Prince Harry and Queen Elizabeth’s awkward phone call after Megxit revealed

A former Buckingham Palace insider has revealed a chilling moment that reportedly marked the point of no return in the relationship between the late Queen Elizabeth II and her grandson Prince Harry following his and Meghan Markle’s exit from the royal fold.

According to a switchboard operator who regularly handled calls for the Queen, a phone call from Harry during the COVID-19 pandemic was met with an unprecedented “stony silence”, a reaction so unusual it immediately signalled to staff that relations had badly deteriorated.

The former palace staffer explained that standard protocol required operators to call the Queen’s private number and announce the identity of the caller before connecting the line. Normally, the monarch would acknowledge the operator with a polite word of thanks before the call was put through.

“When I announced to the Queen that Harry was her caller, there was just a stony silence,” the operator recalled in comments reported by the Daily Mail.

“In fact, it was so uncomfortable that I filled the silence myself by saying ‘Thank you, Your Majesty’ and then connected them.”

The insider added: “It was memorable because the Queen would never not acknowledge you,” the former staffer said.

The incident is said to have taken place during the height of the pandemic, a deeply difficult period for the Royal Family.

At the time, the Queen’s husband Prince Philip was in declining health, and tensions surrounding Harry and Meghan Markle’s decision to step back from royal life were still raw.

The revelation comes in the wake of new insights published by royal author Sally Bedell Smith on her Substack, Royal Extras. Her reporting draws on private conversations with Lady Elizabeth Anson, one of Queen Elizabeth’s closest confidantes in her later years.

In those conversations, Lady Elizabeth reportedly described Meghan as “nothing but trouble” and claimed the Queen was “not at all content” in the period leading up to the Sussexes’ wedding, following a series of incidents that caused concern inside the Palace.