Prince Harry has revealed whether he and Meghan Markle plan to attend his grandmother Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations after it was reported that the couple was invited to appear on the Buckingham Palace balcony.
The Duke of Sussex discussed his and Meghan’s recent surprise visit to the UK to see the 95-year-old monarch, and whether they will attend the four-day celebration during an interview with Today’s Hoda Kotb from The Hague, Netherlands, where Harry is attending the fifth Invictus Games.
While opening up about his relationship with the Queen, the duke said that the pair have a “really special relationship,” and that his favourite thing about his grandmother is her sense of humour and her “ability to see the humour in so many different things”.
“We have a really special relationship, we talk about things that she can’t talk about with anybody else,” the duke said.
However, according to Prince Harry, the Queen, who turns 96 on 21 April, may be “bored” of birthdays. “I think after a certain age, you get bored of birthdays,” he jokingly claimed.
After Kotb asked whether the Queen will be “bored of the Jubilee,” Prince Harry said: “Uh, no. I don’t think so. She’s had a few Jubilees now so, and every one is slightly different. I’m sure she’s looking forward to it.”
As for whether he will attend the June celebration, the duke said that he doesn’t know yet, as there’s “lots of things, security issues, and everything else”.
However, he added: “This is what I’m trying to do, trying to make it possible to get my kids to meet her.”
While the couple welcomed their son Archie, two, before stepping down from the royal family, the Queen has not yet met the duke and duchess’s daughter, Lilibet Diana, 10 months, who is named after the royal family’s nickname for the monarch.
The duke’s comments come amid his case against the Home Office over police protection in the UK, which challenges the February 2020 decision of the Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures (Ravec), which told the royal he would no longer be given the “same degree” of personal protective security when visiting from the US.
Elsewhere in the interview, the duke discussed what it was like to be reunited with his grandmother, telling Kotb that it was “so nice” to see the Queen when he and Meghan visited.
“Being with her was great, it was just so nice to see her. She was on great form,” the duke said, adding that he was also there to make sure that the monarch “is protected and got the right people around her”.
