Queen Elizabeth II had one final wish to see all of her great-grandchildren — including her grandson Prince Harry’s two children with Meghan Markle — in the months leading up to her September 2022 death.
“The Queen wanted all the great-grandchildren to come up to Balmoral at some point over that summer, even if the Sussexes might not be able to make it,” royal biographer Robert Hardman writes in his forthcoming biography, “Elizabeth II: In Private. In Public. The Inside Story.”
“She wanted to make sure that they all had a really happy memory of her,” a friend of the family claims in the book, per an excerpt published by the Daily Mail on Monday.
The biographer includes mention of Prince Harry and Markle, who share children Prince Archie, 6, and Princess Lilibet, 4, as its worth noting the ex-pats were reportedly not on great terms with the rest of the royals at that time.
As many may recall, a notorious rift grew among the royal family in 2020 after Prince Harry and Meghan Markle decided to resign from their positions as royals and moved to the US.
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.”
