Finding Freedom

Inside Harry’s very cozy house, any nerves Meghan had before her arrival would have dissolved. While Nottingham Cottage, or Nott Cott as regular visitors know it, is a nice place by anyone’s standards, it’s pretty humble surroundings for an heir to the throne. Clearly, he wasn’t materialistic. Plus, Harry had such a big, sweet smile.

Meghan had enough dating experience to know a charmer when she saw one, and Harry was obviously not at all that. If anything, he was unfiltered. While it was clear he wanted to impress her with details about his work, he spoke without overthinking—and he never once mentioned anything about being a royal or a prince. The most he had admitted at that point was that his life was “sometimes a little mad.”

Harry was unusually candid for someone with his title, but he was also every bit the gentleman. Wherever they went, and to this day, he gestures for Meghan to go first. The short walk from the living room would have been no different.

With her visit to Nott Cott over, Meghan’s trip was sadly coming to an end. She spent her last day in the British capital cheering on her friend Serena Williams in the Players’ Box at Wimbledon (where photographers took little note of Meghan, focusing instead on Vogue editor in chief Anna Wintour and Pippa Middleton, who were in the same box), she jetted back across the Atlantic to Toronto, leaving in her wake just a few words posted to Instagram: “Gutted to be leaving London.” Again, only a few people had any inkling what those words truly meant.

One person in that select group was Doria. Meghan shared the news of her budding romance with her mom almost immediately. There was probably no one more influential in Meghan’s life than her mother. “She helped shape Meghan into a strong, powerful, independent woman,” Doria’s half brother Joseph said of his sister. Their bond had been forged during Meghan’s childhood. Practicing yoga, jogging in their LA neighborhood, biking to the La Brea Tar Pits after school, spending time preparing home-cooked dinners with fresh, healthy ingredients, and traveling—Meghan learned to love many of the same things her mom did. Mother and daughter were always very open with each other, and that did not change once Meghan became an adult.

In the following weeks—as Meghan traveled to New York and Boston to publicize the upcoming season of Suits and then to Madrid for a quick trip with Misha and Markus, where they drank lots of wine at Taberna Carmencita, visited Museo Nacional del Prado, and danced in bars—it wasn’t uncommon to see Meghan typing away on her phone and smiling or giggling to herself. She was texting with her new crush. Harry and Meghan sent each other selfies—nothing untoward, just sweet pics of them going about their day. Meghan also sent pictures of meals she was cooking or when she was hair and makeup–ready for camera on set.

Harry and Meghan were falling for each other fast, despite the fact that trust was an issue for both of them—although for completely different reasons. Meghan was protective of herself. She preferred to play it cool and get to know a guy before committing. That said, when she was sure about someone, she dove headlong into the relationship. Meghan’s dream was always to be friends first, then fall in love.

With those he was close to, Harry wore his heart on his sleeve. That’s why he protected himself from getting hurt. It took a very long time to earn his trust, because he was never sure about people’s motivations when they wanted to be his friend. That concern was only exacerbated when it came to women. Were they interested in him because they wanted to make high-society connections? Did they just want to say they dated a prince? Or did they want to sell a story to the press? His radar was always up, calculating how many questions potential love interests asked about the Palace or the Queen. If Harry could have his way, he would have jumped right in—texting and calling every day—when he found a woman he clicked with. But being a prince, he was raised to be wary of the intentions of others.

The correspondence continued through early August, when Meghan traveled to New York for her college friend Lindsay’s wedding to the British businessman Gavin Jordan. From New York, Meghan jetted to the Amalfi Coast for a long-planned holiday with Jessica. Camped out at Le Sirenuse Hotel, a chic five-star hotel in Positano, Meghan and Jessica spent most of their trip poolside, sipping negronis, Bellinis, and champagne while sunbathing. They called it “cocktails o’clock” as the two girlfriends caught up on their lives. With the azure crystalline waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea and Capri visible in the distance, Meghan spoke about everything, including the prince. As Meghan documented every moment of her trip on social media, dubbing it the “Eat Pray Love” tour of the Amalfi Coast, in a cheeky nod to her new love interest, Meghan posted a photo of a red leather-bound volume titled Amore Eterno.

Jessica was one of the few people in the world who knew Meghan’s secret; she was soon meeting Harry again in his home city. Just six weeks after their first date in the city, the prince was taking her on a trip. Harry planned everything for the five-day adventure. He told her to just arrive in London, and he’d handle the rest.

Their destination was Africa—a continent that had great personal significance for him.

A few weeks before, Harry had told Meghan he was planning to go to Africa soon—as he did every summer—and asked her if she would like to come along. He said he’d love for her to join him, since it was the perfect chance to spend time together in a place he was confident they wouldn’t be followed.

When Meghan asked about plans, like finding a place to stay, the prince said, “Leave it with me.”

This wasn’t Meghan’s first trip to Africa. In January 2015, she traveled with UN representatives to Rwanda to visit the Gihembe refugee camp and spend time in Kigali with female parliamentarians.

The trip had its roots in a Tig post from July 4, 2014, where Meghan connected Independence Day and individual independence: “Raise a glass to yourself today—to the right to freedom, to the empowerment of the women (and men) who struggle to have it, and to knowing, embracing, honoring, educating, and loving yourself.”

Her Tig post caught the attention of an executive at HeForShe—the United Nations’ global campaign for gender equality—who reached out to enlist Meghan in their efforts. Her increasing profile as an actress meant more to Meghan than just red carpet invites or free clothes. She wanted to stretch herself intellectually and morally. She had seen how actresses such as Angelina Jolie had advanced humanitarian goals and similarly wanted “to use whatever status I have as an actress to make a tangible impact.” So, she agreed—even offering to intern for a week during her upcoming filming hiatus from Suits. It was very much in character for Meghan, who, before taking on a commitment, likes to be fully prepared.

Rwanda is the only country in the world with a 64 percent female majority in Parliament. This female empowerment grew out of the ashes of the country’s 1994 genocide, which killed between eight hundred thousand and one million and left the population 60 to 70 percent female. Passed in 2003, the country’s new constitution declared that women must hold 30 percent of the seats in Parliament. In the election, though, voters surpassed the quota, raising it to 48 percent of the seats, a number that went up to 64 percent in the following election.

Almost a year after her first trip, she returned to Rwanda in February 2016, this time with World Vision, a Christian humanitarian organization dedicated to working with children. The purpose was to witness firsthand the importance of clean water. While visiting a school in the country, Meghan taught students to paint with watercolors, using water from a newly installed pipeline in their community. The students created pictures based on their hopes for the future. “It was an amazing experience, taking water from one of the water sources in the community and using it with the children to paint pictures of what they dream to be when they grow up,” Meghan said. “I saw that water is not just a life source for a community, but it can really be a source for creative imagination.”

It was an experience Meghan talked about with Harry on their first date. He also shared many of his own feelings about Africa—a place where he has said many times he feels “more like myself than anywhere else in the world.”

Harry fell for Africa following the tragic death of his mother, Princess Diana, in 1997—over the years it had quickly become his home away from home, but his first visit will always be as clear as day. Days after a fifteen-year-old William and twelve-year-old Harry followed their mother’s coffin from St. James’s Palace to Westminster Abbey, Prince Charles, due to make his first trip to South Africa, encouraged his sons to come along to escape the public mourning that surrounded them.

Diana’s death was a big turning point in Charles’s relationship with his sons. The Prince of Wales always tried to be the best father he knew how to be, but he had been raised with a strict sense of formality. While he showered affection on his sons when compared to what he experienced as heir to the throne, Charles was incredibly stiff and not at all used to the kind of world Diana created for the boys.

As a result of her parents’ divorce and difficult childhood, Diana was committed to creating a normal family home filled with love and laughter at Kensington Palace. Diana, one of the first royals to make the kitchen a place for the family and not just the staff, loved it when their chef, Carolyn Robb, cooked with the boys. Carolyn had a cake recipe that called for digestive biscuit crumbs, for which she enlisted Harry and William in pulverizing the cookies in Ziploc bags.

Charles was never going to fill the role of his sons’ mother, but after Diana’s death, he realized that he had to finish the job of raising his boys. That came before everything else, even his relationship with his longtime love, Camilla Parker-Bowles. Two weeks before they were set to make their public debut at an Osteoporosis Society function, Diana was tragically killed. They weren’t seen in public together for another two years, as Charles shifted his priorities to focus on his children.

On that trip with his father right after his mother’s death, Harry went on safari and was able to meet Nelson Mandela (as well as the Spice Girls). At a time in his life when he was most vulnerable, he made his very first visit to the countries of Lesotho and Botswana. The beauty of the animals and their natural habitat was something the thirteen-year-old would never forget.

As soon as Harry was old enough to travel by himself, he made sure to spend at least two to three weeks in Africa every summer. He also focused some of his charitable works on protecting the native wildlife and habitats that make the continent so special. “We need to look after them,” he said, “because otherwise our children will not have a chance to see what we have seen. And it’s a test. If we can’t save some animals in a wilderness area, what else can we do?”

Thanks to his dad, Harry was an environmentalist long before it became a mainstream movement. Prince Charles has been talking about climate change and plastic use since the seventies, noting he was considered “rather dotty” when he first brought up these issues. An advocate of sustainable farming, he manages his estate at Highgrove under “the strictest sustainable principles,” including a reed-bed sewage system and rainwater that’s collected in tanks for some of the toilets and watering the fields.

When Harry and William were growing up, the Prince of Wales was constantly on them to turn out the lights and also took them to pick up litter while on holiday. “I used to get taken the mickey out of at school for picking up rubbish,” Harry said in a documentary to mark his father’s seventieth birthday. Despite the teasing, the brothers both took up their father’s environmental activism, launching their own initiatives in that charitable space.

Harry’s conservation efforts, however, were not his only work in Africa. He was also inspired to continue his mother’s work fighting the AIDS epidemic. Just five months before her death, Princess Diana made a private visit to South Africa to visit her brother Charles Spencer, who was living there at the time. While in the country, she fulfilled a longtime wish to meet Nelson Mandela in Cape Town to discuss the threat of AIDS. “She went for the sort of charities and organizations that everybody was scared to go near, such as landmines in the Third World,” Harry said of his mother. “She got involved in things that nobody had done before, such as AIDS. She had more guts than anybody else.

“I want to carry on the things she didn’t quite finish,” said Harry, who spent part of his gap year in 2004 in Lesotho, which had the second-highest rate of HIV and AIDS in the world.

Harry’s mentor Captain Mark Dyer—who served formerly as an equerry for Prince Charles and had stepped in as a second father figure to William and Harry after their mother’s death—had suggested he visit the impoverished African country when the prince said he hoped to learn more about his mother’s work.

Lesotho’s statistics were bleak. Unemployment was at a staggering 50 percent, and life expectancy was less than forty years old for nearly 70 percent of the population. Nearly 25 percent of the adult population was infected with HIV—a number that rose to upward of 35 percent for childbearing women. Poverty, gender inequality, and the stigma associated with the disease all stood in the way of prevention and treatment of HIV and AIDS.

Harry—who spent two months with the orphaned children of Lesotho experiencing firsthand the widespread effects of the AIDS crisis—made a connection with Prince Seeiso of the country’s royal family, who had recently lost his mother, Queen Mamohato. Together they came up with the concept of Sentebale, an organization they officially founded in 2006 to support “the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people affected by HIV in Lesotho and Botswana.” Both princes viewed Sentebale, which means “forget me not” in the country’s language of Sesotho, as a way to honor their late mothers. Forget-me-nots were Diana’s favorite flower.

Among all the subjects Harry and Meghan talked about that first night in Soho House, Africa was the one that they instantly bonded over. Meghan said that she’d love to go back and see more of the continent—and Harry had clearly been listening.

After Meghan said yes to the trip, a friend said she was “excited” but also wondering, “Is this crazy to go away like this?”

“It wasn’t something she had done before,” the friend continued. “But in the short time she had spent with him, and their daily phone conversations and text chats, she knew he was a good man. And a gentleman at that. Sometimes you just have to allow yourself to get swept up in these things—and that she did.”

Having flown in from Toronto, Meghan spent one night with Harry at Kensington Palace before boarding an eleven-hour flight from London to Johannesburg the next morning. That was followed by two hours on a private light plane to Maun International Airport. Then they jumped into a 4×4 sport utility vehicle for a seventy-five-mile drive along the A3 National Route deep into a place many refer to as Africa’s last Eden.

When it came to Africa’s natural beauty, in Harry’s mind nothing beat the Okavango Delta—the stunning 5,800-square-mile wetland at the center of Botswana’s safari country, one of the last remaining wildlife habitats, and where he was secretly taking Meghan. He had visited the same part of the world before with Chelsy—first traveling the waterway on the houseboat the Kubu Queen in 2005 and again in 2009 for three nights at the five-star Shakawe River Lodge. For his romantic getaway with Meghan, he chose Meno A Kwena (translated as “teeth of the crocodile”), a safari camp on the edge of Makgadikgadi Pans National Park.

Six miles from any other safari camp (rare for the area), Meno A Kwena provided the couple with maximum privacy, not only from press but also from other tourists. On the wall of the resort is a framed photo of Harry’s grandparents the Queen and Prince Philip from when they made a state visit to Botswana in 1979. Also on the wall: a portrait of Sir Seretse Khama, the first president of Botswana, and his white, English wife, Ruth Williams. The couple created a furor when they married in 1948. (Their story was made into a film, A United Kingdom, starring David Oyelowo and Rosamund Pike, in 2016.)

Harry and Meghan spent much of their trip in one of the $1,957-a-night deluxe tents. The word “tent” might be somewhat of a misnomer for the fully serviced accommodation at Meno A Kwena. With teak king-size beds covered in cozy hand-woven comforters for when the temperature drops at night, the rooms at the campsite are far more akin to luxury cabins. Each tent has its own private terrace and a fully equipped en suite bathroom, featuring solar-powered hot water on tap, pressurized showers, and Egyptian cotton towels, making this a rather plush camping experience. The comfortable space always made for a welcome sight after a day out on safari for the couple.

A typical outing started with an early breakfast served on the deck outside their room—usually bacon and eggs for Harry, and fruit and yogurt for Meghan. They then packed up their essentials for the day ahead, including boxed lunches provided by the camp kitchen. Meghan made sure to pack sunscreen for both (especially handy for Harry, who burned easily and often forgot to use SPF protection).

The couple also spent nights away from the site on a specially organized safari of the Makgadikgadi Pans. Although Meghan is a well-traveled and an adventurous woman, a friend said she did find that sleeping outside took a bit of getting used to. Hearing random calls of birds or the grunt of a hippo or other animals in the middle of the night did not lend itself to a great night’s sleep. Harry was used to the sounds of the bush and so was the perfect person to have by her side.

Meghan could be forgiven if she didn’t find sleeping in the heart of a truly wild and remote part of Africa easy at first because she proved to be a versatile traveler, which Harry loved. In fact, she brought only one backpack on the trip (albeit a large one). Extremely organized, Meghan immediately impressed Harry with her packing skills. She has always taken pride in being a great packer—going as far as layering dryer sheets in between her clothes to keep them smelling fresh and no matter her destination always bringing tea-tree oil for bites, cuts, and pimples—and her skills were appreciated by the prince.

“The fact that Meghan has always been so comfortable with doing away with luxuries and embracing natural surroundings is something that Harry has always really loved about her,” a friend of the couple revealed. “I remember Meghan once joking that she can manage to pack even less than he does when they go away!”

If he worried that he was bringing along a high-maintenance Hollywood actress on safari, Harry was delightfully surprised by Meghan’s down-to-earth attitude. While camping, she cleaned her face with baby wipes and happily wandered into the woodlands if she needed a bathroom break. Spending five days of uninterrupted time together gave the new couple a chance to get to know each other and discover that they shared a curiosity about the world and a laid-back nature.

“It’s this love of adventure and sharing these exciting experiences that brought them so close together in the first place,” said a close friend of the couple. “The fact that they’re both as happy as just throwing on a backpack and going out to explore . . . I honestly think these experiences will never stop for them.”

After Harry and Meghan’s visit to Botswana, Meghan went home by herself and Harry moved on to Malawi to spend three weeks working with the organization African Parks, which manages an ecologically diverse portfolio of national parks in Africa.

After Meghan had departed for home, Harry worked alongside volunteers, veterinarians, and experts in one of the largest and most significant elephant relocations in history, moving five hundred elephants.

Harry helped safely move elephant herds from Majete and Liwonde to help replenish stocks in the Nkhotakota Wildlife Reserve. “Elephants simply can’t roam freely like they used to, without coming into conflict with communities, or being threatened by poaching and persecution,” Harry said. “To allow the coexistence of people and animals, fences are increasingly having to be used to separate the two and try to keep the peace.”

The wildlife conservationist and veterinarian Dr. Andre Uys rode in a helicopter with Harry that flushed elephant families from woods onto a floodplain. Andre safely tranquilized them to move them almost two hundred miles away to a safer place, and Harry would tag the elephants using a nontoxic temporary spray paint. “Harry’s dedication to conservation is admirable. His passion for helping preserve wildlife clearly comes from the heart,” Andre said, adding that Harry “got involved like everyone else. One of the team.”

When Meghan returned from Africa, a friend said, “She came back smiling and just completely spellbound.” Her phone was full of photos—the nature they had seen, candid snaps of herself, and selfies with Harry. According to the friend, if Meghan didn’t have to return to Canada for work and Harry to his life in London, “they would have happily spent the entire summer there together.” It wasn’t just the beauty of the place that had made the trip so idyllic. Meghan said that she and Harry talked so much, about things she rarely shared with anyone.

“I’ve never felt that safe,” Meghan told her friend, “that close to someone in such a short amount of time.”

4

The World Gets Wind

Harry felt that familiar buzz of excitement when his flight from London touched down at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport on October 28. Once again, after another agonizingly month-long separation, he was just minutes from being reunited with his girlfriend.

With months of clandestine meet-ups under their respective belts, with no one the wiser, they had their undercover dating routine down pat. The prince took commercial flights, as he always did. (Although he was usually the last on the plane and the first off.) But in an effort to maintain a low profile, he flew into Toronto with just one plainclothes protection officer instead of his normal two. And he’d seen to it that a generic-looking sedan would be waiting just outside the terminal to whisk him the twelve miles to Meghan’s two-story wine-colored townhouse in the city’s Seaton Village neighborhood, their safe haven.

Ever since the couple’s trip to Africa, their romance had been on a fast track. “Technically the getaway was just their third date,” said a friend about Botswana, “but by then, they were each already dancing around the idea that this just may be a forever thing.”

For Meghan, she was all in. Nothing could get her to slow down, not even a friend who cautioned her about getting involved with Harry. The British pal warned her from the prince because of the tabloids. “They hate royal wives and girlfriends. They will come after you,” he said. “Look at Diana.” But so much had changed since the time of Diana, Meghan reasoned: “How bad could it be?”

Another friend warned her off because of the tabloids, but for a very different reason: Harry’s wild reputation as portrayed in the media. The British press, which had connected him with a different girl almost every month, made him appear as though he wasn’t settling down anytime soon. That was enough for the friend to tell Meghan to “be careful.” But Meghan couldn’t reconcile the tabloid persona with the earnest man she felt so close to now. “He’s a really nice guy,” she insisted. “Very sweet, very genuine.”

Even though Harry was a prince, he was just like any young adult in that he had gone through experiences that pushed him to face adulthood. By the time he met Meghan, Harry had undergone a huge evolution through his experience in the military.