It’s been more than two years since the Queen sadly passed away peacefully at Balmoral in Scotland. As the country went into national mourning and the world remembered her incredible reign, the monarch’s official death certificate was released, along with her cause of death – which was listed on the document as simply old age.
While many hoped the Queen’s death would heal the rift between Prince Harry and The Firm, it seems as though the grief-stricken moment simply magnified tensions within the royal family. Prince Harry previously opened up about a heated discussion he had with his father King Charles on the sad day of his grandmother’s death. Writing in his explosive memoir, Spare, the Duke of Sussex shared details of his race to get to Scotland to be by his grandmother’s bedside, but sadly he didn’t make it before her final breath.
Harry and his wife Meghan Markle were in the UK at the time of the Queen’s passing, as they’d been on a mini tour of Europe. They were preparing to attend the WellChild Awards in London, when they learned of the decline in Her Majesty’s health. It’s likely Harry would have wanted Meghan by his side in his grief, but in his book he claims that Charles told him not to bring his wife with him to Balmoral. Furious about the comment, in response, he replied to the now-monarch: “Don’t ever speak about my wife that way.”
The Queen’s death certificate reveals her time of death was 3:10pm, meaning many royals weren’t there, including Harry who was on on a flight from Luton Airport that took off at 5.35pm. The monarch’s death was officially announced at 6.30pm, with the Duke of Sussex’s plane landing in Aberdeen at 6.46pm.
As Harry was still travelling when the devastating news broke he has since claimed he only found out his grandmother had died after checking the internet while on the plane. He wrote in his book that he had been thinking on the plane about the last time he was with his grandmother and what they had been talking about – he then got a notification on his phone.
“When the plane started to descend I saw that my phone lit up,” he said. “It was a message from Meg: ‘Call me when you get this.’ I looked at the BBC website. My grandmother had died. My father was King.” He went on to reveal how when he finally did make it to Balmoral, Princess Anne led him upstairs to “Granny’s bedroom” so he could pay his respects. He also lamented the fact he never got to see his mum, Princess Diana, after she died in a car crash in 1997 when he was just 12.
The Sussexes stepped down as working royals in March 2020 before relocating to the California in the US that summer. Since their move, the pair’s relationship with the rest of the Firm has become increasingly more fractured, particularly after their interview with Oprah Winfrey, the release of Spare as well as Harry and Meghan’s bombshell Netflix documentary.
