesting the younger royals were not working well together. Looking back, Anson viewed the wedding period as an early sign of deeper problems that would later emerge within the Sussexes’ relationship with the monarchy.