Prince Harry revealed in his memoir Spare that his questioning of Meghan Markle would “often” end up with her crying when she was still his new girlfriend. He said she didn’t pay much attention to the internet or the stories about her “as a rule,” which he believed to be intelligent but unsustainable in the long run.
Once the press started running upsetting narratives about her, Harry felt he was going to war for her “reputation and physical safety” and said he needed to know fact from fiction. Here’s what he said went down during that time.
Prince Harry condemned the press for treatment of Meghan Markle
Harry and Meghan met in the summer of 2016, and that November, his communications secretary released a statement condemning the actions of the press toward her. It acknowledged “significant curiosity about his private life” and stated he’d developed a “thick skin” despite his discomfort about the media interest.
However, Harry felt the press crossed a line with a “wave of abuse and harassment” directed at Meghan. For instance, “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.”
The statement concluded, “[Harry] has asked for this … to be issued in the hopes that those in the press who have been driving this story can pause and reflect before any further damage is done. He knows that it is unusual to issue a statement like this, but hopes that fair-minded people will understand why he has felt it necessary to speak publicly.”
Prince Harry said Meghan Markle would ‘often begin to cry’ over questions about her life
In Spare, Harry revealed that Meghan ignored the internet “as a rule” when they first began dating. He said it was wise for her to do but “not sustainable” as they became more committed and they were fighting for her “reputation and physical safety” as she came under attack from the British press.
Harry wrote that he “needed to know exactly what was fact, what was false, and that meant asking her every few hours about something else that had appeared online.”
In response to tabloid claims, he would ask Meghan, “Is this true? Is that true? Is there a grain of truth in this?”
He recalled, “She’d often begin to cry.”
“Why would they say that, Haz? I don’t understand,” she told him. “Can they just make stuff up?”
Harry’s response? “Yes, they can. And yes, they do.”
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were stressed about media during their most blissful moments
In his memoir, Harry claimed all the press coverage and abusive comments about Meghan hurt their happiness. “Instead of walking around Frogmore gardens, or sitting in my kitchen talking dreamily about the future, or just getting to know each other, we were meeting lawyers, searching for ways to combat this madness,” he revealed.
Still, he described their relationship then as “solid [and] happy” and stated they “managed to protect their essential bond” during that difficult time.
