Louis+Eleanor+Hannah—The messy timeline
A while ago I got a good-faith ask about Louis potentially cheating on his girlfriend Hannah with a man, and how he could be a victim of internalized homophobia—that it could be the reason he bullied a gay kid. Prompted by that ask, I put together a post proving that Louis had actually cheated on Hannah with who would later be his girlfriend, Eleanor.
Some anons tried to push back against that, so the very concrete proof is spread out in four separate posts, which makes linking back to this quite messy and complicated to read. That is why I decided to just put everything together in one post.
It's the same info I had in all the other posts, just cleaned up for ease of reading.
Ok, so, a Larrie who we'll call Betterstill made a series of posts where she talked about knowing someone who knew Eleanor and how much of a b*tch she was (ok, and?). While making those posts she kind of... gave away something that made how Louis and Eleanor met click.
The first post said that, "Eleanor's best friend from university tells people that she introduced Louis and Eleanor backstage in 2011." In another, Betterstill clarified that the friend was Alana. When an anon pushed back and said that Alana didn't know Harry in 2011, Betterstill replied that, no Alana did work at the same bakery Harry did.
Another anon said that ok, even if Alana worked at the same bakery, she and Harry couldn't have worked there at the same time because she was in university when he worked there, to which Betterstill agreed and said that the story "didn't add up" for that reason.
Alright, now I need to explain all of this, which is very complicated to do in a non-confusing way, so bear with me.
Let's introduce Chloe Burcham. Chloe is one of Gemma's best friends (Harry's sister—idk, just in case):
Chloe's entire family has been friends with Harry's family for decades:
Chloe has also been friends for a very long time with a girl called Alana Burton—or Lani, how people usually called her online. Since neither of them are public figures (though Chloe is sort of an influencer), I don't really want to post old pictures of them together, but you can find them easily enough if you Google. The 1D fandom documents everything.
The kicker here is that Alana was roommates in University with Eleanor, aka Louis' long-time girlfriend. Both she and Eleanor posted endless photos together. Here's a photo Eleanor posted of all her university roommates—Lani is on the far right, while Eleanor is next to the blonde girl with a bob.
For a while, fans of 1D would discuss how trippy it was that Louis' girlfriend (Eleanor) was roommates with someone (Alana) who was childhood friends with one of Harry's childhood friends (Chloe), but there was no indication that Harry and Alana knew each other.
Louis + Eleanor shippers ("Elounor") had their theories about Alana+Chloe being the reason Louis and Eleanor met, but there was nothing concrete to go off of.
Until... kind of out of nowhere Lani tweeted Harry with an inside joke.
And a few weeks later Harry went bowling with Alana, Chloe, Chloe's sister, and some dude.
Then Harry tweeted Lani with a lot of familiarity:
And people were torn. Some believed Chloe had introduced Harry and Alana and that was all there was to it, while others put together the fact that Chloe and Alana had met when they were young because Alana was from a town 5 minutes away from Holmes Chapel (Harry's hometown), and that since Chloe was so close to Harry and Gemma since they were kids, chances were that Harry and Alana had met long before 1D.
Another reason people believed this, was that Louis explained how he and Eleanor met like this:
I don't know if anyone who's this deep into my obscure blog will not know that Harry worked in a bakery prior to being in 1D, but, well, he did. He worked there for two years, from fourteen to sixteen.
Harry (via Liam) also confirmed that he introduced Louis and Eleanor:
So, was Alana the friend of Harry's who worked at the bakery with him? Or was it someone else and Alana was just a coincidence?
Well, Betterstill shared in her "receipt" that Alana indeed worked at the bakery. I don't trust Larries as far as I can throw them, of course, but this one is very reluctantly admitting that Alana worked at the bakery. She's also agreeing with her anons that "the story doesn't add up" because "Alana was in university when Harry worked at the bakery." What I get from this, is that Betterstill actually does know someone somewhat connected to all of this, who confirmed that Alana worked at the bakery with Harry, and is trying to use that knowledge to claim that Eleanor is not a nice person (because Larries all have a vendetta against her), while also trying to somehow cast doubt onto something that she herself is confirming.
Betterstill has dozens of posts talking about being from the same area as Harry and knowing people he knows, so her knowing someone who knows Alana is not far-fetched to me. It seems like her coping mechanism is sort of lying to herself.
But, well, she's wrong. Alana started university the same year that Harry auditioned for The X Factor. As I said, Alana was roommates with Eleanor, meaning, they most likely started university at around the same time. Eleanor started university in 2010 after Harry auditioned for The X Factor. Harry and Alana working together at the bakery makes perfect sense. They could've worked together for the entire two years he worked there.
Fast-forward to January 2018 (a year after Betterstill's "receipt") and we get pictures of Harry hanging out with Alana in Japan:
And then almost two years later, we get content of Alana spending Christmas with the Styles in 2019:
Suffice to say that Harry and Alana are friends, and every part of this story is adding up.
Now, what else was it that Betterstill said? That Alana claims that she introduced Louis and Eleanor backstage at a show in 2011. Okay... interesting. We know for a fact that Louis and Eleanor had met by September 2011 because we have pictures of them together then, so that means they didn't meet backstage at 1D's first tour, since it started in December 2011.
What other shows did 1D have before that? Well, they had a couple of TV show appearances, some on the radio, at malls and stuff. Could it be that Harry invited Alana to one of those? Sure, it could be, but apparently it's not.
You see, Betterstill is/was friends with a bunch of other Larries, such as our good old pal Bulletproof who I talked about in my "living together" posts. Bulletproof gave us a tiny extra detail about this whole thing that's very interesting: that the show they met at was an X Factor one. She later expanded on the show being in the Spring of 2011. Betterstill and Bulletproof's friendship is long documented on both of their blogs, so presumably Betterstill gave Bulletproof details that she didn't make public in her blog.
I had my suspicion that was the case ever since Betterstill mentioned it was backstage at a show in 2011 and while looking for something else on Bulletproof's blog found the confirmation.
I figured that backstage at a show in 2011 had to mean at The X Factor Tour because it was what made the most sense, in terms of being a show where the guys could take friends with them. The families were always talking about getting tickets for those shows on Twitter.
What show? We have no idea, but most likely one in Manchester. The X Factor Tour ran from February 19th till April 9th, 2011.
So, regardless of what the exact show was, that's the range of time we're looking at.
Mmhm, but... at the time Louis was... dating Hannah, his girlfriend who he was with since before One Direction. If all of this is correct (and it adds up perfectly), when Louis and Eleanor met, he was 100% dating Hannah.
Fun fact, if Louis and Eleanor indeed met at a Manchester show, then they met right around the time of his and Hannah's 1-year anniversary:
(archived tweet)
Hannah would tweet about Louis a bunch. Hannah's sister posted this photo of them together on Easter a couple of weeks after The X Factor Tour ended:
Hannah deactivated her account a few years ago, so we can't link to her tweets, but we can see fan reactions to them. On July 17th, she took a Twitter break for a couple of days because of "rumors":
This was right after Louis went back home to Doncaster (where Hannah also lived) for a day, according to what his mom tweeted on July 16th.
A week or so later, Hannah came back from her Twitter break for 1D's anniversary (July 23rd), and right after that, she confirmed she and Louis had broken up but that they remained best friends, to which Louis agreed. We have screenshots of those tweets:
Louis' is still up.
You're gonna have to trust me on this one, because there's no way for me to link the source, but Stan, one of Louis' closest friends, had a period of time in 2013 where his Facebook was public. In fact, through Stan's Facebook we found out that Louis auditioned for The X Factor in 2009 as well:
And through his Facebook we found the date in which he and Eleanor became friends there...
That is four days after the potential date in which Louis broke up with Hannah (July 16th) and four days before Hannah would confirm it on Twitter. That is... quite the fucking timing.
Of course, we don't have 100% confirmation that Louis and Eleanor cheated on Hannah. But come the fuck on... They most likely met in March 2011, then Louis continued to date Hannah, and as soon as Louis and Hannah break up he starts interacting with Eleanor?
Just 10 days after that Eleanor's cousin, Emily Calder who was very young and a huge 1D fan (her @ used to be NomNomNiall), was tweeting about Eleanor knowing Louis. You can check out Emily's Twitter account—Louis still follows her.
(archived tweet)
Louis called her on the phone and followed her that same day.
As far Emily she was aware, at this point, Louis and Eleanor were "just friends." Emily wouldn't find out they were an item until it became public knowledge. Why? Because, well, she was a child, and she was a 1D fan, so she knew perfectly well that Louis had a girlfriend until LITERALLY two weeks prior to following her.
Like...
(archived tweet)
Larries took Emily's lack of knowledge of the situation as "proof" of it being all fake, instead of the fact that she was lied to and told 1% of the information. She was told that Louis and Eleanor had known each other for a while, but she didn't have the full context:
(She had an ask.fm at the time that was linked to her Twitter account, so this is 100% legit, but it's not up anymore for me to link it)
Sugarscape, a popular media outlet at the time that had a lot of interviews with 1D, said that someone spotted Louis with a brunette girl at V Festival (August 20/21 2011). I can't find the original article because Sugarscape has gone offline since then, but I can find an archived version of a second article where they reference it, a year later:
And Eleanor confirmed it was her:
(archived tweet)
Sugarscape wrote this second article because Louis had said in an interview that he and Eleanor didn't know how long they'd been together:
Larries also used this as proof that their relationship was fake. "Louis loves his girlfriend so much but he has no idea when they started dating."
They made whole ass timelines showing the discrepancies in what Louis said in different interviews, and dissected the whole thing in an attempt to "prove" that it was fake.
But... he couldn't say how long they'd been together BECAUSE THEY CHEATED. Not because he "didn't know" or because "he didn't care" or any other Larrie-backward-ass-logic. He did know, but if he admitted it, he was basically spelling out that he had cheated on his ex for months. He always gave different answers because the real one would not paint him in a good light.
Notice how Sugarscape corrects Louis, who said they'd been together for 6-8 months. They're like, "No, actually, it's at least 11." And, no, actually, it's MORE.
At first, Hannah didn't know, but she probably did realize it eventually. A year+ after the breakup, and a month after the Sugarscape article I linked, Hannah's little brother George had a pretty heated exchange with Louis' best friend Stan, in which he used a homophobic slur to describe Louis:
That's why Larries say that George accused Louis of cheating with a man, but that's... not true. You can see from his profile picture that George was a literal child. He most likely just used that slur because it was the worst word he could think of. Louis had been with Eleanor, very openly, for a year. They were first spotted together in September 2011. Eleanor then confirmed that they were together IN AUGUST, a month after he and Hannah broke up.
Even if Louis were gay (which he wasn't) and had a relationship with a man, why would Hannah's 12-year-old brother who he hadn't talked to in a year even know about it?
The "proof" of it is one word that can be very easily explained with logic. Now, here's the thing, a little bit after tweeting all of that, George deleted the tweets, so Larries went out of their way to claim that George had specifically tweeted that Louis had cheated with a man, and that makes the rounds to this day.
George did not tweet that. Here's a post by Larries the day after the tweets, August 17th, 2012, clarifying that it was FAKE. Just in case, I archived the post as well, you can find it here.
There aren't even screenshots of the tweet people use as "proof."
In fact, our friend Bulletproof (who was such a staunch Larrie she believed that Hannah was a friend of Louis' who was doing him a favor by pretending to be his girlfriend), didn't even believe that George was using that slur because he thought Louis was gay. She instead believed that George "wasn't told" what Hannah's "real role" was and that he was upset because of how fast Louis had moved on.
Which he was. That is why George was upset. In fact, so was Hannah!
As I said, her Twitter account is long gone, but she tweeted about unfollowing 1D accounts because she didn't want to see Louis' face on her Timeline in 2012. There's also this...
Hannah posted a video of her and a friend singing with a sore throat, to which a friend of Louis' called Calvin Rodgers (who he was distanced from at the time) commented, "In theory, the singing wasn't AS flat as Louis." A friend of Calvin and Hannah's called Dan replied, "Fair point." To which Calvin replied, "Not only fair, but true." And Hannah replied, "Controversial 🙊"
Anyway, to close this post, let's address two more things.
Larries claimed that Harry "looked uncomfortable" when it was said that he introduced Louis and Eleanor. They attributed this to, well, Harry and Louis being a closeted couple.
In actuality, the problem was probably that Harry was close with Hannah:
And because he was there when Louis met Eleanor, and was the main reason they met, felt uncomfortable about the whole thing.
2. Larries also claim that Harry "never interacted with Eleanor" and had raging jealousy. They project onto him the hatred they have for her.
Harry and Eleanor were probably not friends. Harry and Louis' friendships was already winding down by the time he and Eleanor started dating. But Harry did tweet a picture of Louis and Eleanor together in 2011
Here's Harry photobombing Eleanor and her friend at One Direction's premiere for their documentary This Is Us in 2013.
And here's Harry saying hello to Eleanor and her dad, who were having lunch at the pub close to his house. And yes, that was Eleanor 100%. That's exactly what her father looks like, plus, she's a regular at the pub. There have been a ton of sightings of her there. (Sighting 1, Sighting 2, Sighting 3, Sighting 4, Sighting 5, Sighting 6)
That was August 18th, 2019, btw. Louis and Eleanor had been back together since early 2017. They would break up again in January 2023. So, Eleanor was actively "Louis' beard" in Larries minds.
In order to claim that Harry hated Eleanor or was upset about her and Louis' relationship, Larries will use out of context clips, slowed down gifs, etc. But that's a debunk for a different day.
Anyway, that's all the condensed pretty concrete proof that Louis seemingly cheated on Hannah with Eleanor.
He also seemingly cheated on Eleanor with Briana (and other girls), dated Danielle Campbell very openly while Briana was pregnant with his son, then cheated on Danielle with Eleanor. So, you know, a really nice guy! I can make a post about that at some point if you guys want me to.
