Prince Harry recalls his first text exchange with Meghan Markle

In Spare, Prince Harry assumes that Meghan Markle and Princess Diana met thanks to her.

The 38-year-old Duke of Sussex published his historic memoir last week, reflecting on his upbringing as a royal, his military duty in Afghanistan, and how meeting his future wife altered everything. In his detailed account of how he met Meghan, Prince Harry wrote that he was astounded by her beauty when he first saw her Instagram post.

On July 1, 2016, the birthday of Harry's late mother, Meghan, 41, jokingly posed for a selfie with a friend named Violet. Harry asked the friend for Violet's contact information.

Because Harry and Meghan connected through a mutual love of Africa and the fact that Harry's Instagram page was replete with images from the continent, Harry claimed that Meghan messaged him first.

"Eventually, we exchanged phone numbers, and mitigated the conversation over to text, going late into the night," Harry wrote in Spare, adding that he was "texting like a teenager" through the following day.

"It occurred to me how uncanny, how surreal, how bizarre, that this marathon conversation should have begun on July 1, 2016. My mother's fifty-fifth birthday," he added.