Here’s Prince Harry's ‘under the stars’ love story with Meghan Markle

In his memoir Spare, Prince Harry revealed the enchanting tale of his romantic under-the-stars love story with Meghan Markle. 

He recounted first noticing Meghan through a mutual friend's Instagram story and subsequently asking the friend to facilitate their introduction. This led to a lengthy online conversation between Harry and Meghan, culminating in them arranging a date for the following evening.

Meghan, who was visiting London to attend the Wimbledon Championships at the time, agreed to meet Harry at Soho House.

On the day, Harry was running late due to traffic - but he was instantly enamoured. "We'd each had first dates on which there was nothing to talk about, and now we both felt that special thrill when there's too much to talk about, when there isn't enough time to say all that needs to be said," he wrote.

But just as quickly as it had begun, the date was over, with Harry explaining he had prior dinner plans. "If I hadn't been late, we'd have had more time. I cursed myself, got to my feet. A brief goodbye hug," he wrote. "Poof, she was gone. Compared to her, Cinderella was the queen of long goodbyes."

After their dates, Harry invited Meghan to visit Botswana, a place very close to his heart. He explained in their engagement interview, "We camped out with each other under the stars. She 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."

Prince Harry later said it was during this trip that he knew Meghan was his "soulmate." The pair opened up further about the trip during their docuseries, sharing that their escape to Botswana came after they had only met twice.

"I was astonished that she said, 'Yes,'" Harry recalled. "This woman, that I've really met twice, she's coming to Botswana, and we're gonna be living in a tent for five days!"

Prince Harry and Meghan's final outing before their relationship became public was when they went to a Halloween party in 2016, she told Ellen DeGeneres in a 2021 interview.

Meghan and Harry shared never-before-seen photos of the evening in their Netflix docuseries, noting that they had received a heads up that news of their romance was about to break, so they decided to "pull the pin on the fun grenade" and go all out for their last private outing.