'Harry & Meghan': Prince Harry Says Prince William 'Screamed and Shouted' at Him at Family Crisis Meeting
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are revealing intense details about the Sandringham Summit. In the second volume of their Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex revealed there was a "wedge created" between Prince Harry and his brother Prince William after the latter screamed and shouted at him during the meeting called by the late Queen Elizabeth after Harry and Markle announced their intention to step back as senior working members of the royal family.
"I sent an email to the three most senior private secretaries saying, 'Let's have a meeting, let's get together and have a meeting and talk about this,'" Harry said of the aftermath of his January 2020 announcement. "Because what was happening, what was playing out in public was crazy. And that meeting was rejected."
It was only once Markle had left to go back to Canada that a meeting was planned for Sandringham, which Harry said was clearly intended to keep his wife from being a part of the conversation. Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles and Prince William met for around 90 minutes during the summit on Jan. 13, 2020, to "talk things through" and Harry says he entered a set of options.
"I went in with the same proposal that we'd already made publicly. But once I got there, I was given five options," he explained. "One being all in, no change, five being all out." The royal ended up choosing option three: "Half in, half out; have our own jobs but also work in support of the Queen." But despite his compromise, Harry's older brother William was very upset.
"It became very clear very quickly that that goal was not up for discussion or debate," said Harry. "It was terrifying to have my brother scream and shout at me, and my father say things that simply weren't true and my grandmother quietly sit there and sort of take it all in." He continued, "But you have to understand that from the family's perspective, especially from [Queen Elizabeth's], there are ways of doing things and her ultimate sort of mission goal or responsibility is the institution. People around her telling her, 'By the way, that proposal or these two doing 'xyz' is going to be seen as an attack on the institution,' then she's going to on the advice that she's given. That was really hard."
The meeting "finished without any solidified action plan," Harry noted. "I think from their perspective, they had to believe that it was more about us and maybe the issues that we had, as opposed to their partner, the media, and themselves, that relationship that was causing so much pain for us. They saw what they wanted to see," the Duke of Sussex said.
"The saddest part of it was this wedge created between myself and my brother so that he's now on the institution's side," he continued. "Part of that I get, I understand, right, that's his inheritance. So to some extent, it's already ingrained in him that part of his responsibility is the survivability and continuation of this institution." Harry & Meghan is streaming now on Netflix.