Meghan’s story of Archie escaping fire disputed by royal sources, experts

It didn’t take long for royal sources and others online to raise questions about Meghan Markle’s story of being forced to carry on with official engagements after a fire broke out in her baby son’s bedroom while she and Prince Harry were visiting South Africa.

In a conversation with Serena Williams for the debut episode of her Spotify podcast, Meghan said she and Harry arrived in South Africa on Sept. 23, 2019 and left Archie, then four months old, with his nanny at the British High Commissioner’s residence in Cape Town.

While they attended an event in the township of Nyanga, Meghan told Williams that a heater sparked a fire in Archie’s bedroom, where he was about to take a nap. Fortunately, Archie was with his nanny in the kitchen, but Meghan said the incident left “everyone shaken” and complained that royal aides forced her and Harry to attend more official engagements later that day.

“Everyone’s in tears, everyone’s shaken,” Meghan told Williams. “And what do we have to do? Go out and do another official engagement. I said, ‘This doesn’t make any sense.’”

Meghan said that aides were concerned with the “optics,” worried about “how it looks, instead of how it feels.”

Critics of the Duchess of Sussex, including royal biographer Angela Levin, suggest that this story could be another example of how the former TV actress can be an unreliable narrator. If nothing else, they wondered how details of such a traumatic event, involving the risk of harm to the great grandson of Elizabeth II, never was leaked to the media.

While The Telegraph said that Buckingham Palace had no official response to Meghan’s fire story, royal sources confirmed to the Daily Mail that there was an incident involving a heater at the High Commissioner’s residence on Sept. 23, 2019, but they say it didn’t happen the way Meghan described.

They don’t recall that there was an actual fire, but they say that the heater “was smoking, unplugged and dealt with,” the Daily Mail report. While some said it was understandable that the incident would cause concern for any parent, they noted that the Sussexes were moved to a different accommodation for the remainder of their South Africa visit.

The sources agreed that Harry and Meghan would have been expected to carry on with their engagements, given all the months of planning, however, as senior royals, they would have had the final say about whether to continue, the sources said.

Sources also told The Telegraph that there would have been concern that news about the incident, or the sudden cancellation of events, would have overshadowed their work in South Africa. That day, the first day of their tour, Harry and Meghan attended events that acknowledged endemic violence against women and the horrors of Apartheid.

Writing about the incident on Twitter, Angela Levin expressed skepticism about Meghan’s version of events or her complaint about having to attend other events that day.

“Meghan outraged that she had to go on another royal engagement in South Africa after she heard there was a fire in baby Archie’s room,” Levin wrote. “Nasty to hear but as an actress doesn’t she know the show must go on. Luckily he wasn’t there but odd it was never leaked to the press.”

Meghan opened up about the alleged fire in a discussion with Williams, her good friend, for the first episode of her long-awaited Archetypes podcast series. The episode focused on negative stereotypes about ambitious women.

Williams spurred Meghan to talk about carrying on with work despite private struggles after she explained how she had to play and win a match at the French Open after being up all night with her baby daughter, who had broken her wrist.

“I somehow managed to win,” Williams said. “I was so emotionally spent and drained. Moms do a lot.”

Meghan responded by saying, “Part of humanizing and breaking through these labels (about women) is to have an understanding of the human moments behind the scenes that people might not have awareness of — and to give each other a break.”