A royal source has revealed the key role Queen Camilla played in King Charles’ meeting with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, along with their children Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, were hosted by the King and Queen at Highgrove House, the monarch’s private home, last week.
Buckingham Palace confirmed a “private family occasion” had taken place, but no further official information regarding the meeting has been released.
However, an inside source “close to the Sussexes” has revealed the lengths the Royal Family went to to keep the meeting shrouded in secrecy.
Camilla, who was nearby at her Ray Mill House estate, selflessly “dropped everything” and drove over to Highgrove in “quite a hurry”.
“Charles wanted Camilla to be there for moral support and because she has been a pillar of strength for him throughout all the drama with Harry, and she dropped everything,” a source told Vanity Fair.
“She told no one, not even her family. She just got in the car and headed over.
“They were all on a mission to keep the meeting as watertight as possible.”
Harry and Meghan have not released any details about the meeting with the King and Queen.
The private affair marked the first time the monarch had seen Archie and Lilibet in person in more than four years.
Meanwhile, the Duchess had not been in the UK since 2022 when she attended the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II with Harry.
It comes after a royal expert claimed the Sussexes had to adhere to a strict set of rules in order for the meeting to go ahead.
“After intense pressure, the prince ultimately got his way in securing a meeting with seven-year-old Prince Archie and five-year-old Princess Lilibet at the royal Highgrove estate in Gloucestershire,” author Sally Bedell Smith wrote in her Royals Extra Substack.
“But Harry had to yield to strict conditions imposed by Buckingham Palace: no photographs, nothing on social media, no advance leaks to the press, and no descriptions of what took place except a brief confirmation from the King’s office that it had occurred.”
The royal author further claimed the Queen attended the meeting to act as a “witness” to Charles and Harry’s conversation.
“Significantly, Queen Camilla was by her husband’s side, not least to serve as a witness to Charles’ interactions with his volatile younger son—as she had been in February 2024 when Harry came to London after Charles’s cancer diagnosis was revealed,” she added.