long-distance romance. meeting up in london and toronto, where meghan, then an actress, was filming the tv show suits. wow, you re pretty. good. you hit on me, we can get it out of the way that i am not interested. reporter: the whole time, they kept their relationship a secret. when they first met, nobody knew about it. which is, itself, impressive. it is impressive. i mean, the great fear about harry finding a wife was always going to be the intrusion of the press. because that is what had killed two, previous long-term relationships. just before he met meghan, the month before. and we talked about, you know, his private life, at the time. and he described it as massive paranoia that sat inside him, with regards to who he could possibly embark on a relationship with. so i think that made it very difficult to find someone, who could cope with that kind of spotlight. reporter: and what happened to his mother was never far from his mind. harry and his brother, still,
why did that garner so much attention? in the past, members of the royal family, princes, would have married princesses. and when harry s father, prince charles, was looking for a wife. it was, also, a requirement that that a wife should be a virgin. and a member of the church of england. you just go back a few generations in the royal family. and everything that you can say about meghan markle disqualifies her from marrying harry. this is precisely why you had edward abdicating his throne. so that he could marry an american divorcee. elizabeth sister s margaret was in love with a divorced man and was not allowed to marry him. wasn t charles and diana s wedding and marriage a wake-up call, in some ways, that you can try to have somebody perfect? but it has to be chemistry and you have to let the person have the freedom to marry who they want. i think it was a lesson that they ve learned.
i think that there are these memories. these very vivid memories of what their mother went through. reporter: harry filed a lawsuit against two british newspaper groups alleging they hacked his phone years earlier. and meghan filed suit against the mail on sunday. meghan announced that she was suing for breach of privacy and copyright because they had published extracts from a letter that meghan had handwritten to her father after his failure to come to their wedding. reporter: at the end of 2019, harry and meghan announced they were taking a six-week break from royal duties. and escaped to canada. meghan, i think, was unhappy. it was clear, she wasn t thriving. and harry, i think, decided, get her out of the situation. knee-jerk reaction.
wondering if my wife is going to end up like my mother and vial to take care of him by myself. i think there s so much hurt on both sides. i think it will take a long time for this resist to heal. the oprah interview was probably the d. it was not the place to have deep conversations. they were all there to support the queen, but as harry has said, he loves his brother and they ve been through hell together. i think in time we ll see the royal family heal. time will tell how the fractured relationships recover, but one thing is certain. whatever harry and meaghan do with their future, they will do it their way .
reporter: determined to use her position for good, meghan advocated for women s equality across the world. meghan traveled to rwanda, in 2016, as an ambassador for the nonprofit, world vision, to highlight the importance of clean-drinking water. these girls are able to stay in school because they weren t walking hours a day to go and get water and this clean water source has changed the entire community. this is not a celebrity, who floats in who needs a platform issue to associate with their, quote/unquote, brand. this is a woman, who s had a desire to help, in some way, for a very long time. promote the faces and stories of women, and to begin to elevate them. reporter: coming up. he was very angry. harry struggles with his royal role. he started drinking very heavily. he was fed up with who he was.