Prince Harry has opened up about the opportunity to visit his grandmother Queen Elizabeth II with his wife Meghan Markle.
On Thursday, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who are currently in The Hague, Netherlands, for the Invictus Games, made a secret visit to the UK, where they visited the 95-year-old monarch at Windsor Castle.
According to the duke, who has only returned to the UK on two occasions since he and Meghan stepped back from their roles as senior members of the royal family and relocated to California, it was “great” to see his grandmother, who he noted shared a number of supportive messages for “Team UK” during the visit.
“She had plenty of messages for Team UK, which I have already passed on to most of them,” Prince Harry told the BBC on Monday about the visit. “So, it was great to see her. I’m sure she would love to be here if she could.”
The royal couple’s visit to Windsor marked the first time that Meghan and Harry have been in Europe together since stepping down from their roles as senior royals in March 2020. The couple also reportedly met with Harry’s father Prince Charles during the visit to Windsor.
Prince Harry previously returned to the UK for his grandfather Prince Philip’s funeral in April 2021 and again in July 2021, to unveil a statue of his and Prince William’s late mother Princess Diana alongside his brother.
The duke and duchess made their first public appearance in Europe since March 2020 on Friday, when they attended an Invictus Games welcome reception in The Hague ahead of the start of the games, which Prince Harry founded in 2014. The 2017 Invictus Games are where the couple made their first public appearance together nearly five years ago.
While attending this year’s Invictus Games, the couple has also shared additional details about their family, including their two children, son Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, two, and daughter Lilibet Diana Mountbatten Winsor, 10 months.
During a speech addressing the audience at the opening ceremony of the international sporting event on Saturday, the Duke of Sussex discussed the hopes and dreams of the couple’s son, with Harry revealing that Archie wants to be an astronaut or a pilot, or an undersea explorer like Kwazii from the children’s TV show The Octonauts.
Meghan has also discussed the couple’s children, with the duchess revealing during a conversation with a Games competitor that she and Harry nearly chose Harrison for their son’s first name. During the couple’s trip, Meghan also told veterans and children during a children’s book reading that she was missing her son and daughter.
The duke and duchess’s trip to The Hague is understood to be the longest the couple has spent apart from their two children.
