I am going to be the first to admit that I am coming from a slightly biased perspective. If you’re new here (hi!) you might not know that I used to be a BIG fan of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. I’ve been (very avidly) watching the royals since the early 2000s, and started my first blog about them in 2010.

When Prince Harry announced that he was dating Meghan Markle I thought it was the best news. I woke up early for their wedding and made scones. My neighbors – who had just returned from a trip to their native UK, brought me a Harry and Meghan commemorative wedding mug and a onesie for my kiddo.

But since then, the two have done pretty much everything they can to position themselves as victims of the press, the general public, and – of course – the royal family.

Throughout all of it, Buckingham Palace and Kensington Palace have maintained a mostly stoic silence. We’ve had a few instances where they’ve come out and batted down a specific story (allegations that Kate yelled at Meghan for speaking harshly to a member of Kate’s staff were met with “that entire story didn’t happen”). And it seems The Sussexes biggest complaint is that the palace was “leaking” stories about them and letting lies about them stand, while protecting other members of the family.

We all expected some of that to be addressed and – hopefully – cleared up in Harry’s book. Would he have specific examples to show us that Kensington Palace staff were, in fact, leaking about them? Did he have emails and text messages as evidence?

No.

As it turns out, he doesn’t really present ANY proof in his book. He just continues insisting that his version of events – that the palace was leaking about him – is true. He doesn’t ever really acknowledge that it could have been … well, anyone. Housekeepers, cooks, protection officers, their own staff… no. It couldn’t have been any of the probably dozens of people they came into contact with every day. It had to be Charles and William’s staff, at Charles and William’s explicit direction.

And you know what? Maybe I could believe it… if Harry was a reliable narrator.

But he isn’t. Throughout his book we find a multitude of inconsistencies. Some things don’t make sense in the timeline he’s presenting while others are just straight up false.

He says, at one point, that “chronology and cause-and-effect are just fables” and that “objective facts” don’t matter in the truth. Except that’s exactly what the truth is.

If the truth isn’t objectively verifiable… it isn’t true. It’s just one version of a story. The truth is that a specific thing happened at a specific time, with these specific people being involved and doing these specific actions. Anything else is your perception of what happened, or your version of what happened.

And that isn’t to say that someone’s perception of a situation isn’t valid. But it isn’t the truth.

So today, I thought I’d run down a few of the inconsistencies that have been brought to the forefront of Harry’s book – whether they’re completely false or just items that don’t make sense in “the timeline.”

Here we go!

1. Catherine is the one who actually made Meghan cry.

This is a big one. Harry says that Catherine made Meghan cry, and not the other way around. We don’t actually know where – specifically – this story came from, though we can assume that it was a leak from someone at Kensington Palace, perhaps one of Catherine’s staff. However, Harry’s evidence is that Meghan and Catherine had a text message conversation. Essentially, Catherine reached out to Meghan about the bridesmaids dresses being a mess. Meghan ignored her for 24 hours (4 days before the wedding) and once they spoke Catherine was like “this is a disaster, they need to be remade.” This – understandably – stressed Meghan out and she cried.

I 100% believe this. I would have cried too! However… Harry is completely discounting that Catherine could have also cried. And neither of the women had any way of knowing if the other was crying or not because this was done via text. Catherine was 2 weeks postpartum, dealing with a little kid and a toddler – and the toddler’s dress was a disaster. She was probably stressed out as heck as well. And I would have cried if I was Catherine in that position.

2. When The Queen Mum died, he was at school

In one part of the book, Harry claims that while he isn’t great at remembering exact conversations or dates, he is excellent at remembering rooms and scenery. Which makes this one all the more troubling…

Harry claims that when he found out that his beloved great-grandmother, The Queen Mum, died he was in his room at Eton. He describes himself as sitting at his desk, looking out the window at a beautiful sunny day with bright blue skies, and getting a phone call from a courtier.

Except… that didn’t happen. Harry was in Switzerland with his brother and father. And it was raining.

It’s possible that what Harry is remembering is a call that (might have?) come a few weeks earlier when Princess Margaret died. But the fact that he described the scene in such vivid detail and it didn’t at all happen the way he says it did is troubling.

3. Diana purchased an Xbox for him just before she died

In a story that’s been made famous by the press, Harry recounts that his mother, Princess Diana, had purchased him an XBox for his birthday right before she died. In his retelling, his aunt – Sarah, Duchess of York – presented him with the gift on behalf of his late mother.

He then goes on to say that he doesn’t know if this really happened at all, or if he’s just remembering what the press wrote.

So first of all… it couldn’t have been an XBox, as they weren’t released for about 4 years after the fact. However, the N64 had come out just a few weeks prior – so if this event happened, it was likely that he received an N64. Not a huge deal but…

… excuse me, what? You don’t REMEMBER if this happened? You are writing a book about “your truth” and you are openly admitting that your life has been so heavily influenced by reading press stories about yourself that you cannot discern what ACTUALLY happened to you from what is fabricated by strangers? That’s alarming. And, again, makes Harry an unreliable narrator.

Because now we know that he is incredibly, deeply swayed by what the press write, to the point that he cannot tell fact from fiction. To the point that he adopts a story as part of his own biography, without knowing if it’s real because it feels that real to him.

Which means… anything anyone tells him can become “his truth” without him really knowing if it is or not.

These are just three examples, that – for me – mean that across 400+ pages, every single word Harry writes needs to be taken with a mountain of salt. Maybe some of what he wrote is 100% factual – but these 3 things make it so that I can’t 100% trust his version of events, because he has proven that he is: unwilling to consider another side of the story, completely misremembers events, and is entirely too easily swayed by other people’s versions of events to know what truly happened.

And regardless of what Harry says the truth isn’t flexible. Chronology and cause-and-effect DO matter.

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