Anger was never Queen Elizabeth’s primary emotion—if you looked up stoic in the dictionary, her picture would be there. But in royal biographer Robert Hardman’s new book The Making of a King: King Charles III and the Modern Monarchy, he quotes a Palace staffer as saying Her late Majesty was “as angry as I’d ever seen her” in 2021 after the Sussexes announced that she had given them her blessing to name their daughter Lilibet—her familial nickname so sacred that only a small number of people could ever dream of calling her by the moniker. (In the last decade, it was likely that her husband, Prince Philip—who died in April 2021 at 99 years old—was the only person able to call her that.)
Princess Lilibet Diana was born on June 4, 2021, and, according to The Daily Mail, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle publicly stated that they received approval to use the name “Lilibet” for their only daughter. Later, a Palace staffer told the BBC that the late Queen was “never asked” her opinion on Lilibet’s name before her birth, BBC royal correspondent Jonny Dymond tweeted at the time.
