What actually occurred on the Sandringham Summit? Inside the notorious assembly that ended Harry and Meghan’s royal careers… and why a ridiculous excuse is the important thing piece of proof for the Prince’s conspiracy concept that it was all a royal ‘repair’

Sandringham House is famous for being the countryside retreat where the Royal Family has been hosting their annual Christmas family gathering for decades.

But five years ago today, on January 13, 2020, it was at the centre of the biggest news story in the country for an entirely different reason.

The Firm had once again gathered at the Norfolk estate, but this time there was no jolly festive spirit in the air, only an eerie sense of apprehension. 

The late Queen had gathered her son and heir Prince Charles, her grandson and second in line to the throne Prince William, and Prince Harry to discuss the looming problem of Megxit.

Since Meghan Markle married Harry in May 2018, the couple had been unhappy with their lot and now wanted to carve out a new ‘half-in half-out’ role for themselves.

In response to their public whining, Queen Elizabeth II summoned them to try to heal the family rift that was threatening to break apart the House of Windsor.

But at the same time, the private family meeting would decide the future of the monarchy and was, therefore, of great importance to the British public.

It was quickly dubbed ‘The Sandringham Summit’ by the press as media vans with satellite dishes descended on the outskirts of the estate to cover the monumental moment.

As it is her private home rather than an official royal residence, the Queen had expressly chosen Sandringham to try to give the summit a family, rather than formal, flavour. 

It is also the least stuffy of all the royal homes, as it is less formal than Buckingham Palace, less historical than Windsor Castle and less baronial than Balmoral. 

As the 2pm meeting approached, normal life came to a halt as the maids were ordered to discharge their duties on the other side of the house and the footmen were confined to the pages’ vestibule in order to give the royals maximum privacy. 

The showdown took place in the Long Library, which used to house a bowling alley and where, as children, Princes William and Harry would take tea while staying at the estate.

But this time, the room had a long, polished conference table with eight chairs and a royal notepad in front of each one. The Queen was placed at the head of the table. 

As she sat down with her immediate heirs, she knew she would be trying to resolve one of the deepest crises of her long reign.

The Daily Mail’s renowned royal expert Richard Kay wrote at the time: ‘Not since the dark days over Diana has there been such a sense of dread and unhappiness shrouding the Royal Family.’

The meeting lasted around 90 minutes, with the royals, alongside their closest aides, discussing a number of possible futures for Harry and Meghan.

Due to the deep privacy of the occasion, details of the intense family chat initially remained private. For royal watchers, it would have been a fascinating day to be a fly on the wall. 

According to informed sources at the time, the mood of the meeting was calm and there were no reports of shouting or blistering exchanges. 

But in the years since, recollections have once again begun to vary as Harry has come forward with more details that seem to contradict those accounts. 

In his and Meghan’s 2022 Netflix docuseries, Harry alleged William left him ‘terrified’ during the summit after he ‘screamed and shouted’ at him, while also accusing Charles of telling untruths to his face – as the Queen quietly sat there and ‘took it all in’.

And in his 2023 blockbuster memoir Spare, he claimed the summit was ‘just for show’ as the outcome had already been ‘fixed’ by the Queen’s aides.

He wrote that he arrived at Sandringham with the impression that the summit would consider five options for how the Sussexes would exit royal life – ranging from maintaining the status quo (option one), to full departure (option five). 

The Duke claims the rest of the royals pressed him and his wife to stay, but barring that, the only other solution they would accept was option five, departure. 

Upon coming to the summit, he and Meghan’s preference had been option three – a compromise that was ‘somewhere in between’.

After an hour, the Queen’s private secretary, nicknamed by Harry as ‘the Bee’, (who has since been identified as Sir Edward Young) distributed drafts of a statement announcing the Sussex’s departure through the implementation of option five. 

The stunned Harry wrote: ‘Wait. I’m confused. You’ve already drafted a statement? Before any discussion? Announcing Option 5? 

‘In other words, the fix was in, this whole time? This summit was just for show? No answer. 

‘I asked if there were drafts of other statements. Announcing the other options. Oh yes, of course, the Bee assured me. 

‘Can I see them? Alas – his printer had gone on the blink, he said. The odds! At the very moment he was about to print out those other drafts! 

‘I started laughing. Is this some kind of joke? Everyone was staring away or down at their shoes.’

Following the meeting Harry then writes he asked the Queen’s friendliest page, ‘who’d always liked him’, for directions to the printer which he found was working fine ‘churning out documents’.

When he asked an assistant if it was working properly he wrote, he was told it was ‘indestructible’, and when he asked if the printer in ‘the Bee’s’ office worked too he was told yes.

A few moments later ‘the Bee’ appeared and ‘looked extremely sheepish’ as he ‘knew he was busted’ – but brushed off the Prince and told him ‘not to worry’ about the printer.

Other details in Harry’s account of the summit include that when he arrived early to chat with the Queen, Charles’ private secretary ‘reacted with alarm’ and went ‘buzzing off’ to fetch him.

He also claimed his brother William ‘looked at me as if he planned to murder me’ when he first sat down at the table for the meeting. 

Meghan also spoke about her outrage that she was not able to attend the summit as she was still in Canada with baby Archie. 

She said in her and Harry’s Netflix show: ‘Imagine a conversation, a roundtable discussion about the future of your life.

‘When the stakes are this high. And you as the mom and the wife and the target, in many regards, aren’t invited to have a seat at the table.’ 

Harry added: ‘It was clear to me that they planned out so that you weren’t in the room.’

None of the other royal spouses, Philip, Camilla, or Kate, attended the meeting either. 

But despite not being in attendance, royal author Robert Lacey wrote the ‘key negotiator and spiritual head of the whole team’ who Harry would defer to was Rachel Zane — the character played by Meghan in the hit legal show Suits.

The author claimed she had not spent seven years playing the role of a hotshot paralegal in a top Manhattan law firm without ‘developing the confidence that she could handle the cut and thrust of a high-stakes duel like this’.

‘Don’t sign anything unless you can get something in return’ was one of the key commandments drilled into Rachel in the show – along with ‘Stand Your Ground’.

Lacey described in his 2020 book Battle Of Brothers: William, Harry And The Inside Story Of A Family In Tumult, that William on the other hand maintained his distance at the summit. 

He claims the Queen had suggested the family should gather for lunch before their big pow-wow in the afternoon, but he refused his grandmother’s invitation.

William would obviously turn up at 2pm for the meeting, but he only wanted to talk business, wrote Lacey.

His friends speculated that he was so furious with his younger brother that he would not be able to endure the hypocrisy of smiling at him over lunch.

‘It was like dealing with a hard-nosed Hollywood lawyer,’ a senior palace source familiar with the negotiations told Lacey. ‘The Sussexes wanted guarantees on every single point as if it were a contractual negotiation.’

‘They totally misplayed the negotiations,’ said the palace insider, ‘but then so did the palace.’

The man directing the palace strategy was the Queen’s private secretary Sir Edward Young.

‘The trouble with Edward,’ a source told Lacey, who had worked with Young for many years, ‘is that he is not very good at doing humans. 

‘He is incredibly difficult to read — impossible to fathom. He is also deeply cautious. He’s a letter-of-the-law kind of man.’

Lacey believes the Sandringham Summit was a ‘transatlantic cross-cultural conflict that pitted the stereotypical all-American superwoman against a Monty Python parody of a toffee-nosed royal sucker-up’.

But unlike the Sussexes, the rest of the Royal Family have remained tight-lipped about what happened at the meeting.

And due to their ‘never complain, never explain’ mantra, we are unlikely to ever hear their side of the story. 

Harry seems to believe that the Queen was heavily influenced by her advisers, who he has accused on other occasions of blocking his access to her.

He said in his Netflix show: ‘But you have to understand that, from the family’s perspective, especially from hers [Queen Elizabeth], there are ways of doing things — and her ultimate sort of mission goal or responsibility is the institution. 

‘People around her telling her, by the way, that proposal or these two doing “xyz” is going to be seen as an attack on the institution, then she’s going to on the advice that she’s given,’ he continued. ‘That was really hard.’ 

It is thought that Elizabeth II had always had a soft spot for Harry, and she was widely seen to have been delighted by the arrival of Meghan, who she had high hopes for improving relations with her beloved Commonwealth.

But despite the kindness in her heart for her grandson, the Queen ultimately had to make the heartbreaking decision about how to conclude the family crisis. 

And the statement that came in her name after the summit was laced with despair. 

Her message was clear that she would not stand in the couple’s way but it was seen by royal experts that she made the decision with a heavy heart. 

In this one sentence alone, her sadness about this incendiary situation shone through. 

‘Although we would have preferred them to remain full-time working members of the Royal Family, we respect and understand their wish to live a more independent life as a family while remaining a valued part of my family.’ 

Richard Kay wrote at the time of the announcement: ‘Not since 1997 in the aftermath of the death of Diana has the Queen issued such a personal bulletin.’ 

But although the deal was dressed up with talk of it being ‘a constructive and supportive way forward’, at the end of the day it involved Meghan and Harry being ‘required to step back from royal duties’.

Harry would also lose his beloved military appointments and his role as Commonwealth youth ambassador.

They also volunteered to forgo all access to the Sovereign Grant and public cash, along with paying off the costs of Frogmore Cottage’s renovation. 

After thinking about it for several weeks, the Queen then also ruled that Harry and Meghan could not use Sussex Royal as the brand name to market their merchandise in the US. 

The name of Meghan’s upcoming wellness brand has since been revealed as American Riviera Orchard. 

The summit was where Harry’s security, which had been with him for his entire life at that point, began to slip away. He was so angered at the decision that he has since sued the government over the decision.

One of the only things the couple managed to keep was their His/Her Royal Highness titles, but they no longer use them.

Although logical, the Queen’s ruthless decision to strip Princess Diana of her HRH title after her divorce from Charles was deemed as unnecessarily harsh by the public towards the mother of a future king. 

Richard Kay believes that due to the repercussions of that decision, which linger to this day, it is unlikely that the step will be repeated with the Princess’s son and his wife.  

Nevertheless the shadow of the Sandringham Summit looms large to this day on the Royal Family. 

Only 18 months earlier they had all welcomed Meghan into the family, along with millions of people around the world, as Harry married her in a lavish ceremony. 

In Spare, Harry told of his anguish following the summit, writing: ‘I love my Mother Country, and I love my family, and I always will. 

‘I just wish, at the second-darkest moment of my life, they’d both been there for me. And I believe they’ll look back one day and wish they had too.’

But it seems the moment of regret that Harry is waiting for has not yet dawned on the Royal Family. 

Instead they seem to have moved on with their lives and are now facing down challenges of a different sort – mainly cancer battles for Kate and Charles.

For his part, Harry seems to be content with his life in his $14million California mansion.

But perhaps now, when he looks back on his old life, his everlasting memory of Sandringham has changed. 

Instead of recalling his annual Christmas pilgrimage there to open presents and eat turkey, he will now remember the fateful January afternoon his family told him his royal life was over.