Prince Harry’s claims about ‘special relationship’ with Queen are ‘incendiary’, royal expert says 

Prince Harry’s suggestion that he has a ‘really special relationship’ with his grandmother in a recent US TV interview are likely to prove damaging in helping heal the rift between the Duke of Sussex and the Royal Family, a royal expert has claimed. 

Speaking during the latest episode of True Royalty TV’s The Royal Beat, commentator Roya Nikkhah described Harry’s admission that he still has a close relationship with the Queen, 96, in spite of his controversial 2020 move to California, as likely to be ‘incendiary’ and ‘triggering’ for the rest of his family – who ‘are around for the Queen all the time’. 

Harry, 37, has been accused of ‘playing up’ his relationship with the Queen to ensure he maintains credibility in America amid the Sussexes’ deal with Netflix. 

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Roya Nikkhah told True Royalty TV’s The Royal Beat that Prince Harry’s recent comments to the Today programme in the US would be ‘triggering’ for his family (Pictured: The Duke and Duchess of Sussex with Queen Elizabeth II at a ceremony at Buckingham Palace in London in 2018)

Salt on the wound: Nikkhah claimed that Harry’s comments of his long-distance closeness to the Queen might have irked family members who see her more frequently  

Speaking to NBC’s Today show about his meeting with the Queen earlier this month, the royal said: ‘It was great, it was just so nice to see her, she’s on great form.

‘She’s always got a great sense of humour with me and I’m just making sure that she’s protected and got the right people around her. Both Meghan and I had tea with her, so it was really nice to catch up with her.’

He also told the show’s host, Hoda Kotb, that he continues to have a ‘really special relationship’ with his grandmother.  

Royal expert Nikkhah told The Royal Beat’s host Kate Thornton: ‘That comment was quite triggering for the rest of his family, who are around the Queen all the time and I’m sure who the Queen does confide in quite a lot.’

She added: ‘There is no doubting that those two [the Queen and Prince Harry] have an incredibly special, close relationship.

‘But I think to say to an American network, knowing these comments are going to go around the world, and come right back at your family, that the Queen tells Harry things that she feels she cannot tell any other member of her family who see her much more regularly – it just felt quite incendiary.’

Speaking in the latest episode of The Royal Beat, Roya Nikkhah said that Prince Harry would be aware that making such comments on a global platform would ‘come back to his family’

The royal commentator added that people might struggle to believe that ‘the Queen tells Harry things that she feels she cannot tell any other member of her family’

Last week, Investigative journalist and award-winning biographer Tom Bower told MailOnline that he thinks the Duke of Sussex is playing up his relationship with his grandmother to prevent the Palace from dampening the Sussexes’ marketing efforts and commercial endeavours beyond the Royal Family.

Bower, who is currently writing a biography on Meghan Markle, said he thinks that ‘Harry is hitting out at those standing in the way of promoting the Sussex’s self-promotion’.

‘To enhance his credibility in America and for Netflix he needs to [play up] a special relationship with the Queen.’

Harry and Meghan chose to step down from their Royal duties to pursue other commercial interests, but the pair are pushing the Royal Family for continued assistance. 

Bower’s comments come off the back of Harry’s latest interview in the US, in which he placed doubt over whether he would attend his grandmother’s Platinum Jubilee celebrations in London in June amid the ongoing security row with the UK’s Home Office, adding: ‘Home for me now is, you know, for the time being, it’s in the States. And it feels that way as well.’

The Royal Beat – available on True Royalty TV