Harry and Meghan ‘got engaged before first public outing’
He popped question a month earlier, book claims
‘It was so sweet and natural’
THEIR engagement was famously folksy – Prince Harry getting down on one knee before a roast chicken dinner during a ‘cosy night’ in with Meghan Markle at their cottage at Kensington Palace.
But the controversial new biography of the couple suggests they did not actually get engaged in November 2017, as stated, but rather three months earlier.
According to Finding Freedom, Prince Harry popped the question a month before the couple’s appearance at the Invictus Games, possibly on a romantic trip to Africa.
If true, it means that they were already engaged at their first official appearance together in Toronto, Canada, that September.
Meghan wore a €151 designer white shirt – called the ‘Husband’ – when she attended Harry’s games for injured service personnel. At the time, it was widely thought that she sported the shirt to support her friend Misha Nonoo, the fashion queen who designed it and who also introduced the pair.
But royal watchers now believe she may have worn it as a coded message about the state of their relationship.
That August, the couple were spotted arriving in Botswana, a country that is close to Harry’s heart because of its wildlife and memories of his visits there in childhood.
Yet Clarence House’s official statement in November said they had become ‘engaged in London earlier this month’. In their first joint interview, the smiling couple told BBC presenter Mishal Husain that Harry proposed while they were cooking in Nottingham Cottage at Kensington Palace. Meghan said: ‘We were roasting a chicken and it [was] just... just an amazing surprise, it was so sweet and natural and very romantic. He got on one knee.’
Asked about when it took place, Harry said: ‘It happened a few weeks ago, earlier this month, here at our cottage – just a standard typical night for us. She didn’t even let me finish, she said, “Can I say yes, can I say yes?”
‘And then there were hugs and I had the ring in my finger and I was like, “Can I... can I give you the ring?” She goes, “Oh yes, the ring”.’
Finding Freedom, written by Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand, explores the couple’s life together, starting from the early days of their fast-moving romance and culminating in their decision to step down as royals and move to Los Angeles with son Archie. It is released on August 11.
A friend of the couple told the authors Harry was so ‘obsessed’ after their first date in summer 2016, it was as if he was ‘in a trance’.
Harry drank beer while Meghan sipped on a martini at London’s trendy Soho House. They were said to be so engrossed in each other they failed to notice the ‘rather rude wallpaper featuring photos of women’s private parts’.
By the second meeting, Harry ‘knew they would be together’, and within three months they had said ‘I love you’ to each other, the book says. It claims that from there ‘it didn’t take long for them to begin talking in non-oblique terms about their future’.
Just nine months after they started dating, Prince William is said to have warned his brother not to rush into anything.
The authors also said the couple preferred to keep the ‘story of their matchmaker a mystery’ but Meghan told friends her first encounter with Harry was ‘serendipitous’.
A spokesman for Meghan, 38, and Harry, 35, said they ‘were not interviewed and did not contribute to Finding Freedom’.