Finding Freedom

by Omid Scobie

  Harry described himself as having “shut down” all thoughts and feelings about his mother’s death for nearly two decades. “I thought that thinking of her was only going to make me sad and not going to bring her back,” he said, reasoning, “right, don’t ever let your emotions be part of anything.”

  Talking about his feelings turned out to be the best medicine—and part of the inspiration for the single biggest project the princes had ever undertaken together.

  In April 2016, William, Kate, and Harry launched Heads Together, a campaign to reduce the stigma surrounding mental health. The goal was to change the conversation about mental health so millions might feel safer getting the help they needed. William, Kate, and Harry hoped that if they opened up about mental health, others in the UK, where the British stiff upper lip prevailed, would feel they had permission to do the same.

  William and Harry credited Kate for the initiative’s genesis, saying the original concept was scribbled on the back of a cigarette pack one night. With much of her humanitarian work focused on early-childhood education development and addiction, the Duchess of Cambridge had become an outspoken proponent of mental health awareness. She believed the root of many unresolved adolescent problems could be traced to mental illness, which, if left untreated, often manifested as greater societal problems later in life.

  While Heads Together, a flagship initiative for the Royal Foundation, might have been Kate’s brainchild, it was Harry’s radical public admission of his personal struggles during one of the darkest periods in his life that imbued the mental health initiative with real impact. A year after the launch of the charity, Harry stunned the world when he bravely shared his decades-long repression of grief over his mother’s death, his subsequent anger and anxiety issues, and the confusion he felt about the source of his problems on Bryony’s podcast, which brought a lot of publicity for his cause but also broke with convention.

  William and Harry had never spoken so candidly about their mother, and certainly they had never shared in the press the immense pain they felt in the aftermath of her death. It was a watershed moment that defied the stereotype of the royal family.

  It was a brave and bold decision for Harry to open up about the anguish he suffered over the years. He was helping untold millions with his candid confession. Yet some Palace courtiers privately questioned whether the “soul baring” had gone a step too far, setting the wrong precedent and exposing William and Harry in the future. After all, the royal family normally revealed very little and certainly never addressed such intimate struggles.

  At the time, his father didn’t comment on his son’s confession, although in 2019, Prince Charles said he was “proud” of his son’s work to remove the stigma of mental health struggles. Though there was no public response from the Queen to his admission, the mere fact that Harry was launching a public mental health campaign with his brother and sister-in-law implied that he had the tacit approval of his grandmother. Harry’s personal revelations weren’t a break from protocol; they were a move forward for the monarchy within the confines of its rules.

  Only Harry, however, could have gotten away with such an admission. It had nothing to do with playing favorites. There were stricter confines for his brother, because he was direct heir to the throne. The same dynamic was true for Prince Andrew, who had been continually given chances after making major missteps or lapses in judgment. Until his association with American financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Andrew got to keep going on as a working member of the royal family after behavior that would never have flown with Charles. There is a different level of protocol for direct heirs to the throne.

  Harry was proud of the two and a half years in which he not only prioritized his royal duties but was “able to take my private life seriously as well.” Three months later, when he joined his brother at a private service at Althorp House to rededicate Diana’s grave on what would have been her 56th birthday, Harry could honestly say that he was a changed man. By his own admission he put “blood, sweat, and tears into the things that really make a difference,” both for himself and others.

  But even as he hit his stride as a public figure, Harry still struggled to find a soul mate. His brother, William, had been lucky enough to settle down with a woman he first met at the age of nineteen, while Harry had two failed long-term relationships and a history of bad headlines. William and Kate’s successful courtship and marriage, however, was more than just luck. William went to university, which allowed him to meet new friends in a protected environment. At St. Andrews, in Fife, Scotland, he developed his social skills without intrusion from the press, because of an agreement with the British media, including tabloids, that he would be left alone while at university. In that safe space, he met Kate, who, except for a three-month split in 2007, has always been someone William could lean on and trust.

  In a committed relationship, William didn’t always understand Harry’s interest in London nightlife. He checked out the scene with Kate now and then, but it was a very different experience as part of a couple.

  During his 2013 tour of Afghanistan, Harry admitted being “very jealous of my brother . . . back home he gets to go home to his wife and dog.” Whether he was “stuck playing PlayStation in a tent full of men” while on active duty or playing Call of Duty and ordering pizzas from PizzaExpress (a favorite of the princes) to his modest Kensington Palace apartment that he moved into once he returned, Harry led a relatively solitary life. His longing for his own family only grew as William and Kate expanded theirs with a second child after the birth of Princess Charlotte on May 2, 2015.

  All combined, Harry had changed, from the impulsive prince Meghan had been told about by the friend who cautioned against dating him, to the man, ready to find love, in front of her.

  Bringing Meghan to Botswana, one of the most sacred and special places in his life, was a symbol of how he felt about her. She was smart, independent, adventurous, optimistic, and beautiful. But perhaps most important to Harry, Meghan came across as authentic. With Meghan, he knew she wasn’t trying to impress him. He felt as though he was getting the real Meghan from day one.

  Just three months into their relationship, a Meghan pal said, they had already begun swapping the words “I love you.” It was Harry who said the three little but very loaded words first, but Meghan immediately replied, “I love you, too.” From there it didn’t take long for them to begin talking in non-oblique terms about their future.

  In another display of affection, Meghan left inside jokes and references littered across her Instagram feed. There was her July reference to a “date night for one,” on the evening she spent alone in her hotel room during one of the first trips when she met Harry, and her posting a photo of two kissing matches with the caption “Sunday kind of love” on July 17. Then came the pretty displays of peonies that were presumably a gift from one Captain Wales. “Swooning over these,” she wrote on July 1. More flowers came two weeks later. “Because I’m spoiled rotten,” she said, alongside the hashtag #theynevergetold.

  Harry also showed his feelings by traveling to Toronto three times between August and October. Fearing his famed ginger locks would be an easy spot, they had both largely avoided going out to her favorite haunts, such as Bar Isabel and Terroni, preferring to hunker down at the three-bedroom, two-bath house she began renting in the summer of 2013, right around the time of her divorce.

  When Meghan moved in, it was the largest place she had ever had to herself—and to furnish. Meghan decorated like she dressed. She was a big fan of mixing high- and low-end products. While she may have had some decent art to hang on the walls (it was an occasional payday treat to pick up a small piece for her growing collection), for some of her furniture and home accessories she often turned to affordable places such as HomeSense, IKEA, and even Home Depot. “Money in the bank doesn’t mean money to spend” was the advice her father gave her as a teen, and she still took that to heart.

  She eventually treated
herself to the ceramic kamado-style Big Green Egg barbecue she had had in her Internet bookmarks for a year; the large patio space was perfect for entertaining. With its deck, beachy décor, and large open windows to the rear, the space reminded her a little of California. Friendly neighbors, mostly families, lived in the closely grouped houses centered around a good public school and dog park where Meghan’s rescue dog, Bogart, could frolic.

  Although Meghan didn’t grow up with pets, Bogs, as she called him, became the object of her devotion and in heavy rotation on her Instagram feed. But she credits Ellen DeGeneres as the reason she adopted the Lab mix.

  Meghan was cuddling with Bogart at the animal shelter that had rescued him and his brother in Los Angeles when the daytime talk show host walked in with her wife, actress Portia de Rossi.

  “Is that your dog?” Ellen asked Meghan.

  “No,” Meghan answered.

  The two women had never met. And although Meghan, of course, knew Ellen, Ellen had no idea who she was. Still, the famous comedian said to her, “You have to take that dog.”

  “Well, I’m deciding . . .”

  “Rescue the dog!” Ellen ordered.

  Ellen left the rescue center, but as soon as she walked outside, she tapped on the window and yelled to Meghan, “Take the dog!”

  How could she refuse? “It’s sort of like if Oprah tells you to do something,” Meghan said. “I brought him home. Because Ellen told me to.”

  She didn’t regret the decision. In fact, two years later, she adopted another rescue—a beagle she named Guy after meeting him at an adoption event organized by the Ontario-based charity A Dog’s Dream Rescue.

  Now her sweet dogs ran underfoot as Meghan whipped up her signature roast chicken for the prince sitting in her sleek, all-white chef’s kitchen.

  While Harry and Meghan kept a low profile, the prince’s presence could not go unnoticed in her neighborhood. It didn’t take long for Harry’s visits to become an open secret among the residents of Seaton Village. As one of Meghan’s neighbors said, “When a black SUV was parked with guys inside wearing headsets and eating burritos, we’d say, ‘Hey, Harry’s in town!’ ” But the news never went further than the Seaton Village community Facebook page, typically devoted to discussions about shoveling snow and dog poop. Toronto doesn’t have the kind of paparazzi presence of New York, LA, or London, because there is not a large Canadian celebrity media industry to serve.

  But Harry and Meghan didn’t just spend time together in London and Canada. Letting their closest friends in on their secret had been key. Not worried that any of their dearest confidants would out them, they instead found themselves with a multitude of accomplices willing to help them hide.

  One of Harry’s oldest friends, Arthur Landon, offered the couple the use of his LA home for a week. The son of the late brigadier Tim Landon—known as the White Sultan, or Landon of Arabia, because of the peaceful coup he is said to have helped organize in Oman and the fortune he made there—Arthur is one of the wealthiest young men in Britain. The onetime model and filmmaker, who had always tried to look out for Harry since the two became friends at Eton College, called the woman who sold the naked photos of the prince during the trip they took together to Las Vegas “despicable.”

  Knowing firsthand what lengths people would go to in order to get a picture of Harry and his personal life, Arthur told the prince that the best place he could stay in LA while visiting with Meghan was his house. Arthur’s bohemian-style West Hollywood spread sits in the lowest part of the Hills, with a pool and views of Sunset Boulevard. It was a prime, and private, location from which Harry had his first chance to visit Meghan’s native city. The trip—during which they spent almost the entire time at the house in hiding—is also when Harry met Doria for the first time.

  Unable to venture to Doria’s two-bedroom house in the neighborhood of Windsor Hills, Harry and Meghan invited her over to their temporary LA digs. (Although the couple was holed up, that didn’t stop Meghan from having Harry taste dishes from some of her favorite local restaurants, including Sushi Park, which she said has “the most delicious sashimi,” by using a delivery app.) While Meghan may have been nervous for her mom to meet Harry for the first time, Doria was as cool as ever. It takes a lot to faze the yoga instructor, although she later told a colleague at the mental health clinic where she worked that the experience of meeting a prince who also happened to be dating her daughter was “a little surreal.”

  Although she talked with Doria about the guys she dated, Meghan didn’t make it a habit of introducing them to her mom until the relationship was further down the line. But she wanted to put Doria at ease and show her that even though Harry was a worldwide public figure, he was also a good man. “Meghan didn’t want her worrying about anything,” says a source. “She wanted her mom to see the real Harry. The man she was falling in love with.”

  Harry also wanted to impress Meghan’s mother when he first met her. Not with gifts, but through his words and actions. Often one to worry what others think of him, he wanted to prove that he was different from the royals depicted in the British tabloids. And it worked. Doria came away impressed by his compassion, empathy, and level of activism. As a friend said, “She could see he was genuine.”

  During those first months of their relationship, when their news was still a secret, Meghan went to the UK at least three times. Each time she arrived at the airport, Harry made sure a driver was waiting for her—no fancy Rolls-Royce or chauffeur in uniform, just someone from a local corporate taxi company that he and other members of the royal family used on occasion.

  Markus, however, could always be counted on to find a cozy, luxurious, and hidden spot for the couple. He put them up at a private four-bedroom cottage tucked away from the main members’ Soho Farmhouse. In Oxfordshire, barely an hour and a half outside of London, it was the perfect retreat from the city. Although the stone house stood on one hundred acres of English countryside, they still enjoyed sashimi and other Japanese dishes delivered to their cottage from Pen Yen, one of the restaurants on the property.

  During a fall visit Markus arranged for the couple to spend a weekend at Babington House, an eighteenth-century manor house in Somerset that Soho House had converted into one of their vacation properties. Harry and Meghan’s accommodations included a roaring open fire and a butler—another secret getaway the press never found out about.

  It wasn’t long before Meghan was feeling so confident in their pairing, so emboldened by their ability to hide in plain sight, that she even had Harry join her as she walked her dogs along their favorite paths through Toronto’s Trinity Bellwoods Park. A hoodie and a baseball cap were enough to obscure Harry’s famous face during his visit to the city. Most Canadians never looked twice anyway at the young couple wearing matching beaded blue bracelets they picked up in Botswana. (Bracelets are a signature item of the prince’s, and each has its own meaning and importance. A silver band with engravings that he’s worn religiously since 2001 came from his 1997 trip to Africa after his mother died. William has been photographed wearing a similar bracelet.)

  They especially didn’t feel like spending Halloween weekend in hiding, as there was much to celebrate. Some four months into their relationship, they were madly in love and eager to take part in the fun of one of their favorite holidays. The evening of October 29, with Harry in town, the couple decided to go to a big costume party being thrown at Soho House in Toronto. Harry and Meghan both had on Venetian-style masks, hiding their true identities to other partygoers.

  Surrounded by the establishment’s exclusive clientele and confident due to a rule that discouraged patrons from surreptitiously snapping pictures with their phones, Harry and Meghan felt at ease. It wasn’t their first time at the club. During a previous visit, they had stepped into the bar’s photo booth together, keeping the strip of snapshots as a souvenir.

  They also weren’t alone. The pair turned up at the Halloween bash with Harry’s cousin Princess Eugenie and he
r longtime boyfriend, Jack Brooksbank, who was in Toronto for work as a brand ambassador for George Clooney and Rande Gerber’s tequila brand, Casamigos. Harry and Meghan had already been out on two double dates with them.

  Eugenie had always been more than just a cousin to Harry. They were also the closest of friends. Out of all the Queen’s grandchildren, Harry and Eugenie have one of the most natural connections. Like Harry, Eugenie is loyal, honest, and great fun. The two had many nights out together in London, sneaking into back entrances of clubs, such as Mahiki, where Jack once was manager, or Tonteria, where in one of the VIP cave areas, they downed shots from Mexican skull-shaped glasses and a giant frozen margarita (with multiple straws). Harry had so much fun at the club co-owned by one of Harry’s close childhood pals, Guy Pelly, he partied there four nights in one week of July 2014.

  Although they grew up in different places (she at Royal Lodge in Windsor Great Park, he at Kensington Palace in London), the close relationship between their mothers brought them together. Sarah Ferguson would often bring her daughters to tea with Diana, William, and Harry at Kensington Palace. After both women’s divorces were finalized in 1996, the single mothers took their kids on vacation together to the South of France. (It was Harry who later ensured that his aunt Sarah was invited to the wedding ceremony and first reception—quite the feat considering that Prince Philip reportedly once said he never wanted to be in the same room as her again.) Like Harry, Eugenie also struggled to carve out her own identity growing up. Not being in a senior role meant that she had to go out into the world and find her own path, which she had done, moving to New York in 2013 to work at Paddle8, the auction house run by Misha’s husband and Harry’s friend Alexander.

  Harry had always confided in his cousin when it came to the women in his life. Not only did he trust her implicitly, but friends say that she gives great advice and has always been “beyond wise” for her years. It’s not surprising, then, that Eugenie was one of the first in the family to know about his relationship with Meghan. Although she was the one to introduce Harry to her good friend Cressida (they used to double-date as well), she was nothing but encouraging about his new relationship. In fact, Eugenie, who’d long wanted to see her cousin settle down and be happy, told friends she loved Meghan and that she was “just the tonic” for him.