Prince Philip was intensely relieved once Prince Harry and Meghan Marke’s nuptials were over, a royal biographer claims.
“Once all the formalities were over, we watched as the happy couple, and then the other members of the Royal Family, filed out of the chapel,” former royal butler Grant Harrold writes an upcoming memoir, according to an excerpt published by the Telegraph Monday.
He adds, “When Prince Philip came out, he turned to the Queen and said, ‘Thank f–k that’s over.’”
Harrold’s book, “The Royal Butler,” hits shelves in September. Reps for Prince Harry and the royal family did not immediately respond to Page Six’s request for comment.
The couple famously exchanged vows in a lavish ceremony in 2018 held at St George’s Chapel at Windsor Castle, with both Queen Elizabeth, who passed away in 2022, and Prince Philip, who died in 2021, in attendance.
In a controversial move, Harry and Markle would ultimately announce their intention to leave their duties as royal family members in 2020 and move to California, where they are raising their children, Prince Archie, 6, and Princess Lilibet, 4.
And while Philip reportedly did not agree with the decision, he steered clear of getting involved.
Philip understood that “people have to lead their lives as they think best,” the Sun reported in 2021, citing royal biographer Gyles Brandreth.
Prince Philip also reportedly thought of Harry — who remains embroiled in an apparent rift with his brother, Prince William — as a “good man” and was sympathetic to his need to “do things his own way,” Brandreth reportedly said.
According to the Daily Mail, the biographer said Philip responded to “Megxit” by stating that “it’s his [Prince Harry’s] life” and adding, “I’ll soon be out of it and not before time.”
And per Us Weekly, Philip was “welcoming” to Markle when she married into the royal family. “He was very welcoming to Meghan because, of course, she was a newcomer and a very different newcomer,” royal biographer Ingrid Seward told the outlet in 2021.
However, “at the time of Meghan and Harry’s romance, he wasn’t around nearly as much because he’d retired,” she added. “He didn’t see very much of Meghan at all [and] he didn’t really have a chance to form a relationship with her.”
Following Philip’s death in April 2021, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex mourned him with an official statement.
“Thank you for your service … You will be greatly missed,” the couple wrote on their Archewell Foundation website at the time, adding, “In loving memory of His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh 1921-2021.”
