It was the year he got married that the penny dropped for some members of Prince Harry’s inner circle.
Standing before them in December 2018 at the 19th-century Chapel of Saint Luke in Chelsea, during the annual Christmas carol concert of the van Straubenzee family, Harry did not deliver a celebratory lecture as expected, but a solemn sermon on menstrual poverty.
The importance of the issue was not in question, even if the topic felt shockingly inappropriate for the Church’s aristocratic audience.
But that it came from Harry – a man most had known since he was a boy, and who had more than earned his reputation as the irreverent ‘Party Prince’ – was what was most astonishing.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle on their 2018 wedding day in Windsor
In his younger days, Harry was known as a “party prince” and a prankster
Good-humoured Harry cuts form with sprinting legend Usain Bolt in Jamaica, 2012
Harry is clearly delighted, beating his brother William and sister-in-law Kate in 2017
Harry, just six months after marrying Meghan Markle, was a changed man.
In fact, there is little today that his once close friends quite recognize in the figure they so often see interviewed on screen.
Nor is there much to remind them of the hedonistic charmer they once knew in the homilies he challenged in the Netflix documentary, Harry & Meghan, and his autobiography, Spare, about the royal family’s shortcomings, its hatred of the media, and his personal journey of grief and healing.
But as his friends have told The Mail on Sunday, the signs that a personal transformation was underway were already present in the earliest days of the pair’s relationship.
And it started with muesli.
“We first noticed a real change when he came to the breakfast buffet on a shooting weekend and started tossing bowls of granola to take upstairs to his bedroom,” a source said. “We asked why he didn’t eat with the rest of the bacon and eggs.
“He said something about sunrise yoga with Meghan and they wanted to have breakfast alone in their bedroom.”
A telling moment reveals just how much an entranced Harry was willing to put up with. At a dinner party in London in the early days of their relationship, friends told how Meghan “went crazy” for not sitting next to Harry, despite British custom requiring couples to sit apart.
Harry would simply shrug off her behavior – much to the chagrin of his friends.
“She made quite a scene,” said a source. She wanted to sit next to Harry and felt insulted that she wasn’t with him.
“We looked to Harry for an explanation – he just said, ‘I know, but she’s so hot.'”
More dinner party faux-pas ensued, as Meghan allegedly treated social situations as if it were a Hollywood networking event.
Before an informal dinner hosted by Jack Mann, a polo-playing friend of Harry’s and an usher at their wedding, a source says Jack was surprised to receive a list of demands beforehand.
Harry with his late grandfather Prince Philip in 2015. He mastered the art of making people laugh
Some childhood friends claim that Harry has changed after marrying Meghan Markle
It is alleged that he simply agreed to her demands – much to the dismay of some friends
The former ‘Fab Four’ on the balcony of Buckingham Palace in 2018. Tensions were already rising at the time
“Meghan wanted to know which designers the women would be wearing, what the seating plan would be, things like that,” the source said. “Jack was so stunned he just didn’t respond. It was a bizarre request to receive prior to a leisurely occasion.’
When Jack decided not to respond to the email, another message was sent.
“In the second email, it seemed that Meghan was mainly interested in the names of the wives and girlfriends present,” the source added. “Again, Jack refused to tell her anything. This wasn’t a movie executives network dinner in the Hollywood Hills with George Clooney; it was wine and food with friends.
“Eventually they both showed up, but Meghan seemed miffed — and she left for dinner.”
By the time the couple got married in May 2018 and attended the van Straubenzee carols together that Christmas, the transformation was complete.
Indeed, friends believe that the speech about poverty was so unfamiliar to Harry during the period that he may not have even written it himself.
“It’s a noble cause, and he clearly heard it from Meghan,” recalled a former friend who was in attendance that night.
But this carol service wasn’t the time or the place — he knew full well the crowd was made up of old dorks who would squirm in their seats. Harry had just decided to become an activist at the time, after his eyes were opened by Meghan. It seemed like he hadn’t written down everything he was reading.’
In any case, most of the friends who were there that night have lost contact with Harry. It’s certainly telling that none appeared in the Netflix documentary telling the couple’s “truth.”
One source suggests that Harry even cut off Violet von Westenholz, the mutual friend who brought him and Meghan together. She was not mentioned by name on the Netflix show, and a picture of Meghan and Violet together – the one uploaded to social media that led Harry to ask Violet to set him up on a date – cut her face out.
The source adds, “Harry literally and figuratively cut Violet out of his life because of a silly argument with Meghan.”
Harry’s former friends’ bewilderment is all the greater because the colorful man they remember is very different from the one portrayed in the film and book.
Some of the most sensational revelations were details about his drug use, including using cocaine as a teenager, smoking cannabis, and using magic mushrooms in Friends actress Courteney Cox’s home that caused him to hallucinate that a garbage can was talking to him.
But friends say that even these stories are a carefully calibrated version of reality.
“If this really was an exercise to ‘clear his conscience’, Harry could have admitted much more,” says an acquaintance. ‘Yes, it was more than we’ve ever read of a senior Royal before – but there was oh so much more he could have said.’
There is, of course, debauchery in the book. An infamous trip to Las Vegas in 2012, in which Harry was photographed naked playing billiards after a full day of drinking, is described in detail.
However, there is no mention of the free suite Harry accepted from a generous hotelier.
And friends say there were many other equally hedonistic trips to Vegas that were left out.
“The infamous strip billiards trip was not a one-off,” emphasizes a source. “Harry has been a few times and had a deal with the hotel. He got to know an American girl so well that he spent Thanksgiving at her family’s house.’
And old Harry would “enjoy” overturning PC conventions.
“Harry wasn’t afraid to say things that could be offensive,” one said. “During dinners, for example, he has a history of acting like he’s in the school cafeteria, making fun of jokes, and generally interrupting the flow of conversation.
“There was one time we came to a formal dinner and found that he had rearranged a dozen Patrick Mavros animal figurines — hugely expensive silver table decorations — in the dining room to make it look like they were mating.
Harry always broke the rules. Now he wants “seats” for informal gatherings, say friends. Pictured with wife Meghan for Oprah Winfrey’s 2021 bombshell interview
Violet von Westenholz allegedly set Prince Harry and Meghan Markle on a ‘blind date’ in 2016. Here she is pictured with Meghan at Wimbledon the following year
Harry’s best-selling memoir, Spare, was released in January. It revealed intimate details of his life and made a series of complaints about the royal family
“It was more cringe than funny, as jokes go, from a grown man. Makes you wonder if all that craziness is still under the surface – though he says he’s been changed for the better by his wife.’
Despite the Californian gloss and “therapy” language, there are some who still believe that old Harry isn’t too far below the surface.
For example, it has been suggested that amidst the turmoil of whatever is going on in his mind, there is an ounce of remorse. And that he almost gave up on the book project entirely after seeking advice from the Spencer side of his family.
Will his former self, the one so beloved by the nation, return one day? That’s what most of his friends hope.
How Meghan sees it is another matter.