When Harry Met Meghan | The Fairytale Story | Timeline

I was born and raised in Los Angeles. A California girl who lives by the ethos that most things can be cured by yoga, the beach, or a few avocados. I'm being cheeky, clearly, but it speaks to the temperaments I grew up around. With a free-spirited clinical therapist for a mom and the most hard-working father you can imagine. I always had a foot in two worlds because their work and home environments were so vastly different. My mother raised me to be a global citizen with eyes open to sometimes harsh realities. One of the problems with writing a modern day novel is that history is moving so quickly that you can't keep up with it. I would never have predicted that someone in line to the British throne, a son of the Prince of Wales, a grandson of the Queen, would marry an American divorcee with a black mother. Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are a fairy tale story and we love them because they are. Yeah, this is a post-modern Cinderella story that she can go to the ball, she can have it all, the clock can chime 12 o'clock and she can keep on dancing. I'm sure when Harry first met Meghan the first thing he thought was what an incredibly sexy, attractive woman. He is, he was, the most eligible bachelor on the planet. He had his pick of any girl he wanted. There was a relatively chance encounter, they didn't know each other, they'd never met before, they were introduced through a mutual friend. And as soon as Harry walked into the room and saw this beautiful vision before him, he realised first of all he had to up his game and then when he listened to her conversation, articulate, intelligent, well-travelled, but also someone who was a humanitarian, he also realised that she was the one for him. But I'm told that very quickly Harry realised that there was something special about this girl, you know, after the first couple of dates. Everything, all the stars were aligned, everything was just perfect, it was this beautiful woman just sort of literally tripped and fell into my life, I fell into her life. You know, he felt confident enough that he invited her to Botswana, well that's his spiritual home, he wouldn't just take anyone to Botswana within a few weeks of meeting them. And they spent a week together sharing a tent under the stars and I think this must have been the point where they really decided whether things were going to work out between them. But he did that with Meghan and, you know, it was under the stars in Botswana, it was all terribly romantic, that I think he really fell in love with her. For many of us, our vision of Harry is sort of frozen on that picture of him walking behind his mother's gun carriage at her funeral and then suddenly the next thing we know, Harry's getting into trouble. He had a difficult teenage period, he drank too much, he partied too much, I think he was, I think you could say a lot of that was self-medication. He was the one who was falling out of nightclubs, picking fights with paparazzi photographers, he was the one who was taking his swimming trunks off in a Las Vegas suite, in the most ridiculous behavior. But those actual incidents were few and far between and one needs really to cut him a little slack it seems to me. Harry certainly has got through his adolescence very well. There might have been some dressing up as Nazis and things like that, which went down well with the press, but he seems to have kept to his idea. We know that he has broken the rules, people like that about him, I think it makes him more relatable. He has changed and progressed from a wayward young royal to an incredibly impressive young man. I think the making of Prince Harry was without a doubt serving in the army for 10 years. Harry absolutely turned a corner and the army I think was the making of Harry. The guys who are doing the same job as us have been shot out on the ground and I don't think there's anything wrong with us being shot out as well. People back home will have issues with that, but we're not special. The guys out there are simple as that. Mixing with other servicemen is always an education. They come from all sorts of different backgrounds, they certainly did in Afghanistan and it wasn't the old stiff upper lip and it was more real danger and sympathy for the people there too. Soldiering was very important to Harry, he joined the army, it was a childhood dream of his to be a soldier and he was a damn good officer from all the evidence. The making of Prince Harry was without a doubt serving in the army for 10 years, going to Afghanistan to serve two tours of duty, fighting on the front line for queen and country and not just fighting on the front line but coming back and doing everything he possibly could to change the lives of the servicemen and women who had fought on the front line, lost limbs, suffered post-traumatic stress disorder, came back to a life that was not the life they'd left. Harry came and shone the spotlight on them and I think the Invictus Games was the making of Prince Harry and Afghanistan too. I wanted to bring this inspirational event to a broader and more international audience, to increase the opportunity for others to participate and to inspire many more who have suffered life-changing injuries either by taking part in the games or simply by watching it at home. So from insecure little boy who looked as though it all might go wrong, I think it's come spectacularly right. The army will always be an important part of his life because of his interest in veterans affairs but it is probably until he met Meghan the most significant development in his life so far. You feel like his journey is complete, you feel now that as he marries Meghan Markle that sort of final piece of his jigsaw has fitted into place. I think Meghan is probably a person of great ambition, I mean it's quite clear that from an early age she wanted to perform. I mean she said that she had to start at the bottom and you know climbing that slippery pole of stardom to get to the top hasn't been easy. I mean it cost her her first marriage, it's cost her a lot. I think she was hardwired from birth to give back, to be an activist, to put herself out there. At the same time she was encouraged by her mother always to look after herself. But the way she went about turning herself into if not quite a Hollywood A-lister but into a very successful working actress. I wasn't black enough for the black roles and I wasn't white enough for the white ones, leaving me somewhere in the middle as the ethnic chameleon who couldn't book a job. This is precisely why Suits stole my heart. It's the Goldilocks of my acting career, where finally I was just right. It wasn't as if she just walked straight into that role in Suits and of course playing Rachel Zane was the role that shot her to become, well famous to becoming a household name. I think you can maybe look to her upbringing, it strikes me that her mother is a fantastic influence on her. We know she's been a social worker, she's a yoga teacher, she obviously cares a lot about society and we know that from a young age she was exposing Meghan to things like slums in Jamaica they visited on holiday. She was raised in a very nice leafy suburb in Los Angeles and she went to a good prep school and actually the reason that her father was able to afford to send her to that school was because he won the lottery, he won $750,000. She was taught by her father the virtues of hard work. He would work 80-90 hours a week as a lighting director. So this combination and also the fact that she always felt something of an outsider because she never really at school joined in with say the African-American group or the white girls and people were kind of shocked when they saw her mother who's African-American they thought she was Italian. So she's always she's lived in a world where people have made racist remarks not knowing that she's actually biracial. And I think growing up her mother Doria was very determined I think that Meghan grew up aware that she grew up in quite a privileged background but there were others that were less lucky than she was. So she's had to learn from quite an early age not only to be diplomatic with her parents who split up when she was just two but be diplomatic with the outside world. She's learned to bend, she's learned to be fluid, she's learned to see the other point of view. That is what I grew up seeing. So that is what I grew up being. A young adult with a social conscience to do what I could and to at the very least speak up when I knew something was wrong. Young people view the royal family like everything else very differently to their parents and the fact that this figure Meghan Markle is a divorcee, is from a mixed race background, is an actress is attractive to them. It makes them feel that the monarchy is not somehow up on a remote pedestal, it's not something that their grandparents like and get excited about, it's something for them. I think that when you've got an American who's argued for gender equality but also is accepted by the royal family, that shows to me that Britain is changing as a nation and that the royal family is reflecting that change. The Queen has gone further than any of her predecessors in sort of coming off her gilded throne and mixing with people and thinking ahead of what will please people. We are seeing a transition, as slow as it is, it is happening. So I think the monarchy has reached a point where it absolutely knows it needs to modernise, it knows it needs to move forward, it knows it needs to do that in order to stay relevant and at the helm of that movement are the young royals because they are the ones that people can connect with. Prince William, Prince Harry and the Duchess of Cambridge are really reaching out to people, they go and they meet all sorts of people and they're very open and I think that that's the future of the monarchy really. We'll never let it be said that the royal family is not above adapting, I mean it has survived a thousand years of change and remained in situ. It is brilliant at navigating its way through changes in social life, the mores of the time, they've done it many many times, they reinvent themselves every few generations. It's a remarkable journey that the royal family has been on and it shows great resilience and adaptability and I think relevance. The monarchy must be relevant to the people, if the people do not feel that the monarchy is relevant we will no longer have a monarchy. The great thing that I feel about this marriage between Meghan and Harry is that Meghan is representative of a great many people in our society today. When you look back to the 1970s and early 1980s the royal family was a do not touch, white gloved, big handbags monarchy. What a transformation in the last few years. When I was a child you were taught that the secret of the royal family was their distance and once they broke that the game would be up and in my youth I believed that. I now believe the exact opposite, that they've joined in with the modern world and that is why the British people not only accept them but like them. I mean the royal family has been likened to a soap opera for the last 30 years, I mean ever since the arrival of Princess Diana transformed a rather staid, inward-looking, conventional institution into something which attracted the world's interest. I mean that was the Diana effect. There is a clearly a danger that they become seen simply as sort of celebrities but I think that they're not that. I think the royal family have a genuine role to play both in this country and abroad. They do help unify the nation in a way that political figures in a very divisive time no longer can. Having a woman like this as a member of our royal family, a senior member of our royal family, will make a whole lot of people who weren't that interested in the royal family suddenly become interested in them. Well Prince Harry at the time was fifth in line to the throne when he decided he was going to propose to Meghan Markle and being fifth in line to the throne he was required to ask his grandmother's permission to wed. The Queen's a very pragmatic woman. She has been thrilled and delighted at the way her grandchildren have made successes of their marriages in the way that her own children failed, signally failed, and I think it has been a sense of great joy for her latter years to see the happiness that they've enjoyed and they've had. The Queen must be delighted that her family is continuing to grow. We know she's very fond of Prince Harry and seeing him happy with someone and creating a future together with Meghan must be incredibly satisfying for her but also I'm sure she's very mindful of the work that Meghan's done and her ability and her the talents that she brings if you like to the role and I think you know it's only going to reflect very positively on the rest of the families. The fact that he's marrying someone so diversely different from anyone else that any of her children or grandchildren have married is probably a sense, has given the Queen a sense of pride. The last time of course that marrying a divorcee was contemplated was Edward VIII and Wallace Simpson. It almost brought the monarchy to an end. It was catastrophic. Compare it to Edward VIII, the king who abdicated his throne so that he could marry a two times divorced woman, Wallace Simpson, another American and you can see the huge transition, the transformation in the monarchy mainly in this Queen's reign. Times have changed so dramatically. When the Queen came to the throne, divorcees were not welcome at court. Now three of her four children are divorced. Her heir, Prince Charles, is a divorcee who is married to a divorcee. A lot was made of the fact that Meghan was dual heritage. I don't think that was an issue for the Queen and that she was an American actress. Well, if anything was going to raise eyebrows, I think it was probably that because Meghan had clearly had quite a colourful life up until this point. You know, she'd had 10 years in show business but there didn't appear to be any skeletons in her closet. I think Diana would have been thrilled by Meghan. I think she would have loved her glamour. She would have liked the work she's been doing on the charitable front but most of all she'd have adored the fact that she makes her younger son so very, very happy. She would have seen in Meghan something of herself in the fact that she's lived to give back, that she has a sense of the wider world and helping people who have got fewer advantages than herself. So she would have been thrilled too to see that Harry is no longer wild Harry but mature Harry. It's impossible to avoid a comparison with the late Princess Diana. Meghan obviously has this incredible natural rapport with especially children and people. She's very at ease with them. Obviously she looks very glamorous and beautiful but again, like Princess Diana before her, she has chosen to champion causes which, you know, might traditionally raise eyebrows I suppose and she doesn't seem frightened to get in and get stuck into the things that she cares about. Yeah, I think there's something mythic about this that in a way Prince Charles had his quest to find a woman and found the wrong one who was looking in the wrong places. Harry found his straight away and it's interesting that he's not allowed any kind of second doubts, second thoughts to come into it. He hasn't allowed the palace courtiers to say, well, are you sure sir? Are you absolutely right in your own mind about this? Because he's been certain from day one. I've been thrilled, thank you very much, to both of them. I hope they'll be very happy indeed, is all I can say. Prince Charles is very happy for Harry. In fact, you know, I've heard that Clarence House are delighted with the match and I think he, you know, has done a fantastic job in bringing his sons up as a sole parent for a very long time and for any parent it's a wonderful moment when you know that your child has found the person they want to spend the rest of their life with. But I think that Charles is very proud of Harry and I think they have quite a lot in common, the two of them. We tend to look at Harry and think, oh, he's so like his mother. Actually, he's also very like his father and he is emotional like his father and he's sensitive like his father. Charles will have cautioned Harry that to make sure he's making the right decision, to really be certain that this girl will understand completely, utterly, what her life is going to be like. I mean, there really can be no going back. Once you marry a member of the royal family, especially someone as so high profile as Harry, then your life is set in stone for the foreseeable future. It's been a quick courtship by royal standards but, you know, I think you have to remember that, you know, had Prince Charles married the woman he first fell in love with, he would have married Camilla Parker-Bowles. So, I think if anyone's going to tell Harry, marry for love, don't make the mistakes I made, it's going to be Charles. I'd never even heard about her until this friend said, Meghan Markle. I was like, right, okay, give me a bit of background, like what's going on here. So, no, I'd never watched Suits. I'd never heard of Meghan before and I was beautifully surprised when I walked into that room and saw her and there she was sitting there. I was like, okay, I really have to up my game. Three, maybe four weeks later that I managed to persuade her to come and join me in Botswana and we camped out with each other under the stars and we spent, came and joined me for five days out there which was absolutely fantastic. So, 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. I don't see it as giving anything up, I just see it as a change. It's a new challenge. It's a new chapter. I think Harry is self-aware enough to realise that he is the supplicant. He is the one who is desperate for somebody to say, I will, because he knows how difficult it is moving into this family. Everybody's talked about all the glamour of it and all the rest of it. It ain't that glamorous. I mean, you know, when she went on the first walkabout in Nottingham, she'll have been told, well, just think of it like the red carpet, except that there's no red carpet, it's colder and it's wetter and you're talking about the weather, you're not talking about LA traffic. Make no mistake about it, Meghan's going to find it tough. Every new arrival into the royal family has found it tough. Obviously, most notably Diana, but also Fergie, Sophie Rhys-Jones, none of them found it particularly easy for all kinds of different reasons. She's given up her home. She's given up her career. She's given up everything, really, to move to the UK, to become a member of the royal family. She's given up her private life, which is just a huge thing for anyone to have to do. So you don't do that without really knowing that this is the real deal. And I think she very much feels that about Harry. Kensington Palace, quite frankly, yes, it's a village, but it can also feel a bit like a prison. And Diana certainly felt it was like an open prison. And she will find it difficult just getting out and about. She's not going to be able to just switch off. She doesn't just get to walk around the streets anymore as a private individual. The difficulties for her is that she's had a successful career. She's been able to get on a plane and go to Cuba and go snorkeling in the Caribbean and go to Africa on a humanitarian mission at the drop of a hat. And she's not had to answer to anybody. She was representing major Canadian brands and major Canadian charities when she met Harry. So she's given up an awful lot, simple things like finding a decent avocado. The first thing that strikes you when you hear Meghan speak is how articulate and intelligent she is and how at ease she is speaking publicly. And this is something that she's done for a long time, way before meeting Prince Harry. We know that she has been a keen supporter of female empowerment and gender equality. When she was just 11 years old, she wrote to a US advertising company to complain that they were saying women across America are fighting greasy dishes, and she couldn't understand why it didn't refer to men as well. And a few weeks went by, and to my surprise, I received letters of encouragement from Hillary Clinton, from Linda Ellerbee, and from Gloria Allred. It was amazing. And it was roughly a month later when the soap manufacturer, Procter & Gamble, changed the commercial for their Ivory Clear dishwashing liquid. They changed it from women all over America are fighting greasy pots and pans to people all over America. And this is something that she's followed throughout her childhood and her early adulthood. I mean, that is just very indicative of a clearly very intelligent young woman, a very heat-driven young woman. From quite an early age, she was a girl that you could say had a moral compass. That is to say, she knew what was right and what was wrong, and her mother, Doria, was very instrumental in that. And even at schools, she would, for example, organise demonstrations against the Gulf War. She would write letters to companies complaining about their sexist advertising. So, way before she became a public figure, she was an activist. And she actually went on to become an advocate for women at the UN. And I think when you see her talking about issues like this that are very close to her heart, you get a real sense of the passion and the determination she has to see change in the world. I used to go to school. My desire is to go back, but right now I dropped out. Fetching water from a far distance, she gets to school late. And the other thing, getting sick regularly because of the water inflections. I'm so sorry. This is the water that she's going through all this work to get. It's keeping her at school and making her sick as well. So, it's time to build some wells and make things a lot better than what we're seeing here. It feels really cool to be a part of this part of the process. It's really hands-on and being part of this clean water being here for everyone. It feels really nice. There are 12 different water points in this community now. This one was just built last year. It gives water to 136 different households. The ease in which they're able to get water for health and wellness. These girls are able to stay in school because they aren't walking hours a day to go and get water. And this clean water source has changed the entire community. So, it's really cool to see. I think it's very interesting that Megan has chosen some quite challenging subjects to champion. She's particularly honed in on sanitation and things that don't arise for your average Hollywood actress and indeed for a member of the royal family. So, we've got her going out with World Vision to Rwanda and looking at the problem of sanitation and how it impacts on young children who are forced to walk for miles and miles. I think when it comes to charity, Prince Harry knows all about it. It started when he was a baby in arms, when he watched his mother do those remarkable things that she did as a young woman before her death. And he found in Megan someone, I think, remarkably like Diana. Well, I do know that one of the things that bonded Megan and Harry during those early dates was her genuine passion for philanthropy and humanitarian causes. Megan has spent a lot of her teenage and adult years fighting for women's rights and for women all over the world. She's very committed to empowering women and young girls around the globe. Luama Stephanos is from Eritrea and just four years ago, she literally ran to get her freedom with bullets flying towards her. She was a slave. She is now working on a grassroots organization to try to free people who are still slaves in Eritrea. I mean, I think this is one of those moments in life where you have that are so inspiring. She's incredibly brave and strong. She has spoken at the United Nations against the leaders in her country who are still enslaving people. So it's funny, I feel very emotional about it because it's just so humbling and she's just so incredible. So this is Luama Stephanos. She wrote a really articulate piece in Time magazine. And in doing so, I think she's made most of us aware of something that we wouldn't otherwise be aware of. And that's what Harry loves about her. I traveled to Delhi and Mumbai with World Vision to meet girls and women directly impacted by the stigmatization of menstrual health and to learn how it hinders girls' education. 113 million adolescent girls between the ages of 12 and 14 in India alone are at risk of dropping out of school because of the During my time in the field, many girls share that they feel embarrassed to go to school during their periods. Ill-equipped with rags instead of pads, unable to participate in sports, and without bathrooms available to care for themselves, they often opt to drop out of school entirely. Furthermore, with minimal dialogue about menstrual health hygiene, either at school or home due to the taboo nature of the subject, many girls believe their bodies are purging evil spirits or that they are injured once a month. This is a shame-filled reality they quietly endure. All of these factors perpetuate the cycle of poverty and stunt a young girl's dream for a more prolific future. Her work in India promoting, you know, the need for better sanitation for women is really quite, quite a brave move. She has highlighted the fact that young girls in India quite often drop out of school, I think it's nearly a quarter. The struggle of young women who can't get educated because they don't have access to the right sanitary products when they're menstruating, I mean tough gritty issues that she's taken on. And you know this is not a, it's not your typical royal charitable topic, it's not something that people perhaps would throw into conversation. She's not doing this because she thinks it's a trendy thing to be doing that's going to curry favour and get her fans, she's doing it because she's absolutely passionate about it. So her courage with some of her charities in particular in India, where she's supporting charities and supporting ideas with women for women that would never have been discussed on the radio television or in a national newspaper 20 years ago. Harry, when he was 18 years old on his gap year, spent some months in Lesotho, which is the landlocked, beautiful landlocked kingdom in the middle of South Africa, which has been utterly devastated by AIDS. He founded a charity called He came home to his father aged 18 and said I want to help these people, I want to start a charity and his father said you're far too young, you need to get into the army first and we'll talk about it when you're when you've done your army service. And he said no, I want to do it now and he was utterly determined and he did and he started which cares for the orphans who have been orphaned by AIDS. This is a topic that has drifted from the headlines but remains an urgent challenge. In southern Africa the epidemic remains the biggest killer of adolescence. Here in the UK more people have the virus than ever before. What we know is that HIV is a virus that thrives off silence and feeds on stigma. I think we'll see Megan heavily involved with Centervale in the future. It's something that Harry is hugely passionate about and he still has a connection with many of the children helped by his charity. One in particular is a boy called Mutsu who he first met as a four-year-old and was one of the children who inspired him to set this charity up in memory of his mother, Princess Diana. Because he felt a connection with these children who are AIDS orphans they had that shared sense of loss which you know he felt moved by and wanted to do something about. And he's gone back you know so many times over the years and I was lucky enough to see him reunited with Mutsu a couple of years ago at the opening of the Mamahate Centre in Lesotho and it was a really beautiful moment and I'd love to see him introducing Mutsu to Megan at some point as well. There's a real sort of sense of commitment from Prince Harry when he cares about something he will go back and back and back and I'm sure he's desperate to share this with Megan. William and Harry have been the best of friends all their lives. It is that they are as close as brothers can be. Largely I suspect because of the difficulties in their childhood they clung to one another. They are two very different people. William is a very measured, careful, controlling sort of man. Harry is very instinctive and bristling with ideas and get up and go and and he makes instant decisions. Those brothers are unbreakably close they are there is a bond that just can't be fractured and so I expect that that Harry will always be William's right-hand man and while he's slipped down the order of succession it doesn't really matter. He you know he is the person that William's going to turn to when William is eventually on the throne. Harry is a perfect foil for his brother and Megan is a very glamorous addition to the Royal Family and let's not forget that the Royal Family is not just about substance it's also about style and she really brings a kind of Hollywood gloss, a Hollywood glamour to the Royal Family in the same way as Grace Kelly did with the Monegasque Royal Family in the 1950s. Well the last American actress to marry a European royal was Grace Kelly from Philadelphia who was a famous Queen of Hollywood in her time and so it was very unlikely that somehow she'd end up Princess of Monaco but she did in a very glamorous wedding to Prince Rainier. Of course when Kate married in she brought this stardust you know that we haven't seen since the days of Diana into the Royal Family. We wanted to know who she was wearing, which designers, which shoes, who'd done her makeup, who'd done her nails. There was suddenly a whole new dimension to covering the young royals and that was the royal trio. Well now three is about to become four. I think it's going to be very interesting to see how the fab four if you like work together in future. For a long time Harry was almost like the third wheel to William and Kate's duo and although they've done hugely important work together as a royal foundation it will mean a lot to him to have someone by his side to support him in his own work but also someone who can develop their own branch of charitable work under the Royal Foundation's umbrella. We are fully aware that with any institution longevity comes with adapting to the ever-changing times. For that reason my brother and I began the Royal Foundation to bolster the work our family has long contributed to and to add to it with a progressive approach by listening to the people on the ground, engaging with grassroots leadership and creating programming that is built on localized knowledge and gained trust to have the highest impact. I think what's interesting is I hear a lot of people saying when speaking about girls empowerment finding and knowing their worth or women's empowerment as well you'll often hear people say well you're helping women find their voices and I fundamentally disagree with that because women don't need to find a voice they have a voice they need to feel empowered to use it and people need to be encouraged to listen. Seeing the four of them operating together recently and talking about their ambitions for the future was really inspiring and you really got you got a sense that they really get on very well together there was a lot of humour. When William married Kate I think the relationship inevitably changed slightly as sibling relationships always do when a third person comes into it. The arrival of Megan is going to sort of continue the circle or complete the circle if you like because for the last six or seven years Harry has been the third person alongside Kate and William they've got their charities they do together they do engagements together I think we're going to see all four of them doing things together so I think there will be a formidable person if you like there'll be four of them out there and it will be very successful. But I do think there's a there's a danger that that Harry and Megan could overshadow William and Kate. The fact that Megan brings so much experience in terms of her life in the public eye and her humanitarian work is hugely beneficial in terms of courtiers looking at how best to prepare her for her new life. It's a it's a massive seismic leap to go from Hollywood to Kensington Palace and it's a massive transition and I believe that the Palace have been really very hands-on with what's been dubbed Operation Princess which is the behind the scenes program to basically help Megan but royal protocol etiquette all of those sorts of things security issues those are things that do need to be learned and her life as a royal is going to be very different from her life as a Hollywood actress. Over the years others have married into the royal family we think of Sarah Ferguson and Diana Spencer and they they couldn't cope with it and they found the expectation too high too hard. Megan is that much older much more confident and more experienced and I think that gives her a very good chance of making a good shot of this. Harry's last two big affairs his two big relationships with Chelsea Davey and with Cresta Bonas did not last the distance quite simply because those girls didn't want the life that came with being a princess. But I do think that what really scared both of them off was the attentions of the press. I think they were two very private girls who hated suddenly having their lives and their friends and their families trampled over by the by the media. They you know perhaps struggled with the spotlight with the media attention and perhaps also with the role that they would take on were their relationship to continue with the prince. Megan has had a head start being an actress without a doubt she's used to the cameras she's she's very media savvy she knows how this world works. But Harry did shoot a warning shot over the bowels of the media very early on six months after they had been seeing one another the news got out and nasty stories started appearing. As soon as there was any kind of racist remarks in the media or he was straight on to it. And Harry at that point issued a statement which is completely unprecedented and he just said back off. I tried to warn you as much as possible but I think both of us were totally surprised by the reaction after the first five six months of when we had to ourselves of what actually happened from then. So I think you can you can have as many conversations as you want and try and prepare as much as possible but we were we were totally unprepared for what happened after that. Harry has taken time to find the woman he wants to share the rest of his life with he he's had other girlfriends of course other romances which might have gone the distance but for various reasons they haven't worked out and I think with Megan Markle he has found someone in whom he can have a long and happy and fulfilling relationship and I think in Megan he's found someone who possibly he can unburden to but whoever it is whatever it is she has she she can reach inside him she can help him she can understand him and I think all those things are incredibly positive. Of course in Prince Harry she has the greatest mentor she could ask for someone who has grown up in front of the world's lens and knows the falls the pitfalls the advantages and everything that comes with being a royal and is in well the best position really to to teach Megan the ropes. So in finding Megan really I mean as Harry said himself the stars were aligned he not only found this beautiful intelligent woman I mean he talked about having to up his conversational game when he first met her but he's also found someone that in his own words you know is so good at the job itself because she's done it before she's used to being in front of the cameras dealing with the public albeit not to the extent that that she now is but she has had this humanitarian interest already she's got life experience she's been out there and done something and been incredibly successful so you know I think she she brings a great deal with her. The world is now more connected than ever thanks to the internet and social media it is part of our everyday lives and has fundamentally changed the way that we communicate as a result the young leaders of today have the greatest opportunity of any in our history to reach out across the commonwealth and affect change on a global scale. Megan and Harry are going to be the foreign arm of the royal family they'll be working more in the commonwealth after all Prince Harry is always called Africa his second home so I'm sure that over the next 10-15 years you will see them living outside Britain rather more than William and Kate who will be the domestic arm of the royal family. They see themselves as a team doing things they mentioned in that interview they gave on their engagement that the commonwealth was going to feature large in their future life together. What's been really exciting as we talk about the transition of this out of my career but into the role is that as you said the causes that have been very important to me I can focus even more energy on because very early out of the gate I think you realize once you have access or a voice that people are willing to listen to with that comes a lot of responsibility and um and also being able to go around to the commonwealth I think it's just just the beginning of the there's a lot to do there's a lot to do. They clearly think they can do something they can make a difference as they say I think Harry has proved in his own work with veterans charities and mental health together with Meghan they could be quite a formidable team. They are reflecting popular concerns but they're powerfully shaping it too and they're using the immense authority of the monarchy which in many ways is more powerful than the power enjoyed by political leaders. He's worked on commonwealth projects in the UK and overseas such as the commonwealth young leaders and the queen's commonwealth canopy project and I think I'd love to see the two of them taking on sort of ambassadorial roles if you like and going around the world and and really working their magic. People on the street know and what they know with Harry and Meghan is they seem to be two thoroughly nice people in love and actually want to give service and that's been the great strength of the royal family and they clearly want to do their charity work want to make a difference. I think having Meghan as someone from a mixed race background is a huge asset to the royal family. It makes them more representative of the UK but also the commonwealth and you know the wide world at a time when perhaps politically Britain is in danger of isolating itself a little and I think it sends a really important message and of course it can only be a huge bonus for UK-US relationships. It's going to be 37 very shortly. The time is ticking Harry's made it perfectly clear he wants children so has she and you know I would predict that you know by the time she's 40 she's had a couple of kids. We'd all love to see him with children of his own and I think it will happen sooner than later. I think the fact that she's two or three years older than him and the fact that she's had a life she's and she understands a lot more about life than Harry does he's she's lived way outside the goldfish bowl of royalty. And you do feel and believe that there's something about their love for each other which is sparked by their mutual concern for the least advantaged. She's not some shy retiring princess. She's articulate, she knows her own mind and I think she'll bring a lot of refreshing change and continuity to the royal family. But what I do think that Harry's marriage to Meghan will do is bring a whole lot of people who have not necessarily felt the monarchy was so relevant for them. It will bring them into the fold. But she's a strong woman and I'm sure she'll find her way. They really seem to bounce off each other and you know have fun together but they recognize their power as a couple you know is going to amplify things in a way that even as individuals of great star power they couldn't. And finally they are blissfully honestly head over heels in love. I mean you can't fake that sort of chemistry. They're clearly besotted with each other you know when you watch them on engagements they can't keep their hands off each other. With Meghan Markle it seems he's picked an equal. Someone who can stand shoulder to shoulder with him. They've caught the time and they've caught it appropriately for them. That I think is a bit of luck. We got lucky with Prince Harry and Meghan. We got lucky and we should take advantage of it. Are they ahead of the public? No with the public. I mean quite frankly a Hollywood script writer couldn't have made this this script any better. With fame comes opportunity but it also includes responsibility to advocate and share to focus less on glass slippers and more on pushing through glass ceilings. And if I'm lucky enough to inspire.