![]() On their own account, they refused to play the “exchange game”: They broke their own news, posting photos that sometimes never even made it to the Royal Rota. In April 2019, one month before Archie was born, Meghan and Harry launched their own Instagram handle, which reached 1 million followers within six hours. “You tell me how that makes sense and then I’ll play that game.” “Why would I give the very people that are calling my children the N-word a photo of my child before I can share it with the people that love my child?” she asks, still ruffled. That didn’t sit right with Meghan, given her strained relationship with the British tabloids (“Harry’s girl is straight outta Compton” is how the Daily Mail introduced her to the British public), and especially since she would soon have a child of her own to protect. Usually, the photos would be on media outlets before she could post them herself. “There’s literally a structure by which if you want to release photos of your child, as a member of the family, you first have to give them to the Royal Rota,” the U.K. Meghan was permitted to join Harry, Kate, and Will on a preexisting account, that she had no control over. “It was a big adjustment - a huge adjustment to go from that kind of autonomy to a different life,” says Meghan. ![]() She’d loved sharing her life with people, she says, but she loved Harry more. She ran that account for years before she met Harry, but on the heels of their engagement, control over her Instagram was just one of the things (along with The Tig, her passport, and the freedom to open her own mail) she gave up. Fans watched as she attended events with her Suits castmates and charity galas, nights out at Soho House in London and Toronto. As herself, she’d amassed 3 million Instagram followers by sharing snippets of a basic life: yoga, food she liked, hikes with friends, her beagle, Guy. Before this chapter in her life, before everything difficult that spun off from marrying the Duke of Sussex and, along with him, the British monarchy, she was just Meghan Markle, a woman with a plum role on a USA procedural and a moderately popular lifestyle blog, The Tig. But, as I quickly realize, it is actually news. This could have been a troll: Delivering a nothing with such gravitas feels as if Meghan, who has been so trolled by the media, is serving it back, just a little. Then the top-secret drop: “I’m getting back … on Instagram,” she says, her eyes alight and devilish. Meghan, silen ced no more, looks around, making sure nobody (who would be?) is listening in. Then, in the lull in conversation, Meghan turns to me and leans forward to ask in a conspiratorial hush, “Do you want to know a secret?” ![]() An invisible hand has lit a Soho House–branded rose-water candle (the founder, Nick Jones, is a friend from “long before I met Harry,” she says), and that scent fills the air, mingling with the gentle tones of a flamenco-inflected guitar floating from a speaker. ![]() ![]() Meghan, relaxing in a cozy chair, gazes over all that is climate-controlled and high-ceilinged and sun-dappled and perfectly marshmallowy, and hers. Archie giggles and, satisfied, toddles right back out again. He stands, tummy protruding, while his mother, Meghan, convincingly performs her glee at hearing the thump-thump, thump-thump in his chest. Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, a lively 3-year-old with a shock of ginger curls identical to his father’s, toddles into the room demanding “Momma” listen to his heartbeat with a wooden toy stethoscope. It is a beautiful August day in Montecito, in a beautiful sitting room, in a beautiful home. ![]()
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