I have no idea if it's true or not but I heard the rumours irl looooong before they ever got online. That absolutely does not mean it's true, but it's strange that there's such an aggressive and seemingly coordinated push to pretend that Giles Coren originated the rumour, or that girl on Twitter who was a Meghan fan originated the rumour, and to link the rumour to Meghan when it predates her relationship with Harry.
I tried to look for gossip on Twitter and I found something like 50 tweets all sent from separate accounts saying (with basically identical wording) "Giles Coren admitted he made it up after a lunch with Meghan." That to me is far far more suspicious and interesting gossip-wise than Will and Rose, who is the person orchestrating for 50 separate Twitter accounts to copy and paste the same lie? Only someone with an agenda uses astroturfing to that extent.
It's scary, because okay it might just be celeb gossip to most people, but all the stuff with Trump and Jan 6th and fake news and social media shows how very dangerous it is for people to manipulate the general public/social media by astroturfing lies. It's so easy to create a lie just by making a few dozen Twitter accounts pretending to be lots of different people and tweet the same lie from all of them. It's scary how gullible people are that they see a lie repeated over and over, and don't question to check for themselves.
I detest Giles Coren but anyone can google and read both his original tweet and his "retraction", which wasn't really a retraction at all. (The retraction, which has been framed as "Giles admitted he made it up" literally just said something like "I'd been at a boozy lunch for journalists where everyone was discussing the rumour, got drunk, and tweeted. I don't know William so I have no idea if it's true or not.") Now he'd obviously been told to retract as his original tweet caused such a shitstorm, but that's pretty interesting wording for a "retraction", isn't it? Giles managed to shoehorn in the fact an entire room of journalists were discussing the affair rumour (so the exact opposite of "Giles admitted he made it up" - clearly Giles wasn't the originator, if he learned it from a roomful of journalists), and he made a point of saying he didn't know if it was true or not.
I do wonder why Giles felt the need to mention that the affair is being widely discussed by journalists in his "retraction"?
And I wonder where the "Giles admitted he made it up after a lunch with Meghan" statement being astroturfed on Twitter came from, since Meghan very obviously wasn't at a lunch for journalists.
The other aspect is that everyone is focusing on Giles and never mentions Tom Sykes, who actually wrote a full article about the affair saying an earl's daughter had told him during a fancy dinner that William was having an affair with Rose, and that he'd subsequently had the affair confirmed by two other people he considered reliable sources. Tom Sykes is an actual aristocrat (he's the great-grandson of 6th Baronet, Sir Tatton Mark Sykes, and his family were close friends with the former King) and a full-time royal reporter. He's also very anti-Meghan, which demolishes the idea that Meghan was behind the story.
It's also weird how much Rose's brother's press statement (saying that William and Rose are close platonic friends and often have dinner together just the two of them) has been hushed up. Even on gossip blogs, no one ever mentions Tom's article or Rose's brother's statement, all the attention goes to Giles which I'm sure he loves but doesn't deserve, since he really is very irrelevant. What's the agenda in trying to detract attention away from Tom's article and Rose's brother's statement and onto Giles's silly tweets?