Queen Elizabeth's True Feelings About Meghan

31:09Indeed, indeed. So I do want to ask you about something we're about to experience, which is a major state visit. So I want to ask you, first of all, about King Charles' state visit coming up to see Donald Trump in America, but also, you know, American state visits do feel like the biggest and most dramatic state visits we have. So I'd also love to know your opinion on some of the queens that have gone by in past years. But let's start with Trump for now. There's been so much debate in Britain about whether they should even go ahead. Do you think in the long march of history, this state visit we're about to have will be regarded as a good call?

31:47On Keir Starmer's behalf, of course, it's not the king's decision. But should Charles go? Can he possibly get anything out of this in the context of the Iran war, tariffs, or the deteriorating relationship between the two countries? Well, the short answer is yes, he should go. What's he going to get out of it? Well, we don't know, and quite possibly not very much or nothing at all. But what we won't know, unless it's canceled, and I don't think it will be, is the downside, the damage that would be caused by not going. Because Donald Trump is a huge fan of the monarchy. And while I was writing my book, it was only three and a half months ago, he was one of the last people I interviewed.

32:33I went to Mar-a-Lago and had several chats with her about the royal family. And he had this almost veneration of the late queen. He loved her. He'd go on very well with her. But he has very high regard for the king as well. And he is the only U.S. president who's had two state visits to the U.K. And if you look at those visits, and indeed the visit which preceded them in 2018, when he met the queen for the first time, it was an official visit, not a state visit. But on all those occasions, he went out of his way to be on his best behavior, if you like. You know, he switched the phone off. There was no sort of social media stuff, no tweeting.

33:11It was very much, for him, that was a big deal. And this state visit is a big deal. So to cancel it would, I think, cause that it would go down extremely badly. And people are talking about, oh, well, he might embarrass the king. I would wager he won't embarrass the king. He will do his very best to be a very gracious host. What he does either side of the state, who knows? But while the royals are on American soil, he will be very courteous and a warm host in much the same way as he was when he was a guest of the royal family. So what we get out of it, I think there could be upsides. to going, maybe nothing happens.

34:05But the fact is, if we don't go, it will be very bad news indeed. Yeah, okay. So we could, for example, I mean, Trump, you just know what would happen. He would blame Starmer. He would say that Starmer, you know, poisoned his relationship with Charles. And the retaliation might well be renegotiating the trade deal and giving Britain worse tariffs or something like that. That would be, you know, people would then. Also, I think we have to remember that, you know, we as journalists, you and I, we're always looking at everything in the terms of, you know, whatever's happening today seems incredibly dramatic and what might happen tomorrow.

34:39But this state visit was always planned. I mean, whoever was president and whoever was monarch, this state visit was going to happen right now because this year is the 250th anniversary of the USA. And it's all about celebrating two and a half centuries since the founding fathers kicked out Charles' great times five grandfather, George III. And this sort of phenomenal transatlantic alliance evolved from that. And so UK-US relationship has been one of the most pivotal bilateral relationships in modern history. When you look at what it achieved in the Second World War and all the sort of good stuff that's come out of it.

35:19those are all the themes um that are going to be explored and you know these are two leaders two heads of state who are representatives of their peoples not of a political party or a particular creed you know they're there as representative of all the people and that's that's certainly what the sort of the king is going to be bringing to that um and yeah you're going to have some very um substantial elephants lurking in the corner of the room everyone will be ignoring this desperately trying not to talk about Andrew and Epstein and Harry and Meghan and Iran and all this stuff. But in the course of a three-day state visit, there's a lot of other stuff to focus on.

35:54And these are ongoing ties, cultural ties, social ties, shared sacrifice, shared language, shared culture. I mean, there's a lot to get into. And state visits are all about that. So there will, I'm sure, be sort of political subtext. But whenever the monarch goes anywhere, they're always accompanied by the foreign secretary that's that's the tradition so actually i think this trip is the the person facing the the biggest challenge on this trip is not the king or the queen it's the foreign secretary um yvette cooper and if anything remotely political surfaces um the king will do what monarchs always do which will go thank you for asking me that um uh can i direct you to my foreign secretary who's over there who'll be able to answer the question um because So, you know, that's a politician.

36:41I'm a monarch. Yeah, indeed. So what about the Queen and her state visits, both, you know, into America and when she has hosted American presidents? Do you have a favorite story from those or a favorite visit? Yeah, some wonderful stories. I mean, she, let's not forget, for her, America represented sort of salvation and glamour. as a child growing up facing the threat of invasion at any minute. At any minute, you know, the enemy might turn up and put the entire family up against a wall like the Romanovs. And once, you know, once the U.S. cavalry was coming to the rescue after Pearl Harbor, America was in the war, sort of sense of, okay, it's all going to be all right.

37:25And as a young woman growing up in post-war London, which was very sort of drat, nearly bankrupt, The few sort of flashes of glamour and excitement were sort of, you know, Hollywood films and West End musicals. She loved Oklahoma, went to see it time and again. That is a song from it. What is it? People will say we're in love. I mean, that became her. For her and Prince Philip, that was sort of their song. So she's very excited by all this and loved, you know, very excited to go on her first visit. Before she was queen, actually, was to the President Truman's White House in 1951. And that was a big deal.

38:02And then, of course, we had the situation where the White House and Downing Street were at loggerheads, and there was a lot of harsh language and a lot of awkward questions, and Britain was very much out of favor in Washington. at the time of the Suez crisis in 1956. In a nutshell, Britain, France, and Israel tried a sort of mad scheme to annex the Suez Canal, forgot or deliberately didn't tell major allies like the USA and others, and it all ended up in a terrible humiliation. What did Britain do? Britain sent the Queen on a state visit to the USA, and all was well after that. That was in 1957 she went.

38:43And that was, she loved that visit. I mean, she got a tick-a-take parade. It's the first time she'd ever seen a supermarket, for example. And there were other glitches in this so-called special relationship. I mean, during Vietnam, the British and American governments were loggerheads over that. And yet she was a sort of useful bonding element because she was also Queen of Australia, and Australia had troops in Vietnam. Very true. She was in a different position to the British government. And I think the real high point was sort of 70s and 80s. 70s, she was over there for the bicentenary, and that was a huge hit.

39:26Everybody loved that. She loved that. And then in the 80s, there's that famous photo of her riding in the park with Ron Reagan, which I talk about in my book. But the backstory to that is much more to it than just a nice photo opportunity and the fact they both like horses. I mean, for Reagan, that was a really big deal. This is the other state visit that was hosted at Windsor Castle because Trump did kind of say that. Funny enough, it wasn't called a state visit. That's another misconception is that there have been all these state visits over the years. American presidents didn't do state visits to the UK until 2003, funnily enough.

40:05The very first one was George W. Bush because state visits come with various sort of protocol. you know there's a sort of template um which involves certain sort of set piece events um which uh the white house always found there was sort of slightly you know we don't have time for this stuff we don't have time for the sort of the mandatory trip to westminster abbey and mandatory this and that we'll just call it an official visit so reagan's visit was to all intents and purposes a state visit the optics it looked like a state visit but he didn't have the sort of the big official welcome and all the sort of cavalry that come with it.

40:40But it was a very important visit. It was Reagan's first trip to outside America as president. He was coming to Europe. It was a huge deal. He was going to get to a NATO summit, a G7 summit. He was going to meet the Pope. I mean, these are all huge things. But what was it? He was really, really excited about riding in the park with the Queen. And we know that because I actually put in a freedom of information request and got some of the files. A lot of them are still classified, but a lot of them got out um and you see this this this traffic between washington and london um you know yeah nato g7 whatever i'm not just a what what what's the what horse is the president riding you know what sort of saddle is it what sort of jacket should he be wearing uh how will the queen be running all this stuff um and it mattered a lot and why it mattered even more is in between the time when this trip was uh a plan which was early 82 by the time it actually happened in june 82 Britain was at war in the South Atlantic, in the Falklands.

41:35And there was a sort of struggle going on in Washington. You know, you had sort of hawks who didn't want Argentina to get too humiliated because they regarded Argentina as a sort of important bullock against communism in South America. So, you know, there was a sort of struggle between those who wanted Britain to win that war and those who at least didn't want Argentina to lose it. And, of course, Britain was very keen to win it. and the Queen's son was fighting in it. So when you see Reagan and the Queen riding on those horses in Windsor Great Park, you're not just seeing a nice day out in the park on a horse.

42:10This is diplomacy in action. And sure enough, by the end of the Falklands War, Reagan was totally on side. And if you revisit his speech during that visit, and he went and addressed Parliament, and he did a speech at Windsor as well, he's completely on side by the end. He's likening the Falklands War to the liberation of Europe in 1944-45. So, you know, these are moments when the Queen definitely used her sort of diplomatic skills and for our benefit. And as I said, she loved America. And the upshot of that trip was she fulfilled a lifelong dream. She'd always wanted to go to Hollywood. And it hadn't happened before because when you're a monarch, you've got to go to Washington because it's a state visit.

42:57And Reagan said, oh, I tell you what, I'll invite you and it won't be a state visit. and then you don't have to go to Washington. I used to be governor of California. Come to California. So she did. And just, I would love to keep talking and keep talking and keep talking, but I think we are running out of time. So I've just got one more question for you, Robert, which is basically, I want to ask you an overarching question. So let's look at the Queen and her legacy. Now, it feels in this moment, like it's very uncontroversial to say, she is clearly probably the country's favourite royal, you know, certainly of the modern era, but she has this reverence towards her that I don't think is necessarily extended to the monarchs of the past either.

43:36Do you think, you know, it's huge, huge shoes to fill for Charles and William, isn't it? I mean, do you think she's kind of created like an almost an unmeetable bar? Or do you, I mean, or has Charles got off to a great start? Well, you know, what do you think? Well, I think both of those things are true. I mean, I remember at the time, just after her death, as people looked ahead, I mean, people would say openly, well, you know, no one can fill her shoes. And she is Idinta being the record-breaking monarch who broke every single record in the book, pretty much. How can you follow that? And she was the longest reigning monarch.

44:15I mean, no monarch in history. The only monarch ever who'd been to his brain for longer was Louis XIV of France. He was a boy king with a regency for a lot of that. Yeah. So it was a huge challenge, but she'd left it. I think she'd handled the transition very cleverly in her final years. More and more, Charles was taking on a lot of the heavy lifting. And at no point did we talk about a regency or anything like that. Although he was effectively doing all the state visits himself. By the end, he was opening parliament. but she was retaining the sort of core constitutional duties. And I think what happened after her death is that it was actually a sort of seamless transition and Charles stepped in and he did so very well to the point that although lots of people then were saying, oh, he's going to meddle, he's going to cross constitutional red lines, he's not going to be like the Queen, he has actually been very like the Queen.

45:15um uh he can't obviously have that that sort of um grand maternal coziness that comes with uh which which she enjoyed um because um you know he's he's a man in a suit um and and and there is i i think in the in the post-war era uh an old editor of mine used to say the sort of post-war history of britain is essentially a feminine one you know the the the dominant figures were the queen the queen mother Margaret Thatcher and Princess Diana and yeah I think we've just become very used to a sort of royal matriarchy if you like um and so uh and I think the king is you know he he's he's popular much like you know he you see him on his sort of walkabouts and things he's much more personable um than the late queen she was um I mean everybody loved her but everyone was slightly in awe of her um uh you know he he loves sort of getting stuck into sort of walk about he's very approachable and he's very tactile actually she wasn't um and and and yet he laughs a lot doesn't he there's a there's a warmth in the way that he laughs and jokes with people whereas the queen wasn't quite as animated i think as charles is yeah i mean charles can you know he can take a joke he's got a great sense of humor and i think you've only got to see you only need to look at that his first day in the job when he flew down from palm moral having after the death of the queen and that first day he's come down to the palace to do that broadcast and he stops the car outside the gate so he doesn't sweep into the buckingham palace and he gets out and there's this huge crowd there and i was in it and you know what's going to happen now and he gets out of the car and you just go straight up to um all these sort of sobbing people and puts his hand out to this this this woman who's standing there and she says um i don't want a handshake i want a hug can i have a hug and he goes oh right um and so she sort of hugs him and you think this is really weird he's just lost his mother and you're having to console this total stranger who wants a hug um and that that's sort of i think that kind of sums up his approach to the rain i mean he'll do the same thing, but he's going to do it differently.

47:27Robert, thank you so much for joining me. It's been fantastic talking to you. And here's your moment, just to give the book a plug. So it's Pegasus Books in America? It's Pegasus Books in America. It's called Elizabeth II in Private, in Public, Her Story. It's a beautiful book, beautiful cover, which I hope you'll flash up in a second, Jack. And it's coming out bang on her centenary. and I'm going to be in America to launch it. In New York? Then the royals are out too. And, you know, here come the Brits. King and queen on their way. I'm going to take one more quick break, but before I do, a reminder to follow me on X.

48:06I'm at Jack underscore Royston. You will find all my latest stories for Newsweek. When I'm back, Prince Harry is being sued for libel by Santibale, the charity he set up in Princess Diana's memory.

48:25Prince Harry is being sued by Centibale, which is the HIV and AIDS charity that he sets up. He co-founded in honour of Princess Diana. It operates in Africa and in Lesotho and Botswana. And obviously it was his kind of pride and joy. It was continuing his mother's legacy until he believes, he has argued in the past, that he was the subject of a hostile takeover by the chair of the organisation, Dr. Sophie Chandelka. Now, Dr. Sophie Chandalka is suing Harry for defamation and for libel over a kind of media campaign that she says was waged by Harry and one of the board members of the organization, Mark Dyer, against her in the public domain.

49:07So this all blew up in March last year. Harry and a load of other kind of trustees and board members resigned and basically said they could effectively that they couldn't work with Sophie Chandalka. It got really, really messy and really, really ugly. They did fire the first shots publicly, but she had also filed a lawsuit against Sanzibale behind the scenes before they took that decision. And now he faces the prospect for the first time of being a defendant in a libel lawsuit. Now, bear in mind, Harry and Meghan filed roundabout 10 lawsuits between them between 2019 and 2022. So in some ways, he's no stranger to courts.

49:46He's no stranger to lawsuits. But nobody has ever sued Harry before. Actually, Meghan's sister sued her. Samantha Markle sued Meghan, but Harry wasn't a defendant in that case. So first up, you know, if this case makes it to court and fewer UK cases get settled than US cases in America, it kind of feels like it's a foregone conclusion sometimes that these things are going to be settled out of court. in Britain it does happen for sure. It's perhaps a little less frequent. But if it makes it all the way to court, the discovery could be a major, major pain for Harry, more than a pain really. It could blow him to pieces because one of the things that Sophie has been saying publicly since this all blew up last year is that Meghan was actually a part of what went wrong between her and the charity.

50:35And what she says happened was that there was this big polo event in 2022, I think it was April 2022. And, you know, at the end, the winners of the polo tournament go on stage with their trophy and they pose for these publicity photos. And it's all fun and games. And, you know, it's all to raise money for charity, to raise money for Centervale, in fact. But there's this slightly awkward moment when there was an initial photo taken. Megan was kind of in the middle holding the trophy, all lovey-dovey. She kissed Harry and it was all great. And then Sophie tried to get into a follow-up photograph.

51:09And there was a little argument between her and Megan on stage. Very low key as far as the cameras reflected. But Megan appeared to try to tell Sophie, don't stand next to Harry, come stand next to me instead. And Sophie Chandalka told Sky News a year ago that she was put in a difficult position basically by Megan and that it caused all of this media hoo-ha about the choreography on the day. And she basically shoehorned Meghan into this story about the collapse of the charity. So if that plays out in the court case too, then you have the potential for not only Harry's private messages about Sophie, but also potentially messages between Harry and Meghan about Sophie could wind up being disclosed to Sens Barlet, to Sophie, and could wind up in the public domain via the court case.

51:57So the stakes are sky high for Harry and at a time when nothing seems to go right for this couple, absolutely nothing seems to go right for Harry and Meghan anymore. It used to be that nothing went wrong for them, that, you know, they seem to win everything they did. And then ever since basically the end of 2022 and start of 2023, like they just cannot get a break. Everything has been going wrong under the sun. And this is the latest thing. um so will sophie go ahead with the court case or will she settle out of court well i think personally that you know usually talk about the unstoppable force meets the immovable object and harry was the kind of unstoppable force who was taking on the immovable object of the tabloid press who bend for no one um but now actually i think this is hurricane versus hurricane um and basically sophie is maybe the only other person i'm not going to say on planet earth because there are plenty of very kind of toxic people on planet earth many of them wind up in reality tv um but she's certainly like the only person within the wider expanded royal universe um who is on as big a kind of mutually assured destruction uh trail of trail of destruction basically as harry and megan have been on um and so i kind of think in this case will go ahead she there was a review of the situation by the charity commission which basically found that both sides were kind of to blame a bit, you know, took points off both teams and said that the whole thing was a mess, basically, which it was.

53:27And so that wasn't enough for Sophie, clearly. She's come out wanting more. And so you don't do that unless there's something extra that you want. Now, I suppose it could be money. I think, you know, Centipale has had some difficulties. And so if either she were to get a big payday out of it or the charity were to get a big payday out of it, it's probably the latter more likely, maybe she would settle. Maybe she would. Maybe, you know, the money would change her mind. But I have a sneaking suspicion that actually this is about settling scores and that she wants her day in court because she wants to prove to the public that she was right and that she was wronged, you know, that Harry and Meghan wronged her and that, you know, the other people who made up the board of Sence Barley wronged her And she actually accused them of unconscious bias of racism and, you know, waging this horrible campaign against her in this bombshell interview she gave to Sky News.

54:24So basically, I do my gut right now is telling me that this probably will get to court and that it's going to be incredibly messy when it does. were it not Harry and Meghan one suspects that a mobile phone might get lost somewhere containing all the relevant messages it's that kind of situation Harry must have been I guess Harry and Meghan do both work from home so that might reduce the amount of electronic communication between them but otherwise they would I'm sure be talking to each other over written text messages and emails talking to their staff over emails about all the bad things that were going on.

55:03And that will all be subject potentially to discovery and all of it could wind up in court. So let's talk a little bit about what the two sides are saying because obviously this has already led to a war of words. You know, this whole thing has been, this whole scandal has been about a war of words from the very beginning and it doesn't go away. So Sanz Bali said that they filed the case after a coordinated adverse media campaign conducted since 25th March 2025 that has caused operational disruption and reputational harm to the charity, its leadership and its strategic partners. Their statement added, The proceedings have been brought against Prince Harry and Mark Dyer.

55:43Mark Dyer is like a long-standing figure from the royal world. He was Harry's aide for many years. He's an ex-military and he was a massive kind of role model, I think, within Harry's life is probably fair to say. So the proceedings filed against Harry and Mark Dyer identified through evidence as the architects of that adverse media campaign which had significant viral impact and triggered an onslaught of cyberbullying directed at the charity and its leadership. Centipale has experienced the adverse media campaign as false narratives circulated through the media about the charity and its leadership, attempts to undermine its relationships with staff, existing and prospective partners and forced diversion of leadership time and resources into managing a reputational crisis, not of the charity's making.

56:28So this is really interesting. I think she's, as a PR campaign, I think she's got this kind of spot on in the sense that she's not making it about her. She's making it about damage to the charity. But will she actually be able to show that they have defamed her? So defamation in Britain, the widely used, kind of loosely applied definition is that you've defamed somebody if your words about them tend to lower them in the estimation of right-thinking members of society generally. So in other words, if you lower somebody, if you lower their standing, then you defame them. But obviously, if your statements are true, that's a defence that you can operate.

57:12So Harry might try and come back and say, well, everything we said about her is true. So that's probably going to be what it comes down to. But also, there were a lot of briefings to the media, I think, at that time. And if she's going to throw those briefings to the media into this case, she's going to have to prove that they did come from Harry and Mark Dyer, who are the defendants. So it's still in light of, you know, it's quite a long statement to have been released. Often you don't get these big, long, detailed statements made publicly through PR means when litigation has been filed. So despite having this actually really long statement, I still don't feel like we have a proper concrete understanding of what this lawsuit is really about.

57:53I don't think we're going to be able to assess the strength of it until we know exactly the form of words used by Harry that she argues is defamatory. And until we can see that, it's very difficult to know exactly the strength of it. And we'll just have to wait and see. But assuming it goes ahead, we should, the way the UK high court system works, it's probably slightly less advanced than in America, but we should hopefully still get court filings submitted through a particular system equivalent to US PACER. It's called e-file. Hopefully there'll be some e-file filings on there, which will include the kind of plea of claim is what it's called.

58:35And once we get hold of that, we will know exactly what she's arguing and we'll be in a much better position to assess the strength of her case. And let's just be clear about it. You know, I have huge sympathy for Harry. I kind of feel like she did force him out of the organisation a little bit. I mean, he did decide to quit and he didn't have to. You know, she didn't literally force him to quit. He decided to quit. But clearly, you know, the situation had become pretty untenable and something had to happen. And obviously, Harry started the charity in honour of his late mother, of Princess Diana, and that is slightly heartbreaking for him to see him lose control of a charity that was so personal to him.

59:13Like not just any charity that he worked with, but charity he created in his mother's memory. At the same time, it is totally possible that Harry could have messed something up. And that is often the way of defamation cases. a lot of defamation cases. And in fact, lawsuits more generally that get lost by media organizations are lost on the basis of things where the mistake was not actually necessarily intentional. And I think a good example of that is actually one that Harry fought against the Daily Mail, or the Mail on Sunday rather. The Mail on Sunday, back in the early days before the Oprah interview, back in 2020 did this story saying that Harry, you know, in his role as Captain General of the Royal Marines since quitting royal life had not been in touch with the Royal Marines.

1:00:00And, you know, the kind of atmosphere of it was, well, should he continue to be Captain General if he's not going to keep in touch with the Marines? Now, Harry sued for libel on the basis that he had been in touch on a personal level with individual Royal Marine commandos, and that therefore the story was false. And he won, or at least the mail settled. So they paid some money to one of Harry's charities. Now, I thought it was kind of six of one and half a dozen of the other because if Harry had not been in touch with the kind of command structure of the Royal Marines, I can understand entirely that somebody might have entirely truthfully briefed the mail that they felt that Harry, you know, maybe had an obligation to do so and had not met that obligation.

1:00:48But the key thing that I think swung it for Harry is they didn't go to Harry for comment before publication, which didn't give Harry an opportunity to say to them, well, actually, I have been in touch on a personal level with a number of individual Marines. So, you know, if you take that, the mail on Sunday would almost certainly, if they'd known, they would almost certainly have just factored that in, mentioned it, worked it into the story, and they could probably have run something anyway. But they lost basically due to an error, due to a mistake. And it's totally possible that Harry could have made a similar kind of mistake, you know, out of high emotion in something that he said, have just got something wrong, perhaps without even realising that he was doing it.

1:01:34But, you know, I say this, not knowing that to be true. I'm just saying, you know, when emotions run high, mistakes are possible. We will not know the strength of the case that's being filed until we get that paperwork that tells us exactly what it's being fought over, exactly which words spoken or written by Harry, she is saying to fame to. If Harry loses, if it goes ahead, it goes to trial. Harry has to give evidence and Harry loses even beyond the potential for really reputationally damaging material to enter the case through discovery. Like he will also not really be able to kind of, it's going to be very hard for him to spin defeats in this context because having filed all these lawsuits against British newspapers, you know, with the mail, when Megan won her lawsuit against the mail on Sunday, the first one she filed over a private letter she sent her father, you know, Her victory statement was all written in these grandiose terms that this was a victory for all of the people damaged by the mail over the years.

1:02:38And they were the evil ones, basically. Her victory was a testament to the evilness of the mail. And if you've gone on record going in so hard against the newspapers that you've sued in this incredibly un-nuanced way, is then very difficult to spin your own court defeat, should it happen, as being anything other than a kind of damning indictment of your own conduct. Because Harry perceives his court victories and Meghan's past court victories as a damning indictment of the conduct of others. So if that is true, that if it is true that Meghan's victory against the male on Sunday dams the male on Sunday, then Sophie Chandouka's victory against Harry in court, if it happens, will damn Harry by the same logic.

1:03:24So he has been backed into a very tight corner here, and it could be very reputationally damaging to him if he doesn't either manage to settle the case, which clearly is what he should do if he can, or he wins. I think probably the sequence of events for him is try and get it thrown out by the judge. If successful, fine, that's the end of it. If unsuccessful, try and settle the case to contain the reputational damage. If successful, fine. If unsuccessful, when it goes to trial and he loses, it is reputational Armageddon for Prince Harry. And that's it for this episode of The Royal Report. Be sure to join me every show when I visit the latest royal headlines, embark on some royal deep dives and riff on all things royal.

1:04:08I'm Jack Royston, Newsweek's Chief Royal Correspondent, and a curtsy to you all.

1:04:16the royal report with jack royston is a member of the trust project