Halloween has always been a favourite holiday of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle – with the pair keen to celebrate together. Their love affair with spooky season dates back to 2016, just months into their relationship – but that day was marred with a ‘devastating’ phone call.
They spent their first Halloween as a couple with Princess Eugenie and Jack Brooksbank in Toronto, when they all went to the city’s Soho House for an Apocalypse-themed bash. Pictures shown during the Sussexes’ Netflix docuseries revealed the foursome’s costumes that night, including the Mad Max outfit Harry wore, which was borrowed from the actor Tom Hardy, The Mirror reports.
The couple were reportedly having an ideal evening at Soho, however Harry was given a shock call that news of their relationship was due to break whilst enjoying the evening. In the biography, Finding Freedom, authors Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand say the couple was having the “perfect” evening at Soho, where a Halloween party was taking place.
They write: “They especially didn’t feel like spending Halloween weekend in hiding, as there was much to celebrate. Some four months into their relationship, they were madly in love and eager to take part in the fun of one of their favourite holidays. The evening of October 29, with Harry in town, the couple decided to go to a big costume party being thrown at Soho House in Toronto.”
A newspaper had found out about their relationship and was going to go live with a story the following day. The authors write: “A cocktail or so into the party, they were both feeling relaxed, absorbing the Halloween spirit. It was possibly the perfect night out – until they received a call from one of Harry’s aides at Kensington Palace. It wasn’t good news.
Harry also referred to the incident in his own memoir Spare, in which he said that “everything was rendered moot” the day after the party when news of their relationship broke. He explains: “Well, we said, staring anxiously at our phones, it was going to happen eventually.
“In fact, we’d had a heads-up that it was likely to happen that day. We’d been tipped, before heading off to the Halloween Apocalypse, that another apocalypse might be coming. More proof that the universe had a wicked sense of humour.”
But despite the memories, Halloween still remains a special celebration for the couple, especially now they’ve welcomed children Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet. The Duchess of Sussex revealed during an appearance on the Ellen DeGeneres show how the children wore costumes for the holiday.
Speaking back in 2021, Meghan said: “We were home and we saw you guys, which was great. But no, we wanted to do something fun for the kids and then the kids were just not into it at all. Archie was a dinosaur for maybe five minutes. Not even five minutes.”
Ellen then told how Harry persuaded Archie, then two, to put his dinosaur costume on, saying: “Finally Harry talked him into putting the head on. But Lili was a skunk… it was so cute.” Meghan replied: “She was a little skunk. Like Flower from Bambi.”
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