Royal sources told the Daily Mail that King Charles III instructed Prince Harry that it would be "not right or appropriate" for Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, to be at Queen Elizabeth II's bedside at Balmoral as the monarch's health deteriorated on Sept. 8, 2022.
According to the account published Wednesday, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were in the country when they learned the queen was unwell and issued a joint statement saying both would travel to Scotland. The report says that message, shared at 1:53 p.m., surprised palace aides and prompted a rapid clarification that only Harry was travelling at that moment.
The Daily Mail report says that Harry was at Frogmore Cottage when he received a call from his father instructing him not to bring his wife. A source quoted by the paper said that aides pointed out other senior royal wives, including the Princess of Wales, were not attending and that attendance needed to be limited to the closest family. The source said Charles "made it very, very clear Meghan would not be welcome."
The incident intensified a flurry of private and public statements. The initial joint statement and its subsequent clarification were described in the report as creating "half an hour" of confusion before palace officials and the couple's representatives adjusted their messages.
Prince Harry later wrote about the episode in his memoir, Spare, saying the reasons given by his father "didn't make any sense, and actually they were disrespectful. I didn't tolerate it." Harry arrived in Scotland after the queen's death; his private jet touched down at 7:52 p.m., about 90 minutes after the palace formally announced Her Majesty's passing.
Harry said in Spare that he first learned of the queen's death from the BBC while on that flight and that he received a message from Meghan urging him to call when he landed. The duke did not join the family party that left RAF Northolt en route to Aberdeen, and he later said he was unable to say a final goodbye to his grandmother.
In the days following the queen's death, the Sussexes and the Waleses appeared together for a walkabout at Windsor Castle and for other public moments as the family prepared for the state funeral. Robert Jobson, author of Our King, is quoted in the Daily Mail saying that the walkabout was arranged by the Prince of Wales and that the Princess of Wales later described participating as "one of the hardest things she'd ever had to do."
Meghan was among members of the royal family who joined the procession behind the queen's coffin and attended the state funeral on Sept. 19, 2022. She was seen wiping a tear outside Westminster Abbey before taking her seat alongside her husband. The couple remained in the U.K. for nearly three weeks following the queen's death.
Meghan has since spoken about the personal toll of that period. On the second season of the Netflix series With Love, Meghan said the longest she had been apart from her children was "almost three weeks. I was not well." Harry has also written about the difficulty of being separated from their children around the time of the queen's death.
The paper's account is the latest in a series of public and private recollections about the tensions between the Sussexes and other members of the royal family during the monarch's final days. Some elements of the story derive from anonymous "royal sources" and from memoirs and media appearances by the principal figures.
In recent months, there have been signs of a thaw. Reporting has noted a July meeting between communications staff from the Sussex and Windsor camps and an anticipated meeting between King Charles and Prince Harry that would be their first in roughly 20 months. The duke is expected to be in London on Sept. 8 for the third anniversary of the queen's death and to attend the WellChild Awards, a charity event he supports.
The Daily Mail reported the account and attributed the details about the Balmoral exchange to unnamed royal sources. The palace has previously declined to comment on private family conversations surrounding the queen's final hours. Sources close to the Sussexes have offered different perspectives at various times in public statements, memoirs and interviews.