In the first episode of Archetypes, the Duchess of Sussex told a story to Serena Williams about how there was a fire in Archie’s nursery during the Sussexes’ African tour. The Sussexes had arrived in South Africa with baby Archie, they left Archie and Archie’s nanny Lauren behind at the government house, where Lauren was going to put Archie down for his nap. Only Lauren took Archie to the kitchen first, and while they were in the kitchen, there was a fire in the nursery. Within 24 hours of the podcast drop, “palace sources” were already casting aspersions on Meghan’s story, claiming that there was no fire, there was only “smoke,” what’s the big deal. Then they made it sound like Meghan massively overreacted to a deadly threat against her child. Well, South African security people have now confirmed Meghan’s story. Not only that, they say that the British security hushed it up.

South African security has confirmed Meghan Markle’s podcast revelation that there was a fire in her son Archie’s nursery during a tour of the country. Meghan talked about the previously unreported incident on the first episode of her Spotify podcast Archetypes last week. It led to a backlash in the country, with #VoetsekMeghan, or “Go away Meghan” trending in the country after its release.

But a source familiar with the event told The Citizen newspaper that the fire had taken place at the official residence in Cape Town.

“The heater burnt. The house didn’t burn, the rooms didn’t burn. I didn’t see the fire itself, but I saw the heater when it came out of the room. The plastic was severely melted,” the source said. “We were driving in convoy and all of a sudden, the convoy with Meghan broke away. We followed after… We weren’t sure what was going on. When we got to the house, the house-keeper called me and showed me the heater that was burnt and told me what had happened and that the child was not in the room at the time the heater burnt, they smelt it, went up and saw the smoke. When we stopped at the residence, I can tell you that she didn’t get out of the car like a lady normally gets out. She bolted into the house.”

The source told the newspaper that British security traveling with the couple recommended they not make the incident public. “When we were outside, we discussed what we are going to do about this. It was a new heater that was just purchased and the consensus was ‘guys this is gonna look bad for us or for Cape Town, South Africa, or for whoever,’” they said.

“The British Police guys actually told us ‘guys just leave it as is, don’t talk about this.’ We decided we are not going to expose this thing. That’s why we kept quiet about it back then because we knew we were going to get backlash.”

[From The Independent]

I don’t know why the South Africans would get backlash when clearly the British security apparatus was making a point to be extremely “careless” about Meghan and Archie’s safety. I just keep thinking about several specific stories, like how Archie didn’t get his own royal protection, so there was no one securing the home for Archie and his nanny. How someone in the palace removed Meghan’s name from her son’s birth certificate. How a nanny was fired in the middle of the night. Anyway, of course Meghan wasn’t f–king lying.

Photos courtesy of Avalon Red, Backgrid.