Prince Philip 'warned Harry against marrying an actress'
They may be happily married and have just welcomed their first child together, but according to reports, Prince Philip tried to warn Prince Harry off marrying Meghan Markle.
The 93-year-old is said to have told Harry: “One steps out with actresses, one doesn’t marry them”, according to a Sunday Times Magazine article by Sophie Money-Coutts.
His words of warning obviously didn’t do anything to deter his 34-year-old grandson from pursuing 37-year-old former Suits actress Meghan, as the pair wed in a lavish Windsor Castle wedding on May 19th last year.
And it seems there’s no hard feelings between the Sussexes and the Duke of Edinburgh, as last week, Harry and Meghan uploaded a snap of Philip, wishing him a happy birthday.
“Wishing His Royal Highness The Duke of Edinburgh, Sir, Grandpa a very Happy 98th Birthday!” they wrote in the caption.
Queen warned off marrying Prince Philip
While Philip may have simply been looking out for his grandson, he went through something similar himself, when he was marrying the Queen.
The Queen’s biographer, A.N. Wilson, has revealed that she was advised not to marry the Greece-born prince at the time.
According to Wilson, dignitaries thought Philip was too "funny" for the then-Princess Elizabeth.
The pair went on to wed in 1947 and have been happily married ever since.
It’s not the first time reports have surfaced of Philip’s meddling in royal relationships.
Diana and Prince Philip clash
In 2017, it was claimed Diana and Philip were at loggerheads before she passed away.
According to The Express, royal expert Ingrid Seward claimed Philip tried to help Diana deal with her marriage breakdown to Prince Charles in a series of letters.
However, he is said to have went “ballistic” and called her “possessive” and “not a good mother” when she ignored his advice and aired her marriage woes in public.
Ingrid claims Prince Philip’s letters to Diana started out empathetic, signing off at the end with ‘Pa’.
He also reportedly wrote that he didn’t endorse Prince Charles’ affair with Camilla and said he and Queen “never dreamed he might feel like leaving you for her”.
Diana’s tell-all
However, things soured when Andrew Morton’s book Diana: Her True Story was serialised in the Sunday Times.
Philip saw it as a total smack in the face and couldn’t believe that Diana would divulge such personal details in public.
Ingrid claims Philip went and “told her she hadn’t been a caring wife and that, while she was a good mother, she’d been too possessive with her sons”.
“One of his fiercest comments was: ‘Can you honestly look into your heart and say that Charles’s relationship with Camilla had nothing to do with your behaviour towards him in your marriage?’
“Towards the end of Princess Diana’s marriage to Charles, just the mention of her name was enough to send her father-in-law into a tirade.”
Tried to limit Diana’s duties
Philip was so enraged that he seemingly asked the Queen to cut back severely on the amount of public engagements Diana was tasked with.
However, Diana again put one foot in front of him by announcing she was going to retire from public life completely.
Then when she did the now infamous Martin Bashir interview, Prince Philip was even more livid.
It’s thought that the Queen however was still holding out hope to keep their relationship alive and extended an invite for Diana to attend Christmas that year at Buckingham Palace.
But when Diana cancelled at the last minute, Philip is reported to have flown into a fit of rage and went “ballistic”.
That’s when the Queen reportedly decided to sign off on Diana’s divorce from Charles.
