As part of tradition, the first six people in the line of succession must ask the reigning monarch for permission to become engaged. Prince Harry, therefore, asked the late Queen Elizabeth II to marry Meghan Markle but he received a cryptic response.
Writing in his best-selling memoir, Spare – which was released in January 2023, Harry shared the response. In the book, Harry claims that he decided to wait until the family was on a shooting trip in Sandringham before raising the subject, hoping that this would mean his grandmother was in a “good mood”.
According to Spare, he then awkwardly asked: “I’ve been told that I have to ask your permission before I can propose”. After a short exchange, he then details a moment of silence before the Queen replied and told him, “Well then, I suppose I have to say yes.”
The royal claims he was baffled by the response, writing: “I didn’t get it. Was she being sarcastic? Ironic? Deliberately cryptic? Was she indulging in a bit of wordplay?
“I’d never known Granny to do any wordplay and this would be a surpassingly bizarre moment (not to mention widely inconvenient) for her to start, but maybe she just saw the chance to play off my unfortunate use of the word ‘have’ and couldn’t resist.”
In his memoir, Harry also detailed the moment Meghan first met the queen in 2016. Harry wrote in his book of the first meeting: “It was all very pleasant. Granny even asked Meg what she thought of Donald Trump. (This was just before the November 2016 election, so everyone in the world seemed to be thinking and talking about the Republican candidate.)”
Harry added: “Meg thought politics a no-win game, so she changed the subject to Canada.”
Once Harry had the go-ahead, it came to designing the ring and planning the perfect moment with Meghan. He took two diamonds from Princess Diana’s collection and one he had from his beloved Botswana to create the gold ring.
He popped the question during a night in at their Kensington Palace home when the couple roasted a chicken.
Speaking of his proposal in their Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan, the prince said: “I did pop a bottle of champagne while she was roasting a chicken and that kind of slightly gave the game away. She was like, ‘You never drink champagne, what’s the occasion?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know, I just had it like, lying around.”
Harry and Meghan shared their romantic photo of the moment on the docuseries, which showed Harry kneeling on a blanket holding a ring box in one hand with a bunch of white roses on the floor in front of him.
