What Queen Elizabeth Really Thought of Meghan Markle – Hw

What did Queen Elizabeth really think of Meghan Markle? You might assume you already know the answer. The tabloid headlines wrote themselves [music] for years. Endless stories about tension, drama, and disapproval behind palace walls. But the truth is far more complicated than a simple thumbs up or thumbs down.

Because the Queen’s [music] opinion of Megan wasn’t static. It wasn’t fixed from the beginning. It changed dramatically over time, shaped by specific moments, public appearances, and private encounters that revealed the fundamental gulf between what Megan wanted and what the [music] queen expected. And where that opinion started might genuinely surprise you.

Because in the beginning, the queen adored Megan. Not polite tolerance, not stiff upper lip diplomacy, genuine warmth, real affection. The kind of enthusiasm that made the queen break protocol in ways she almost never did for anyone. and body language that experts said showed something remarkable, a monarch who actually enjoyed being around her grandson’s new wife.

So, what happened? How did the queen go from giggling alongside Megan like old friends to reportedly describing her in the harshest possible terms just weeks before her death? What did Megan do or not do that shifted the Queen’s opinion so completely? And what do their [music] public interactions reveal about what was really happening behind closed doors? To understand where things ended up, you have to understand where they started.

And they started in a place that contradicts almost everything [music] the tabloids would have you believe. When Prince Harry first introduced Megan to his grandmother, the Queen wasn’t skeptical. She wasn’t guarded. She was thrilled. The Queen saw something in Megan that genuinely excited her. A modern woman who could connect with the Commonwealth in ways the traditional royals simply couldn’t.

Here was someone with global star power, biracial heritage, and a platform that reached millions of people around the world. And the Queen didn’t just passively accept this relationship. She actively championed it. Consider this. The Queen invited Megan to her annual Christmas celebration at Sandringham before Harry and Megan were even married.

Royal partners traditionally weren’t invited to Sandringham until after the wedding. Catherine had waited years for that invitation, but for Megan, the Queen made an exception. She wanted her there before she was even officially family. The Queen also assigned Sophie, the Duchess of Edinburgh, to serve as a guide and mentor to Megan.

Sophie was one of the Queen’s most trusted confidantes, a woman who had successfully navigated the transition [music] from outsider to respected royal. By pairing Megan with Sophie, the Queen was sending a clear message. She wanted this to work. She was investing in Megan’s success. But the most striking evidence of the Queen’s early affection came in June 2018, less than a month after the royal wedding.

The Queen invited Megan on an overnight trip aboard the royal train, a privilege that had never been extended to any of the younger generation of royals. Not William, not Catherine, not even Harry himself, just Megan. The two traveled to Cheshire together for a day of public engagements, and what the cameras captured told a powerful story.

Body language experts analyzed their interactions extensively and the consensus was remarkable. The queen displayed what one expert called a genuinely authentic smile. The kind that crinkles the eyes and can’t be faked. Both women were photographed leaning in toward each other throughout the day. An unconscious reaction between people who feel comfortable and at ease with one another.

When they sat together, Megan mirrored the queen’s posture, a sign of rapport and connection. And then there was the giggling. Photo after photo showed the two women laughing together, sharing what one body language expert described as a collusive and even secret sharing relationship. Megan would giggle behind her hand while the queen smiled beside her.

These weren’t the stiff, formal interactions you might expect between a 92-year-old monarch and her grandson’s new wife. This looked like genuine friendship. There was another moment from that trip that Megan herself would later reveal, a private detail that showed just how warm the queen had been in those early days. During her interview with Oprah years later, Megan described being in a car with the Queen, traveling between engagements, the Queen had a blanket across her knees for warmth, and when she noticed Megan was chilly, she simply

said, “Megan, come on.” and spread the blanket over Megan’s knees as well. “It was a small gesture, but it spoke volumes.” The Queen treating Megan not like a newcomer to be tolerated, but like a granddaughter to be cared for. “It made me think of my grandmother,” Megan said, where she’s always been warm and inviting and really welcoming.

The Queen even chose the Chester trip specifically because the itinerary included a visit to a theater, a nod to Megan’s [music] acting background. It was a thoughtful gesture, selecting engagements that would make Megan feel comfortable and confident. And afterwards, the Queen [music] reportedly gave Megan top marks for how she handled herself.

This was a monarch going out of her way to welcome someone into the family, not merely accepting her, championing her, but the woman who shared her blanket that day would one day call this marriage a catastrophe. In early 2020, everything changed. Harry and Megan announced that they wanted to step back from their roles as senior royals, but they didn’t want to leave entirely.

They proposed what became known as the half-in halfout model, a hybrid arrangement where they would continue to support the queen on certain occasions while also pursuing their own commercial interests and building their own brand. To the queen, it was impossible. She had spent 70 years protecting the monarchy. And she understood something fundamental.

You cannot serve the crown part-time. You cannot represent an institution built on duty and service while simultaneously building a personal brand. The moment you start monetizing your royal connections, you compromise the integrity of the entire system. So she said no. Harry and Megan could stay and serve or they could leave completely.

But they could not have it both ways. They chose to leave. Their final public appearance as senior royals came at the Commonwealth Day Service at Westminster Abbey in March 2020. and the Queen’s decisions about how to handle their attendance [music] revealed everything about how her feelings had shifted.

In 2018 and 2019, Harry and Megan had walked down the aisle in the main procession behind the Queen, a mark of their status as senior working royals. But for 2020, the Queen approved a different arrangement. Harry and Megan would enter separately. They would not be part of the royal procession. The printed order of service made no mention of them at all.

The message was unmistakable. The queen had personally authorized their demotion and she wanted it visible. [music] Inside the abbey, the seating told the same story. Harry and Megan were placed in the second row away from the senior royals who had once been their equals. When the queen processed [music] him with Charles, the moment when all eyes were on the monarch, Harry and Megan were already seated off to the side, watching like guests rather than family.

The woman who had once put Megan on the royal train, who had shared her blanket and giggled beside her like an old friend, had now approved arrangements that made their diminished status unmistakably clear. The warmth was gone. In its place was the cold machinery of institutional disapproval. In March 2021, Harry and Megan sat down with Oprah Winfrey for a 2-hour interview that would send shock waves through the royal family.

The couple made explosive [music] claims that Megan had experienced suicidal thoughts and received no support from the institution, that a member of the royal family had raised concerns about how dark their son Archie’s skin might be, and that the family had cut them off financially. The Queen’s public response was measured.

She released a brief statement acknowledging that the issues raised were concerning and would be addressed privately. She included one carefully worded phrase that royal watchers immediately recognized as significant. Recollections may vary. It was the Queen’s polite way of saying she didn’t entirely agree with Harry and Megan’s version of events.

But behind closed doors, [music] the Queen was more than disappointed. She was deeply hurt. This wasn’t just criticism of individual family members. It was an attack [music] on the institution itself, the institution she had dedicated every single day of her life to protecting. She had sacrificed personal freedom, privacy, and countless family moments to serve the crown.

And now her own grandson and his wife were publicly questioning the integrity of everything she had built. For the queen, this felt like betrayal. But as devastating as the interview was, something else would cut even deeper. Something personal. It had to do with a name. The Queen’s name, in fact, the most personal thing she had.

In June 2021, Harry and Megan welcomed their daughter and named her Lily Diana. Lily was the queen’s private family nickname, a name used only by her closest relatives. Her parents had called her Lily when she was a child. Her beloved husband, Philillip, had called her Lily throughout their 73-year marriage. It was an intimate name reserved for the innermost circle of her life.

After the birth, Harry and Megan’s team released a statement saying they had spoken with the queen and that she was supportive of the name choice. The palace pushed back almost immediately. Sources close to the queen suggested that she had not actually given her blessing. She had simply been informed. What happened next says everything about how far the Queen’s opinion of Megan had fallen.

She was as angry as she’d ever been. The Queen felt that Harry and Megan had taken something deeply personal and private, a name that connected her to her deceased parents and her late husband, and used it to generate headlines. They had, in her view, commandeered her identity for their brand. The fact that they had then publicly claimed her blessing when the reality was more complicated only made it worse.

For a woman who valued discretion, privacy, and honesty above almost everything else, this was a profound violation of trust. The Platinum Jubilee in June 2022 would be the last time Megan and the Queen appeared at the same public events, and the Queen’s [music] decisions about how to handle Harry and Megan’s attendance made her feelings unmistakably clear.

While the working royals gathered on the Buckingham Palace balcony for the traditional trooping the color appearance, Harry and Megan watched from the major general’s office, visible only through windows, the Queen herself had decreed that only working royals would join her on the balcony. Harry and Megan [music] were explicitly excluded.

At the service of Thanksgiving at St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Queen authorized the seating arrangements that kept Harry and Megan separated from William and Catherine, reportedly to prevent any interaction that might divert attention from her celebration. They entered separately. They sat on opposite sides of the cathedral.

The queen wanted distance and she got it. The contrast with 2018 was devastating. The monarch who had once invited Megan aboard the royal train, who had giggled beside her and shared her blanket, who had broken protocol to welcome her to Sandringham. That same monarch now approved arrangements designed to keep Megan at arms length.

The most revealing moment of the Jubilee weekend happened in [music] private when the Queen finally met her great granddaughter and namesake Liet for the first and only time. Harry and Megan had reportedly hoped to have a photographer capture the historic meeting between the 96-year-old monarch and the one-year-old girl who bore her name.

The Queen’s response was succinct. No chance. Palis aids [music] wanted to ensure the meeting was a quick in-n-out job. The encounter was all quite formal, lasting somewhere between 15 minutes and an hour, depending on the account. Brief, controlled, [music] and nothing like the warm family gathering Harry and Megan might have hoped for.

Archie made his deep boughs. Baby Liet cuddled the monarch’s shins. The queen remarked that she had expected the children to be a bit more American, meaning more rambunctious. They were, she said, the sweetest children. But even that tender observation carried an edge, a hint that she had expected something less refined from Harry and Megan’s children.

and the refusal to allow photographs sent its own message. The Queen would not be used for what she apparently saw as a photo opportunity designed to benefit Harry and Megan’s image. But even that coldness didn’t capture what the Queen truly felt about Megan by the end. By the final months of her life, the Queen’s opinion of Megan had completed its transformation.

In August 2022, just weeks before her death, the Queen hosted guests at Balmoral Castle. During conversations at dinner, she reportedly referred to the marriage as a catastrophe for the family. And when discussing Megan specifically, she allegedly used the word evil. Now, it’s important to acknowledge that this particular account comes from an [music] anonymous guest and was reported secondhand.

We cannot verify the exact words the queen used, and it’s possible the characterization was exaggerated. The queen was not the type to speak carelessly, even in private settings. But the fact that such claims emerged and were considered credible enough to publish tells us something profound about how dramatically the relationship had deteriorated.

The woman who had shared her blanket with Megan, who had leaned in toward her and laughed alongside her, who had given her top marks and broken protocol to welcome her. That woman now reportedly spoke of her in the harshest possible terms. The ark was complete. from genuine warmth to [music] catastrophic disappointment. From giggles on the royal train to the word evil at Balmoral.

What makes this story so devastating is how much the queen invested and how completely that investment was thrown back in her face. [music] The queen genuinely wanted Megan to succeed. The evidence is overwhelming. She broke protocol repeatedly. She offered guidance and mentorship. She created opportunities for Megan to shine.

Her body language in those early appearances showed real warmth, the kind that can’t be manufactured for cameras. She gave Megan every advantage, every benefit of the doubt, every chance to thrive. And in return, she got public accusations on international television. She got her private family nickname plastered across headlines without her true blessing.

She got a grandson who chose to air grievances to Oprah rather than resolve them privately with the grandmother who had always adored him. The queen had spent 70 years putting duty above personal comfort. She had sacrificed privacy, freedom, and countless personal desires for the institution she served. She had watched her own sisters struggle, her children’s marriages collapse, her family’s dirty laundry aired repeatedly, and through all of it, she had maintained dignity, discretion, and an unwavering commitment to the

crown. Harry and Megan made a different choice. [music] And the Queen, who had given them so much, was left to watch from Windsor as they monetized their royal connections, spoke publicly about private family matters, [music] and built a brand on the very access and status she had helped provide them. The Queen died in September 2022, carrying the weight of this unresolved chapter with her.

The ark from giggling on the royal train to the word catastrophe at Balmoral tells you everything you need to know about how deeply the betrayal cut. Thank you so much for watching. Please like and subscribe.

QQ4 Bob Dylan and Keith Richards have been close friends for nearly 40 years. The friendship began on a live television program in November of 1986 in the 11 seconds after Bob Dylan called Keith Richards music derivative on camera. Keith Richard’s response to that assessment, one sentence said without anger, without performance, with the specific directness of a man who has nothing to prove and knows it made Bob Dylan laugh.

Then made Bob Dylan go quiet. then made Bob Dylan say two words that people who know Bob Dylan say he almost never said to anyone. This is the story of those 11 seconds and the 40 years that followed them. The program was a live music interview special broadcast on an American network on the evening of November 3rd, 1986. The format was simple.

Two musicians, a host, an hour of conversation about music and the state of it. The producers had assembled the pairing of Bob Dylan and Keith Richards with the specific calculation of television producers who understand that two people with equally strong and potentially incompatible views about what music is and what it should do will produce better television than two people who agree about everything.

The calculation was correct, though not in the way the producers had anticipated. Bob Dylan was 45 years old in November of 1986. Bob Dylan had released Empire Burlesque the previous year and had been on the road for most of the intervening period as part of the True Confessions tour with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Bob Dylan was in November of 1986 in one of the most prolific and restless phases of a career that had consisted almost entirely of prolific and restless phases. A career that had moved through folk, rock, country, gospel, and back again, that had been declared finished at least six times by the music press, and at each time continued with the serene indifference of a river to the opinions of people standing on its banks.

Bob Dylan had been redefining what music could be. Since 1962, Bob Dylan had invented and reinvented himself so many times that reinvention had become his defining characteristic, not in the superficial sense of a performer changing costumes, but in the deeper sense of a musician who had never allowed his work to settle into a form that could be anticipated or categorized from the outside.

Bob Dylan understood influence and originality and the relationship between them better than almost anyone alive in 1986. Bob Dylan had spent 24 years thinking carefully and specifically about where music came from and where music was going and what it meant that those two things were always in constant conversation with each other.

Keith Richards was 42 years old in November of 1986. Keith Richards had been playing guitar professionally since 1962. Keith Richards had built a career on a foundation of American blues and rhythm and blues. A foundation that Keith Richards had studied with the systematic devotion of someone who understood that the tradition he was building on was not incidental to the music he was making, but essential to it.

that you could not understand what Keith Richards did without understanding where Keith Richards had come from and what Keith Richards had been listening to since he was a teenager in Dartford with American Import Records and a secondhand guitar and no teacher except the recordings themselves. Keith Richards had never pretended otherwise. Keith Richards had in fact spent considerable energy across his career making the lineage explicit, naming the artists, citing the recordings, insisting on the acknowledgement of influence that the mainstream music

industry had a long history of suppressing or ignoring or crediting to the wrong people. If anything, Keith Richards was more transparent about his sources than most musicians of his generation. Keith Richards had always said openly that the Rolling Stones came directly from the blues, that Muddy Waters and Robert Johnson and the specific tradition of the Mississippi Delta were not background influences, but foundational ones.

The music Keith Richards made was in direct and sustained conversation with that tradition, something Keith Richards considered not a limitation, but a responsibility and a form of respect. The interview had been running for 8 minutes when the host asked Bob Dylan about the current state of rock and roll.

Bob Dylan answered with the density and the indirection that characterized Bob Dylan’s responses to direct questions, turning the question over, approaching it from an unexpected angle, finding his way to what he actually thought through a series of observations that moved like a river rather than a road. Bob Dylan was not a straightforward interview subject.

Bob Dylan had been asked about rock and roll in hundreds of interviews across 24 years and had developed the habit of treating the question as an invitation to think out loud rather than a request for a prepared position. The producer Gerald Sherman said afterward that in the first 8 minutes of the interview, he had been slightly anxious, not because anything was going wrong, but because nothing was going anywhere in particular yet.

The interview had the feeling of two conversations happening simultaneously. Bob Dylan’s internal one and the external one visible to the cameras. And Gerald Sherman was not certain in those first eight minutes that the two conversations would converge into something. Bob Dylan talked about influence. Bob Dylan talked about originality.

Bob Dylan talked about the difference between music that absorbed a tradition and transformed it and music that absorbed a tradition and reproduced it. And then Bob Dylan made his assessment. And then Bob Dylan said with the precision of a man making a musical assessment rather than a personal judgment that the Rolling Stones work, and Bob Dylan was specific, naming Keith Richards as the guitarist whose approach he was discussing was derivative in a way that Bob Dylan found limiting.

Bob Dylan said it without hostility. Bob Dylan said it as a technical observation about the relationship between source material and the work that came from it. Bob Dylan said that Keith Richards played the blues the way the blues had already been played, rather than using the blues as a starting point for something that had not yet been played.

Keith Richards had been listening to this with the specific attention Keith Richards gave to things being said about music by people who knew music. Keith Richards did not interrupt. Keith Richards did not shift in his chair or display any of the visible signals of a person preparing a defensive response. Keith Richards listened to Bob Dylan’s complete observation all the way to its conclusion without interrupting and without displaying any visible signal of preparing a response.

Then Keith Richards said one sentence. The sentence was not a rebuttal. The sentence did not defend Keith Richards music or argue for its originality or challenge Bob Dylan’s characterization of what the blues meant in the context of rock and roll. The sentence was something else entirely, something that required a specific kind of confidence to say.

The confidence of a person who has spent long enough thinking about the same things as the person they are talking to that they can locate the exact point where their thinking diverges and say something useful about that point rather than simply defending their own position. The sentence acknowledged everything Bob Dylan had said, the assessment, the distinction Bob Dylan was drawing, the specific musical concern underlying the observation, and then turned it 90°.

Keith Richards took Bob Dylan’s own framework, the one Bob Dylan had used to analyze Keith Richards relationship to the blues tradition, and applied it back to Bob Dylan’s work with the same precision Bob Dylan had used to apply it to Keith Richards. Spare aimed. The sentence asked Bob Dylan something about Bob Dylan’s own music, about the relationship between Bob Dylan’s sources and Bob Dylan’s output that Bob Dylan had not been asked on television before.

The sentence did not attack. The sentence illuminated. Bob Dylan laughed. The laugh was not the polite laugh of someone responding to a joke. The laugh was the involuntary laugh of someone who has been genuinely surprised. The specific kind of surprise that a person of exceptional intelligence experiences when someone else’s intelligence exceeds their expectations.

Bob Dylan laughed for 4 seconds. Then Bob Dylan stopped laughing. Then Bob Dylan was quiet for 3 seconds in the way that Bob Dylan was quiet when Bob Dylan was thinking rather than performing thought. Then Bob Dylan said, “You’re right.” The producer in the booth, a man named Gerald Sherman, who had been working in television for 14 years, said afterward that in 14 years of live television production, he had never heard Bob Dylan say those two words in a public forum.

Gerald Sherman said he had worked with Bob Dylan on two previous occasions and had observed Bob Dylan in numerous other contexts and that you’re right was not a phrase that Bob Dylan deployed easily or often because Bob Dylan had spent 24 years being right about music in ways that other people eventually caught up with. And the experience of being right ahead of everyone else does not generally produce a man who says you’re right readily when someone else makes a point.

The host of the program, a journalist named Patricia Wells, who had been interviewing musicians for 12 years, said afterward that the 11 seconds between Bob Dylan’s assessment and Bob Dylan saying, “You’re right,” were the most extraordinary 11 seconds of television she had been present for. Patricia Wells said that what she witnessed in those 11 seconds was not a debate or a confrontation or a celebrity exchange of competing opinions.

Patricia Wells said what she witnessed was one musician recognizing another musician as an equal, which was in the specific context of Bob Dylan in 1986, not something that happened in public very often. The interview continued for another 42 minutes after those 11 seconds. The conversation between Bob Dylan and Keith Richards in the remaining 42 minutes was described by everyone who watched it as fundamentally different from the first 8 minutes.

The host, Patricia Wells, who had been conducting music interviews for 12 years and understood the difference between the performance of conversation and actual conversation, said that at approximately the 9-minute mark, something shifted in the studio. That the formal interview, architecture dissolved, and what replaced it was something less structured and more genuine.

Bob Dylan and Keith Richards talked about influence and originality and the blues and what it meant to build on a tradition without being consumed by it. They talked about specific recordings and specific musicians with the specificity of two people who had spent their entire adult lives thinking about these things and rarely found another person who had thought about them with equivalent care.

They talked about where music came from and where music was going and whether those two questions were actually one question or two. Patricia Wells said afterward that she had asked approximately four questions in the remaining 42 minutes because Bob Dylan and Keith Richards did not require questions. They required only a room and a camera and the shared understanding that what they were saying together was worth recording carefully.

She said it was the best interview she had ever conducted and that she had conducted the smallest part of it. After the program, Bob Dylan and Keith Richards were in the corridor outside the studio when the host Patricia Wells passed them. Patricia Wells said she did not stop because she did not want to interrupt.

She observed them for approximately 30 seconds from a distance. She said they were talking with the ease of people who had known each other for years rather than people who had met for the first time 2 hours earlier. She said that something had shifted between them during the broadcast that the broadcast had made permanent rather than temporary.

She continued down the corridor and did not look back. She said in her account of that evening that she had decided in that moment not to interrupt the conversation because some conversations are more valuable than any question a journalist might ask and that the conversation she had observed for 30 seconds in the corridor outside the studio was one of them.

She had been a music journalist for 12 years. She recognized the difference. Bob Dylan and Keith Richards have maintained their friendship across four decades. They have appeared together at various events, most significantly at the concert for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, where people who were present described them as inseparable for most of the evening, occupying the same corner of the backstage area and talking with the concentrated attention of people who only have a limited amount of time together and intend to use it

well. Bob Dylan has spoken about Keith Richards in interviews with the specific thoughtful care that Bob Dylan reserves for musicians whose work Bob Dylan considers genuinely important rather than merely culturally prominent. Keith Richards has spoken about Bob Dylan in similar terms with the specific respect of someone who recognizes in another person a commitment to music that goes deeper than career.

Neither Bob Dylan nor Keith Richards has made a public statement specifically about how the friendship began or about the November 1986 interview. Bob Dylan has not mentioned the 11 seconds. Keith Richards has not mentioned the sentence. The interview exists in the archive. The 11 seconds are there. The laugh is there. The two words are there.

What is also there for anyone who watches the interview from its beginning and pays attention to the shift that happens at the 9-minute mark is the specific moment when two people who thought they were appearing on a television program discovered they were actually talking to each other. What Keith Richards said in that one sentence has never been officially reported.

The people who were in the studio that evening, Gerald Sherman, Patricia Wells, the floor crew, the two camera operators, the makeup artist who was watching from the side of the set, have described the sentence in consistent terms. They have described its effect. They have described Bob Dylan’s laugh and Bob Dylan’s silence and Bob Dylan’s two words.

They have not repeated the sentence itself in the specific understanding that the sentence was said between two musicians on a television program and that its power resided in the specific context of that exchange and would not survive removal from it intact. What can be said is this. Keith Richards said something to Bob Dylan about Bob Dylan’s music that used Bob Dylan’s own observation about Keith Richards as its starting point and arrived somewhere that Bob Dylan had not anticipated.

Keith Richards turned Bob Dylan’s assessment 90° and showed Bob Dylan something about the music they had both spent their lives making that Bob Dylan recognized immediately as true. And Bob Dylan said, “You’re right.” Two words said by Bob Dylan in public on live television in 1986 to Keith Richards in response to a single sentence Keith Richards had said about music.

Two words that Gerald Sherman, who had worked with Bob Dylan on two previous occasions, said he had never heard Bob Dylan say in a public forum. Two words that Patricia Wells, who had been interviewing musicians for 12 years, said were the most significant two words she had heard in those 12 years. Not because of their content, but because of who said them and what it cost to say them and what it meant that Keith Richards had produced them in 11 seconds from a conversation that began with Bob Dylan calling Keith Richards’s music derivative. And Keith Richards and

Bob Dylan have been close friends for nearly 40 years. The sentence did its work in 11 seconds on the evening of November 3rd, 1986. The work has been ongoing ever since. If this story moved you, subscribe and leave a comment below. Have you ever said something to someone that turned a potential disagreement into an unexpected and lasting connection? Tell us about it in the comments below.

Share this with someone who needs to be reminded that the right sentence said at the right moment can completely change the entire direction of a relationship. Ring the notification bell for more untold stories about the extraordinary human beings behind music’s greatest legends.