Was Meghan Markle living with another man when she met Harry?
One royal biographer suggests that this royal romance started with a lie.
Here's why Meghan and Harry's relationship is raising eyebrows now.
Meghan Markle and Prince Harry reportedly started dating in July of 2016. News of
their relationship was leaked to the press in October 2016, with sources revealing that Harry
was happier than ever. The couple managed to keep their romance under wraps at first,
in part because of the unusual dates they went on, including a trip to Africa.
"Only two dates and then effectively going on holiday together in the middle of nowhere."
Of course, Meghan and Harry would announce their engagement in November 2017,
tying the knot in a lavish royal wedding in May of the following year. And until now,
no one has really questioned the timeline of their relationship. However, Tom Bower
appears to really have it out for the Duchess of Sussex with the publication of his new book,
"Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the war between the Windsors."
According to Bower, Prince Harry's friends did not get a good first
impression of Meghan when they first got together. Allegedly,
they went so far as to tell the prince he was crazy for dating the "Suits" star.
Bower also claimed that it was, in fact, Meghan who made Kate Middleton cry before the royal
wedding, and not the other way around, as the duchess contended in her interview with Oprah.
"Specifically, did you make Kate cry?"
"No."
Not content with these allegations, Bower is also calling the timeline of Meghan and Harry's
relationship into question. It's been widely reported that the Sussexes met on a blind date.
However, the identity of the mutual friend who set them up has never been confirmed.
But if Tom Bower's account of events are to be believed, Meghan reportedly convinced
Harry's friend Violet von Westenholz to set her up with the prince back in 2016.
According to Bower, the Duchess of Sussex was allegedly intent on finding
a husband when she met von Westenholz and worked her connection to the prince.
Bower also suggests that Meghan may still have been living with her boyfriend,
chef Cory Vitiello, when she first went out with her now-husband.
According to Cheat Sheet, Meghan and Cory dated for a few years after meeting in 2014.
The relationship was reportedly fairly serious, with the "Suits" actress
spending the 2015 holidays with the Canadian restaurant owner's family. By all accounts,
the couple broke up at some point in 2016. Royal biography "Finding Freedom" states that Meghan and
Vitiello were planning to break up before she met and started dating Prince Harry, a claim Tom Bower
does not dispute, incidentally. As Bower writes in his book of her relationship with the chef,
"By the start of 2016, Meghan was confessing to friends that she regretted how quickly things
had progressed with him. That was already obvious to some of her closest pals [...] But
it wasn’t until early that May that they officially ended their two-year romance.”
"Finding Freedom" pinpoints the end of Meghan's romance with Vitiello as being early May 2016.
Remember, Meghan reportedly didn't go out on her first date with Harry until July 2016,
meaning that she was free and single. But according to Bower,
Cory and Meghan still lived together when she agreed to meet up with her future husband.
And the controversial claim that the now-Duchess of Sussex was shacked up with another man when she
started seeing Prince Harry is not the only jaw-dropping revelation that Bower makes.
The biographer goes on to claim that Harry flew to Canada to see Meghan
early on in their relationship, while she was still living with Cory. Bower writes,
"He stayed for about one week in the house of a friend of Meghan's,
probably Jessica Mulroney [...] the situation for Meghan was tricky but manageable."
It was only after that visit from the prince that,
according to Bower, Meghan called things off with Cory. As the biographer alleged,
"At the end of the week, after he returned to London, Meghan was convinced that her spell
was cast and the relationship with Harry would be sealed. She told Cory that their affair was over."
Unless they spill the beans themselves, we might never know the truth about how Meghan and Harry's
relationship really started. But that won't stop royal biographers from trying to figure it out.