A royal expert is speaking out this week to say that Queen Elizabeth was “unsettled and upset” when Meghan Markle and Prince Harry blindsided her by announcing on Instagram that they were stepping down as senior royals last year.

Royal biographer Robert Jobson told the Daily Express that Prince Philip, the late husband of the Queen, was enraged when he first heard what Meghan and Harry were doing.

“Philip was spotted leaving Sandringham in the morning, after he was reportedly made furious by Meghan and Harry’s intention to step back as senior royals,” Jobson said. “The Duke of Edinburgh, who was seen sitting on the passenger seat of his Land Rover wearing a seat belt, is understood to have said, ‘What on earth are they playing at?’”

“One senior member of the Royal Household told me that the Duke’s fit of pique was due to seeing his wife unsettled and upset by the couple’s behavior,” Jobson continued, adding that this source told him, “To say that the Duke feels they let the side down would be a considerable understatement.”

“He was furious and felt that the Queen and indeed his son the Prince of Wales had always given Prince Harry plenty of scope to live the life that he had wanted,” he added. “Yes, he was extremely disappointed by their behavior and the way he tried to back both the Prince of Wales and Her Majesty into a corner by releasing that statement.”

The insider went on to tell Jobson, “It was a question of trust. There was a feeling that Harry and Meghan had knowingly breached that trust. It showed a total lack of respect.”

Meghan and Harry shocked the world last year when they announced that they were stepping down as senior royals. They have since moved to a mansion in Southern California, and have signed lucrative deals to create content for Netflix and Spotify.

In his new mental health docuseries “The Me You Can’t See,” Harry claimed that he felt “helpless” when Meghan began contemplating suicide due to the harassment she suffered from the British tabloids.

“I thought my family would help, but every single ask, request, warning, whatever it is, just got met with total silence or total neglect,” Harry claimed. “I was ashamed to go to my family because — to be honest with you, like a lot of other people my age could probably relate to — I know that I’m not going to get from my family what I need.”

“That was one of the biggest reasons to leave, feeling trapped, and feeling controlled through fear,” he continued. “Both by the media and by the system itself, which never encouraged the talking about this kind of trauma. Certainly, now I will never be bullied into silence.”