If you analyse what Nikki Priddy and others, who have known Meghan well over the years, have said, a pattern emerges. Meghan is so controlled but so vivid, even when she is silent, then so enthusiastic and apparently spontaneous and warm when she is not, that she brings out the best in everyone she wants to impress. But her control conveys the unspoken message to men that they have to ‘up their game’, as Harry put it, without realising that he was confessing that from the very beginning he understood that the name of the game would be pleasing Meghan. She is proudly and overtly a feminist, and one who not only advocates the joys of empowerment but also makes no pretence about wishing to retain control over her destiny. This is not possible without commanding her relationships as well as the other circumstances of her life.
When Meghan had said, after leaving Trevor, that she did not find separation frightening but empowering, she was actually saying that she would never again be involved with a man who didn’t fulfill her demands as and when she wanted them to be fulfilled. All those years of swallowing her resentment while Trevor clung to his integrity and refused to find her parts, had taught her that a man was worth having only if he gave her what she wanted in the here and now. If he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, she would move on to someone else who could and would. This attitude gave her a degree of autonomy that was attractive to men who like powerful men. They interpreted it as strength and independence, not callousness or opportunism.
This was not the only aspect of Meghan’s personality which captivated Harry right from the outset. She was open about her need to have ‘a voice’, not only with the man in her life but with everyone else. He was transfixed by how opinionated she was. She also made it clear that she must remain in control, and that she had no time for those who do not please her. ‘I think very quickly into that we said, “Well, what are we doing tomorrow? We should meet again,” she said. Not for a nanosecond did she convey the slightest degree of deference. To a prince used to it, but hungering to be accepted as a man, this was an extremely attractive quality. It was, ironically, the very quality that had won Wallis Simpson the former King Edward VIII’s heart. It had also worked for Richard Burton when he treated Elizabeth Taylor, who was used to being revered as a movie goddess, as just another woman.
Harry and Meghan both left 5 Hertford Street knowing that something special had happened. The following evening, an excited prince, flying high with anticipation as only someone who is genuinely emotional can, met up with the supremely confident but very warm and responsive Meghan at Soho House. Her friend Markus Anderson had arranged a discreet space for them where they could knock back the wine undisturbed.
‘Back to back, two dates in London,’ Harry said. ‘It was three, maybe four weeks later that I managed to persuade her to join me in Botswana, and we camped out with each other, under the stars.’ They were together ‘for five days out there, which was absolutely fantastic. Then we were really by ourselves, which was crucial to me to make sure that we had a chance to get to know each other.’
Meghan said, ‘Everything that I’ve learned about him, I’ve learned through him, as opposed to having grown up around different news stories or tabloids or whatever else. Everything that I learned about him and his family was what he would share with me and vice versa. So for both of us it was a very authentic and organic way to get to know each other.’
Although Meghan’s critics would accuse her of being disingenuous, in that she had done her homework and knew much more about him than she claimed, the fact remains that they jelled. If her motives were more mixed than his, it does not alter the fact that they patently had something special between them. This they now set about nurturing, creating a bubble which allowed the relationship to develop with speed. It was after the third date that Meghan told Nelthorpe-Cowne that she and Harry were so serious about each other that they were already plotting their future.
The couple would later claim that they had five or six months of privacy before their relationship went public. That was not so. They had met only a handful of times over a period of less than four months before the news of their relationship broke. This shows the intensity which they shared. Meghan was filming Suits in Toronto, so Harry flew out to see her a few times. She also came to London once or twice, staying quietly with him at Nottingham Cottage, which was then his home in Kensington Palace.
This cottage is small and quaint, and used to house retired Private Secretaries such as Sir Alan ’Tommy’ Lascelles, whom Princess Margaret rightly blamed for destroying her chances of marrying Group Captain Peter Townsend. Whenever PM saw him walking in the Kensington Palace complex, she would tell her chauffeur to ‘run the bastard down’, an instruction he wisely avoided implementing. But the cottage was discreet, so Meghan and Harry were able to have the privacy they needed to take their relationship to another level.
Then, on the 30th October 2016, the Sunday Express blew the lovers’ cover. The world now knew that Prince Harry had a girlfriend called Meghan Markle. He was actually staying with Meghan in
