Prince Harry had a furious response when he was told Meghan Markle was not welcome at Balmoral on the day of the Queen’s death.

As Harry prepared to travel from London to Scotland to be with his grandmother in September 2022, he learned that while the royals were gathering to be with the Queen in her final moments, Meghan was not invited.

Harry had expressed his wish for his wife to join him on his journey – but it was his father Charles who put his foot down.

The Duke recalled the awkward phone call in his tell-all memoir Spare, writing: “He said I was welcome at Balmoral, but he didn’t want… her. He started to lay out his reason, which was nonsensical, and disrespectful, and I wasn’t having it.”

Harry said he retorted firmly to his father’s comments about Meghan, saying: “Don’t ever speak about my wife that way…He stammered, apologetic, saying he simply didn’t want a lot of people around. No other wives were coming, Kate wasn’t coming, he said, therefore Meg shouldn’t. Then that’s all you needed to say.”

The Queen peacefully passed away at 15:10 on 8 September. Of her family members, only Charles, Camilla and Princess Anne were able to see her before she died.

Buckingham Palace had announced at 12.50pm that Prince William, Prince Andrew, Prince Edward and Sophie had started to make their way to Scotland. Sadly, they were not in time. They landed at 3:50pm, 40 minutes after her death. With William at the wheel, they drove to Balmoral, arriving at 5.06pm. Prince Harry, meanwhile, left Luton airport onboard a private jet at about 5.30pm. He was still in the air when the announcement of the queen’s death was made at 6.30pm.

The Duke has since claimed he only found out the Queen had died after checking the internet while on the plane. Harry wrote in his book that he had been thinking on the plane about the last time he was with his grandmother and what they had been talking about, when he then got a notification on his phone.

“When the plane started to descend I saw that my phone lit up,” he said. “It was a message from Meg: ‘Call me when you get this.’ I looked at the BBC website. My grandmother had died. My father was King.” Harry further went on to reveal how when he finally did make it to Balmoral, Princess Anne led him upstairs to “Granny’s bedroom” so he could pay his respects

The Sussexes stepped down as working royals in March 2020 before relocating to California in the US that summer. Since their move, the pair’s relationship with the rest of the Firm has become increasingly more fractured, particularly after their interview with Oprah Winfrey, the release of Spare as well as Harry and Meghan’s bombshell Netflix documentary.