Royals thought Meghan & Harry calling daughter Lilibet was ‘bewildering’ but Queen had a different reaction, book claims
THE Royal Family found it “bewildering” and “rather presumptuous” when Meghan Markle and Prince Harry called their daughter Lilibet, a book has claimed.
But the Queen said the name was “very pretty and seems just right”, biographer Gyles Brandreth suggested.
Lilibet was Her late Majesty’s very personal pet name, which only very few people outside her immediate family used for her throughout her life.
Mr Brandreth, one of Prince Philip’s friends, has made the revelations in his upcoming biography Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait, which is being serialised in the .
He wrote: “According to the Sussexes, Harry sought his grandmother’s permission to use her family nickname as the Christian name for her 11th great-grandchild.
“The Queen’s recollection was a little different. According to the Queen, Harry told her the Sussexes wanted to call the baby ‘Lilibet’ in her honour and she accepted their choice with good grace, taking it as the compliment it was intended to be.
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“Others in the family found the choice ‘bewildering’ and ‘rather presumptuous’, given that ‘Lilibet’ as a name had always been intimately and exclusively the Queen’s.
“Later, the Queen said: ‘I hear they’re calling her “Lili”, which is very pretty and seems just right.’”
The Queen finally met her great-granddaughter Lilibet in June this year.
Mr Brandreth also claimed that the Queen did everything she could to welcome the Duchess of Sussex into the family.
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He added that the Queen was "devoted" to Harry and "she truly wished him well in his new life abroad".
But he also wrote in his book: "The only concern the Queen let slip in the early days of the Sussexes’ marriage was to wonder to a friend if Harry wasn’t ‘perhaps a little over-in-love’.
"This was as far as she came – to my knowledge at least – to ever uttering a word against the new Duchess of Sussex."
Meanwhile, the biographer claimed the Queen dismissed the couple's explosive Oprah Winfrey interview as "nonsense".
It comes as...
- The Queen dismissed Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Oprah interview as “nonsense”
- Her Majesty's telling reaction to Prince Harry's romance with Meghan Markle has been revealed
- The Royal Family found it “bewildering” when Meghan and Harry called their daughter Lilibet
- Royal staff’s secret code names for Meghan and Harry have been revealed
- Why Zara Tindall chose to name her daughter 'Lena' has been revealed
- The Queen secretly fought painful cancer in the final year of her life
- The Queen responded to Prince Andrew's account of his friendship with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein with one word
Prince Philip is said to have thought it was "madness" while Her late Majesty was "relaxed, dismissing it".
The first excerpt of the book yesterday revealed the Queen's incredible stoicism during the final years of her life.
Her late Majesty is said to have told a lady-in-waiting that she was determined to keep busy as it helped her cope with Prince Philip's death.
And she is said to have not wanted to give way to self-pity, saying: "My husband would certainly not have approved."
But she pushed herself so hard that by last autumn she suffered a sudden low energy and was advised by doctors to rest, Gyles Brandreth revealed in Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait.
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It has also been claimed that she fought a painful cancer in her final year.
The book suggests that the late-monarch suffered from an incurable form of the disease, despite her death certificate recording her cause of death as "old age".