If you're a fan of the royal family, you know that senior royals and social media are not allowed to pair. Royals are prohibited from having accounts they manage themselves. This is why Meghan Markle had to delete all her platforms when she married Prince Harry.
In the days before that, Meghan was pretty popular on social media. Her acting landed her a lot of followers on social. Paired with her lifestyle blog, The Tig, she knew her way around the web.
What's interesting is what Meghan knew at that time that the rest of us didn't. Apparently, she wasn't the only one in the relationship with some social media savvy. It appears Prince Harry had a secret Instagram account himself. Meghan started following him early on in their relationship, according to Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of a Modern Royal Family writers Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were like all couples, scoping out each other's social media in the early days of their relationship. A new excerpt from Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making of a Modern Royal Family reveals that in the early stages of their relationship, Harry and Meghan followed each other on Instagram. That means Harry broke with royal protocol to have a secret account!
According to writers Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand, Harry had a secret account that was connected to his alleged Facebook alias, Spike Wells. He combined the moniker with his favorite DJ, Deadmau5. The result? @SpikeyMau5, a profile featuring the DJ's iconic mouse ears that Meghan followed around the time of her and Harry's first date.
The profile has since been made private. If you look it up, the bio reads, "Not Prince Harry."
Around the time Meghan followed the account, she posted her first subtle nod to her new relationship. She shared a photo of a candy heart with the words "Kiss Me." The caption read "Lovehearts in #London."
Harry and Meghan's first date was a blind date. The two met at Soho's Dean Street Townhouse in London. The two immediately fell in sync with one another, with the writers claiming they were "in their own little world" conversing over drinks.
They didn't end the night with a kiss, but both of them immediately felt a connection.
"Almost immediately they were almost obsessed with each other," a friend told the authors. "It was as if Harry was in a trance."
"Harry knew they would be together at that point," the friend continued. "She was ticking every box."
So why waste time? They met again the next night. Meghan took a taxi to meet Harry at his cottage. She entered through a staff entrance at Kensington Palace.
Six weeks later, the couple took a now-famous trip together. Harry and Meghan put their fascination with each other to the test by going to Botswana together. As the story is told, the two fell in love with the area and each other on long star-filled nights.
The two quietly dated, taking trips back and forth to see one another. Three months into the relationship, Harry told Meghan he loved her. She immediately told him that she felt the same, propelling their relationship into its next stage.
Meghan had to bid farewell to her public-facing life as things got serious with Harry. It's unclear if the relationship played a role in her decision to shut down her lifestyle blog, The Tig, in April 2017. The following year, as Meghan and Harry got engaged, her social media accounts were closed.
Finding Freedom promises to offer some interesting perspectives into Harry's and Meghan's thoughts on their journey so far. That said, it draws those conclusions from the writers' time reporting on the royals, not from Harry and Meghan themselves.
"The Duke and Duchess of Sussex were not interviewed and did not contribute to Finding Freedom. This book is based on the authors' own experiences as members of the royal press corps and their own independent reporting," a spokesperson for the couple said in a statement.
