Between all of the reports that have come out since 2018 and everything that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have said themselves, it’s probably safe to assume that more than one member of the royal family wasn’t supportive of their union, but this intel really sends that message home. According to a former royal butler, Prince Philip was so relieved that Harry and Meghan’s wedding came to an end that he even dropped a little profanity in the process
As Grant Harrold prepares to release his upcoming memoir, The Royal Butler, about the years he spent working for the royal family, he spoke with The Telegraph about some of the memories that still stand out to him about that time, which ranged from 2004 to 2011.
Though he no longer worked for the royals when Harry and Meghan tied the knot, he has been close with Jack Stooks, who worked as a gardener at Highgrove until recently. So when Jack was invited to the wedding, he brought Grant along as his plus one, and that meant that he witnessed a moment between Philip and Queen Elizabeth that he hasn’t spoken about until now.
In The Royal Butler, Grant wrote about the exchange between the late couple that he overheard while watching the royals leave St. George’s Chapel following the wedding ceremony.
“Once all the formalities were over, we watched as the happy couple, and then the other members of the royal family, filed out of the chapel,” he wrote in the book. “When Prince Philip came out he turned to the Queen and said, ‘Thank f— that’s over.’”
Though the one hour ceremony might have seemed like it dragged on, Philip’s reported reaction to it might have had more to do with how he felt about the couple themselves. That didn’t change after the wedding, either; according to what royal expert Ingrid Seward once said in a 2020 interview, Philip was a bit baffled about the whole “Megxit” debacle.
“Philip couldn’t understand why Meghan wouldn’t simply support Harry and the monarchy the way he had supported the Queen,” she said at the time. “He gave up everything — his career, his identity — for duty. That shaped his entire outlook.”
“He just cannot understand why she couldn’t support Harry and help him rather than wanting to have her voice,” she later added.
