Meghan and Harry’s extraordinary statement sent a shiver down my spine.

The language is stilted, cold and legalistic, the sentiments juvenile and angry.

‘The Queen doesn’t own the word Royal,’ they say in this ill-advised intervention – if any advice was taken, which I doubt.

It is an expression of childish irritation that insults the most admired person in British public life. And this, more than anything, is what gives the game away.

I am afraid that Meghan is an impulsive woman and, as her past behaviour suggests, when she’s had enough of something or someone, she simply ‘moves on’

Are the Duke and Duchess of Sussex really trying to take on the Queen, whose lifetime of duty to her nation is admired around the world?

Is it actually what they intended? Or is it a petulant retort from self-important young people who have grown all-too used to having their own way?

My experience of Prince Harry is that he is charismatic and intuitive, a man with impeccable manners who is full of consideration to others and lights up in the presence of those who need his help.

What on earth has happened to that Harry? Why is he in the strange and invidious position of seeming to side with his wife over a loving family that includes the 93-year-old grandmother he dearly loves and who has been his rock?

I am reminded of Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of The Snow Queen, as beautiful as she is cold, who leaves a sliver of ice in a young man’s heart. Captive, a prisoner in her frozen desert, he is angry and indifferent to those who truly love him

Meghan’s ‘friends’ tell us several times a week that she and Harry are more besotted with each other than ever. Why, then, do they sound so bitter?

Remember, this is a couple so determined to be with one another that they were prepared to leave the Royal Family at almost any cost – indeed in such a rush that they omitted to tell the Queen, Prince Charles or Prince William before they announced their departure to the world.

Today, however, they seem sullen and resentful.

Surely they cannot be surprised that the institution of monarchy moves slowly and with caution.

The Crown has protected itself for many hundreds of years and hopes to survive for hundreds of years to come.

There are restrictions and responsibilities to royal life that simply cannot be dismissed and the Sussexes must know that.

Yet Harry and Meghan are almost stumbling in their rush to join a world of rich, self-centred celebrities that has little to do with the life of hard work and duty at the core of royal life.

Are the Duke and Duchess of Sussex really trying to take on the Queen, whose lifetime of duty to her nation is admired around the world? Is it actually what they intended? Or is it a petulant retort from self-important young people who have grown all-too used to having their own way?

It is all the more puzzling as Harry told me he was fed up with feeling trapped in the ‘goldfish bowl’ of fame and that he would prefer to live in Africa, helping save endangered animals.

He is at heart a gentle soul who values privacy. At one point, he said, he had considered quitting royal life because of the unbearable pressures of all that attention.

Yet today he seems to be courting the publicity he hates. In the process he is forgetting his privilege and preferring to present himself as a victim.

For me, there is only one way to understand his predicament, including this latest, wrong-headed outburst.

I am afraid that Meghan is an impulsive woman and, as her past behaviour suggests, when she’s had enough of something or someone, she simply ‘moves on’.

The American Duchess we all accepted as a breath of fresh air for the set-in-its-ways monarchy has become a gale-force storm.

I am reminded of Hans Christian Andersen’s tale of The Snow Queen, as beautiful as she is cold, who leaves a sliver of ice in a young man’s heart.

Captive, a prisoner in her frozen desert, he is angry and indifferent to those who truly love him.

Harry – Conversations With The Prince, by Angela Levin, is published by Bonnier Books.