Have Harry and Meghan copied Di in new book about their lives?
Peeing in the woods and FaceTimes in the bath, the detail in an explosive new biography about the Sussexes has left royal watchers asking: Did Harry follow his mum Princess Diana’s lead and leak his story?
NSW
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If the Duke of Sussex has taken a leaf from the book of his beloved late mother it is perhaps this: befriend a trusted royal reporter and lift the lid on the gilded cage they had been living in.
There is a pervading sense of deja vu three decades on in the manner in which Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have revealed what really goes on in The Firm and how Princess Diana told Her True Story.
The tale of Harry and Meghan walking away from Buckingham Palace — and the pomp and glory it is synonymous with — is explained in an explosive 354-page biography that has left royal watchers agog over the sensational level of detail only the couple could have known, and questioning whether Finding Freedom is truly the fruit of hundreds of hours of conversations and interviews with “more than 100 sources”.
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The two royal defectors who value their privacy so intensely they are suing an unnamed paparazzi photographer in California for taking “illegal” drone pictures of their son Archie before their July purchase of a Santa Barbara home in a Hollywood-heavy neighbourhood, have remained suspiciously quiet about the book’s claims, except to insist they have had no hand in it.
It is their friends, they insist, who have been indiscreetly whispering to the press.
Yet detailed in it is the intensely private moment when Harry realised Meghan was his soulmate: when she went for a pee in the woods on their first trip to Botswana.
“Harry was delightfully surprised by Meghan’s down-to-earth attitude,” authors Carolyn Durrand and Omid Scobie fawn, adding, “While camping she cleaned her face with baby wipes and happily wandered into the woodlands if she needed a bathroom break.”
Also detailed is fallout over prospective sister-in-law Pippa’s nuptials amid claims former Suits star Meghan pulled out from attending the May 2017 wedding to James Matthews.
When The Sun ran a headline suggesting it would be “Meghan V Pippa” in the wedding of the rears (Pippa’s butt stole the show at sister Kate’s 2011 royal wedding to Will), with hours to go she bailed for fear she would “overshadow” the bride.
We learn, too, about Meghan’s FaceTimes from the bath, what she has for breakfast (steel-cut oats with almond or soya milk, dressed with banana and agave syrup) and how she “rolled her eyes” when reading a tweet from US President Donald Trump that said he would not pay their security bills.
The authors say Harry “deeply craves normalcy” and cites his mother taking him to McDonald’s, as an example.
The book is not a sensational coup of the kind journalist Andrew Morton served up with his shocking 1992 account of the misery of the Princess of Wales in Diana: Her True Story. Diana’s attempt at blowing the lid off Buckingham Palace was at least revelatory.
Rewind to 1992 when Diana: Her True Story exploded onto the scene, blowing away the facade of a fairytale marriage between her and Prince Charles.
It became an overnight bestseller, and Morton — a 10-year royal reporter — became a household name for years to come thanks to its intensely intimate stories.
Unbeknown to the public until 1997, Diana had been a big participant in the writing of the book, secretly meeting Morton at Kensington Palace and sharing her information via secret tape recordings.
Morton believed that The Princess of Wales wanted to escape the life she was living, but could not quit to the other side of the world without provoking yet more intense public scrutiny. The only way the public would understand, was if they knew the reasons behind her actions. But what possessed the Duke and Duchess of Sussex to support the authors of this book is utterly perplexing.
If they believed it was to portray “the real Harry and Meghan” — a tale of victims of inaccurate reporting and a Duchess accused of snaring an “artless” younger prince — they have been let down, largely because of what appears to be Meghan’s big say over the book’s content.
In the end, she says, she would be happy to “settle for ‘a nice English gentleman to flirt with’,” the authors state.
Which only begs the question: Did she get more than she had bargained for?