A week ago, the viewing public binged the first half of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s Netflix docuseries – and the intimate moments it shared.
In those first three episodes, which launched on December 8, they talked about everything from their childhoods to their first date.
Now, the final three episodes have dropped and they are full of more revelations, recriminations and details from Harry and Meghan’s past six years.
Whether you’re a fan of the couple or not, you’ll know they have experienced support and critique from the media and public alike. In episode one of Harry and Meghan, they said this series is a chance to tell their own story.
The next batch of episodes opens with clips from the weddings of the late Queen and Duke of Edinburgh and the now King and Diana, Princess of Wales.
Here are some of more things we learned about Harry and Meghan, what led up to and followed their move abroad in 2020, and their relationship with the Royal Family and British media.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex claim the Royal Family was “blocking” Harry from seeing his grandmother after their move abroad
Harry said he and Meghan were planning to fly back to the UK for a visit in early 2020, after stepping back from their royal duties, and the Queen told her grandson she had no plans all week so they could go for tea and stay the night.
Meghan said: “So, we’re flying back from Vancouver straight to Heathrow, and right as we’re getting on the plane, this urgent message comes through to H, saying ‘You are not allowed to go and see Her Majesty. Make sure that your principal is aware he cannot go and see her. She’s busy. She has plans all week.’”
Harry tells the camera: “I was like ‘Well, that’s certainly the opposite to what she had told me.’”
“Once we were back in the UK, I rang her and said ‘We’re now told that you’re busy,” Harry said. “And she said ‘Yes. I didn’t know that I was busy. I’ve now been told I’m busy all week. I’ve actually been told I’m busy all week.’ I was like ‘Wow’.”
Meghan always saw the Queen as a ‘grandma’ first
The Duchess of Sussex spoke of her first official engagement with the Queen during the fourth episode.
Meghan said: “I treated her as my husband’s grandma, and knowing that of course there has to be a completely different sense of propriety in public, when you’re sitting and having breakfast to just be able to talk.
“When we got into the car in between engagements she had a blanket and she put it over my knees and we were sitting in this car with this blanket and I thought ‘I recognise and respect and see that you’re the Queen, but in this moment I’m so grateful that there is a grandmother figure because that feels like family’.
“And because I was so so close with my grandmother,” Meghan said, adding she had taken care of her grandmother “in her final years”.
The Duchess of Sussex added: “Such a good day, we laughed.”
It was the Queen who suggested Meghan write to her father
The Duchess of Sussex said the Queen told her to write the letter to her estranged father, Thomas Markle, which ended up being leaked to the press.
In the fifth episode, Meghan said she went to senior members of the royal family for advice after her father began to criticise them in the media. “And so I reached out to Her Majesty and said ‘This is what’s going on. What do you want me to do? I want whatever advice you have’, but ultimately it was suggested by the Queen, the Prince of Wales, that I write my dad a letter.”
She said she went to “great efforts” to get the letter to her father “discreetly”.
However, it was then leaked to the press, with parts of the letter appearing in the Mail on Sunday. Harry said the paper printed it believing the royal family would encourage Meghan not to sue.
“People still scratching their heads going ‘How would the Mail have either the stupidity, or whatever you want to call it, to print a letter between a daughter and a father?’” he said.
“Well, the answer is simple: they knew the family would encourage us not to sue.”
Prince William allegedly screamed at Harry about their move abroad
In the fifth episode, the Duke of Sussex said it was “terrifying” for his brother, now the Prince of Wales, to “scream and shout” at him during a meeting on January 13, 2020 at Sandringham about plans for Harry and Meghan to move abroad.
Harry said: “I went in with the same proposal that we’d already made publicly, but once I got there I was given five options – one being all in, no change, five being all out. I chose option three in the meeting – half in, half out. Have our own jobs but also work in support of the Queen.”
“It became very clear very quickly that goal was not up for discussion or debate. It was terrifying to have my brother scream and shout at me and my father say things that just simply weren’t true. And my grandmother, you know, quietly sit there and take it all in.”
“But you have to understand that, from the family’s perspective, especially from hers, there are ways of doing things and her ultimate, sort of, mission, goal/responsibility is the institution.”
Harry claims he didn’t give permission for a joint statement put out in his and William’s name
The Duke of Sussex said the joint statement put out in his and his brother’s name on the same day as they met at Sandringham, denying a story that William had bullied him out of the royal family, was released without his permission.
Harry said: “I couldn’t believe it. No one had asked me. No one had asked me permission to put my name to a statement like that. I rang M and I told her and she burst into floods of tears because within four hours they were happy to lie to protect my brother, and yet for three years they were never willing to tell the truth to protect us.”
Harry continued: “There was no other option at this point. I said, we need to get out of here.”
Harry emailed his father from Canada several times
The Duke of Sussex said he wrote to his father, now King, then still the Prince of Wales, in January 2020 to say he and his wife would be willing to relinquish their titles if the couple’s plan to move to Canada as working royals did not work out.
Harry said: “By the time I was speaking to my father from Canada, the family and their people knew that we were trying to find a different way of working for the minimum of two years.
“Canada, I was speaking to my father, ‘This is the plan’, and he says ‘Can you put it in writing’, and I said I would rather not because of what happened last time…
“And he said ‘I can’t do anything unless you put it in writing’. So I put it in writing, sent him emails on the 1st and the 2nd and the 3rd of January.
“And in one of those I had mentioned that if this wasn’t going to work out, then we would be willing to relinquish our Sussex titles if need be.”
Meghan’s mum felt helpless to protect her daughter
The Duchess of Sussex spoke about the moment she considered taking her own life during the period the couple were still living in the UK.
“It was like ‘All of this will stop if I am not here’. And that was the scariest thing about it because it was such clear thinking,” she said.
Her mother, Doria Ragland, said: “I remember her telling me that, that she had wanted to take her own life, and that really broke my heart because I knew…
“Well, I knew it was bad, but to just constantly be picked at by these vultures, just picking away at her spirit, that she would actually think of not wanting to be here. That is not an easy one for a mum to hear.”
Wiping away tears, Doria added: “And I can’t protect her. H (Harry) can’t protect her.”
Harry says he hates the way he dealt with this period
Harry recalls: “I was devastated. I knew that she was struggling. We were both struggling, but I never thought that it would get to that stage, and the fact that it got to that stage, I felt angry and ashamed.”
He continued: “I didn’t deal with it particularly well. I dealt with it as institutional Harry, as opposed to husband Harry. And what took over my feelings was my royal role.”
“I had been trained to worry more about ‘What are people going to think if we don’t go to this event, we’re going to be late’, and looking back on it now, I hate myself for it.”
“What she needed from me was so much more than what I was able to give.”
Meghan said: “I wanted to go somewhere to get help, but I wasn’t allowed to. They were concerned how that would look for the institution.”
Meghan chose to talk about her later miscarriage for a reason
Meghan wrote about the miscarriage she experienced between the birth of her two children in the New York Times with the headline, The Losses We Share.
The Duchess of Sussex said: “When I reveal things that are moments of vulnerability, when it comes to having a miscarriage and maybe having felt ashamed about that, like, it’s OK, you’re human, it’s OK to talk about that.
“And I could make the choice to never talk about those things, or I could make the choice to say with all the bad that comes with this, the good is being able to help other people.
“That’s the point of life, right, is connection and community like that.”
Her mother, Doria, said: “I thought she was brave and courageous. But that doesn’t surprise me because she is brave and courageous.”
Despite everything, Meghan and Harry support each other
Meghan said: “H and I are really, really good at finding each other in the chaos.
“When we find each other, reconnect, it’s like, ‘It’s you, it’s you’. It’s not that the rest of it doesn’t matter, but the rest of it feels temporary.”
Help and support:
- Mind, open Monday to Friday, 9am-6pm on 0300 123 3393.
- Samaritans offers a listening service which is open 24 hours a day, on 116 123 (UK and ROI - this number is FREE to call and will not appear on your phone bill).
- CALM (the Campaign Against Living Miserably) offer a helpline open 5pm-midnight, 365 days a year, on 0800 58 58 58, and a webchat service.
- The Mix is a free support service for people under 25. Call 0808 808 4994 or email help@themix.org.uk
- Rethink Mental Illness offers practical help through its advice line which can be reached on 0808 801 0525 (Monday to Friday 10am-4pm). More info can be found on rethink.org