How Prince Harry Met Meghan Markle
Two years ago, on a spectacular sunny day in Windsor, England, Prince Harry married Meghan Markle. The newly christened Duchess of Sussex glided into St. George’s Chapel in her Claire Waight Keller for Givenchy dress, a sparkling tiara perched upon her head. Prince Harry whispered, “You look beautiful,” when she reached the altar. The couple’s choice of preacher—Reverend Michael Curry, the first African American presiding bishop of the Episcopal church—represented an unabashed embrace of Markle’s biracial heritage.
It wasn’t all a fairy tale. A few days prior, it emerged that Markle’s father had staged a series of cheesy paparazzi photos. Instead of waiting for his fate, he chose it himself: On TMZ, he announced that he wouldn’t be attending the wedding after all. His daughter reportedly learned of his painful decision at the same time the world did.
Yet, despite the drama, the day did feel magical. After the ceremony, the couple took a carriage ride through Windsor’s streets and up the sweeping tree-lined path to Windsor Castle, known as the Long Walk. Their faces were flushed, and their eyes radiant.
While millions tuned in to watch the proceedings on TV, 100,000 more were there in person, including yours truly. I saw the Union Jack–waving throngs gathered on the rolling green lawns of Windsor Great Park. I saw people offering cheers with Pimm’s Cups on the streets. I saw children’s hasty stick-figure drawings of Harry and Meghan adorning metal security gates. Most of all, I heard it: the roars of excitement, crescendoing as the couple hit every wedding-day milestone. After it was all over—and therefore, my workday too—I treated myself to a strawberries and cream. Even though Harry and Meghan had disappeared from the site hours before, a joyful aura hung in the air.
Twenty months—and two tabloid lawsuits—later, Prince Harry and Markle announced a “step back from royal life.” That quickly transformed into a full two feet out. Now, the couple resides in a Los Angeles home (reportedly owned by Tyler Perry), not as His or Her Royal Highnesses but as private citizens. It may be too grand to say, this early on, that they’ve changed the course of the monarchy. But they’ve certainly changed the public’s perception of it. After all, how miserable must you be to quit a life that so many people dream of?
But before Los Angeles, before the lawsuits, and before the Windsor wedding, Harry and Meghan were set up on a date. By whom is still a matter of debate—although most tabloids point to Ralph Lauren public relations director Violet von Westenholz or designer Misha Nonoo. Either way: She knew Meghan, she knew Harry, and she thought they’d hit it off. So on one night in early July 2016, the British royal and American actress went on a blind date said to be at the Dean Street Townhouse in London. Harry was instantly smitten. “I was beautifully surprised when I walked into that room and saw her,” he admitted. “I was like, Okay, well, I’m really gonna have to up my game!” As for Meghan, she had one major concern. She texted her friend: “Is he nice?”
“If he wasn’t kind, it didn’t seem like it would make sense,” she later recalled.
Turns out, he was. A second date followed. Then Harry had an idea: What if, for their third encounter, they went away for a while—like, far away? So without the world knowing, they jetted off to the bush of Botswana. “We camped out with each other under the stars,” Harry said of their journey. “It was absolutely fantastic.” They’d been dating for three weeks.
For four months, their relationship remained a secret. They spent idyllic days at Soho Farmhouse in Oxfordshire or relaxing in his Kensington Palace garden. The prince even visited Markle in Toronto, where she was filming Suits. They never went two weeks without seeing each other. The actress would spend four days in the U.K., take the red-eye back to Toronto, and walk straight on to set. Only the subtlest of hints about their relationship appeared on Markle’s Instagram: In July, she posted a peony bouquet with the hashtag #London. In October, she shared a picture wearing the same blue-beaded bracelet as Prince Harry. Little did she know the British tabloid the Express was about to blow the whole thing wide open.
“His Majesty’s pleasure: Prince Harry secretly dating U.S. TV star Meghan Markle,” its October 31, 2016, headline blared. An anonymous source shared several colorful details. “Harry has been desperate to keep the relationship quiet because he doesn’t want to scare Meghan off,” they said. “He knows things will change when their romance is public knowledge, but he also knows he can’t keep it a secret for long. It’s too early to say if the relationship will lead to anything long-term, but who knows? At the moment they are just taking it a step at a time and seeing how things develop.” On Instagram, Markle shared a picture of two bananas spooning. “Sleep tight xx,” she wrote. It was only fuel for the rumor-mill fire, and suddenly the tabloids were alight, many with racist coverage. A Daily Mail headline on November 2 read: ”Harry’s girl is (almost) straight outta Compton: Gang-scarred home of her mother revealed—so will he be dropping by for tea?” The Daily Star online took it one step further. “Prince Harry could marry into gangster royalty—his new love is from a crime-ridden Los Angeles neighborhood.” The median income for View Park-Windsor Hills, where Markle’s mother lives, is more than $100,000.
On November 8, 2016, Prince Harry had enough. Kensington Palace released a scathing statement: “The past week has seen a line crossed,” it read. “His girlfriend, Meghan Markle, has been subject to a wave of abuse and harassment. Some of this has been very public—the smear on the front page of a national newspaper; the racial undertones of comment pieces; and the outright sexism and racism of social media trolls and web article comments. Some of this has been hidden from the public—the nightly legal battles to keep defamatory stories out of papers; her mother having to struggle past photographers in order to get to her front door; the attempts of reporters and photographers to gain illegal entry to her home and the calls to police that followed; the substantial bribes offered by papers to her ex-boyfriend; the bombardment of nearly every friend, coworker, and loved one in her life. Prince Harry is worried about Ms. Markle’s safety and is deeply disappointed that he has not been able to protect her.... This is not a game—it is her life and his.” The public interest in Markle was so intense and insatiable that she was the most Googled actress of 2016.
A year later, the couple announced their engagement in the gardens of Kensington Palace. They sat down for an interview with the BBC. As happy and besotted as they were, darkness dripped through. “I think I can very safely say, as naive as it sounds now, having gone through this learning curve in the past year and a half, I did not have any understanding of just what it would be like,” Markle said of the press scrutiny. “Even though I’ve been on my show for I guess six years at that point and working before that, I’ve never been part of tabloid culture. I’ve never been in pop culture to that degree.” A solemn Prince Harry chimed in, “I tried to warn you as much as possible, but I think both of us were totally surprised.”
In retrospect, they offered a forewarning: They were two people, very much in love but not ready for the incessant spotlight. Perhaps they thought it would get better: that the media frenzy would die down after the wedding, that the trolls would grow tired of spewing nasty comments. It didn’t. Markle’s dysfunctional family cruelly sold her out to the tabloids. Reports emerged of a feud between the Sussexes and the Cambridges. Markle was called “Duchess difficult,” a “bridezilla,” criticized for cradling her baby bump too much, accused of committing the horrible offense of...sending emails at 5 a.m. Kensington Palace, overwhelmed by all the venom, started to monitor, and even delete, comments on the then joint Cambridge-Sussex social media accounts. Two years into the daily onslaught, in October 2019, Markle’s misery was palpable. “I never thought that this would be easy, but I thought it would be fair,” she told ITV’s Tom Bradby.
Soon after, Prince Harry announced that the duchess was suing the parent company of The Mail on Sunday. The similarities between this statement and the one in 2016 were apparent: Both were passionate, strongly worded, and begging for privacy. But in this one, there was a new air of desperation. “I have been a silent witness to her private suffering for too long,” he wrote. “It destroys people and destroys lives.”
He continued: “I’ve seen what happens when someone I love is commoditized to the point that they are no longer treated or seen as a real person. I lost my mother, and now I watch my wife falling victim to the same powerful forces.”
They didn’t stick around to see if it would get better. Three months later, they quit the royal family.
“Personally,” Markle said back in 2017, “I love a great love story.”
Today, Harry and Meghan are celebrating not only an anniversary but their own story’s next chapter. There’s to be no statement, no official pictures, no Instagram commemoration—the couple announced back in March that they’re stepping back from social media too. There’s nothing for the press to pick up, no paparazzi photos to publish. Maybe they’re sitting in their garden, wearing matching bracelets, or even a Golden Girls sweatshirt. Maybe, for them, it feels once again like the good old days—or the days they always imagined.
Originally Appeared on Vogue
