(CNN) — The first episodes of the highly anticipated Netflix documentary series about the Duke and Duchess aired on Thursday.
Here are some of the key points from the first three parts:
Your first days of relationship
The couple talked about how they met on social media.
“Meg and I met through Instagram. I was ‘scrolling’ through my feed. A friend had this video where they both had a Snapchat-like filter…like dog ears.” Harry said, “I said, who is that?”
Meghan said she checked Harry’s feed before exchanging phone numbers.
The first date in Soho
Harry was late for the couple’s first date in Soho, London.
Meghan said: “You were late, and I couldn’t understand it. Meanwhile she was sending me text messages saying: ‘I’m in a traffic jam, I’m so sorry’.”
Harry recalled: “I was in a panic, I was going to freak out. I started sweating.” Not knowing what was going on, Meghan began to doubt that the date would work, as she thought that Harry might have an “ego”.
But when he finally did show up, he apologized profusely, which Meghan described as “sweet”, adding: “You were so embarrassed.”
Meghan added: “It was so much fun. So refreshingly fun. We were like children together.”
They agreed to meet again the following night.
“That’s when it hit me,” Harry said. “This girl, this woman, is incredible. She is everything I’ve been looking for.”
The trip to Botswana
The couple described how their relationship was cemented in Africa, when Meghan traveled to accompany Harry on a visit to Botswana, having seen him only twice before.
“We had to meet before the rest of the world knew and before the media found out,” Harry said.
They talked about how they spent time in closed spaces with the bare minimum and how they still weren’t sure how the relationship would progress.
relentless media attention
Harry spoke at length about the ever-present role of the media in his family life, starting with the photographs taken of him outside the hospital after he was born.
Of the continued attention throughout his childhood, he said, “Most of my memories are of being surrounded by paparazzi.”
He recalled learning as a child how to manage that public attention: “Within the family, within the system, the advice that is always given is ‘don’t react. Don’t feed it.’”
The pressure, he said, was always there. “Drama, stress and also tears… I could always see it on my mother’s face.
He added: “Those are the moments when I thought, what am I? who I am? What am I a part of?”
“My mother did a good job of trying to protect us. She took it upon herself to confront these people,” she stated.
The documentary collects footage from a family ski vacation to highlight this. In one clip, Harry is seen alongside his brother, Prince William, and his cousins, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, as they pose for the crowd of photographers, in an unwritten agreement that would finally give them privacy later in the holiday. . But that was followed by another, more intrusive clip that led to his mother confronting a photographer.
“It was never fair, it never worked,” he added.
‘Pain and suffering’ of women who marry into the royal family
Harry brought up the now-discredited Panorama show interview with his mother, Princess Diana. While she acknowledged that she had been “deceived,” she also said that she had told “the truth.”
“My mother was harassed her entire life while she was with my father, but after they broke up, the bullying reached new levels,” she recounted.
The “moment he left the institution” (the royal family) was “completely exposed”, he said.
As Harry grew up, he witnessed the “pain and suffering of the women who married in this institution.” And he added: “What happened to my mother… I didn’t want history to repeat itself.”
A frame from the documentary shows Meghan crying.
Fit ‘the mold’
In a revealing bit about the experience of other royal marriages, Harry said: “I think for a lot of people in the family, especially men, there can be a temptation or an impulse to marry someone who fits the mold, rather than marry who you are meant to be.”
“The difference between making decisions with your head or with your heart. And my mother certainly made most of her decisions, if not all, with her heart. And I am my mother’s son,” she added.
Meghan’s comparison with Diana
Harry opened up about the ways in which Meghan resembles his mother, Diana, who died when he was 12.
“So much of who Meghan is is very similar to my mother. She has the same compassion, she has the same empathy, she has the same confidence, she has that warmth,” Harry said.
“I accept that there will be people around the world who disagree with what I did and how I did it. But I knew that I had to do everything possible to protect my family, especially after what happened to my mother, ”she indicated.
