Nearly six years after Prince Harry and Meghan Markle relocated from Britain to the sunnier pastures of Montecito, California, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are reportedly preparing to return to the UK.
People has revealed that Harry and Meghan, who ceased to be working royals in 2020, will relocate to Britain with Prince Archie, 7, and Princess Lilibet, 5, beginning this month, with the children expected to start school there in September.
The move will mark the Sussexes’ first British home since their tenure at Frogmore Cottage came to an abrupt end. The Windsor residence, which had been gifted to them by the late Queen Elizabeth II, was reclaimed in 2023, when King Charles asked Harry and Meghan to vacate the property following the publication of Harry’s candid memoir, Spare.
Their reported return comes only weeks after Harry and Meghan made a whirlwind summer visit to the UK with Archie and Lilibet. The trip included the children’s first reunion with their grandfather in more than four years, as well as a visit to Althorp, the Northamptonshire estate where Diana, Princess of Wales, spent much of her childhood.
The move represents a striking turnabout for a couple whose departure from Britain stemmed from an increasingly public rupture with the royal family. What began as a retreat from royal life ultimately became a transatlantic estrangement that exposed, with extraordinary intimacy, the dynamics within the royal family.
In their Netflix docuseries, Harry & Meghan, the couple depicted the royal household as riven by competing interests and individual agendas, alleging that different offices routinely briefed against other members of the family in an effort to secure more favourable coverage for their own “principal” royal.
For Harry, that dynamic was compounded by what he regarded as the family’s failure to shield Meghan from increasingly hostile press. Among the most painful episodes was the publication by The Daily Mail of a private letter Meghan had written to her estranged father, Thomas Markle. Harry has maintained that his family understood the severity of the situation but failed to intervene, arguing that senior royals could have privately done more to relieve the relentless coverage.
Now, after years spent across the pond, the Sussexes’ return suggests that, despite the bitterness that has marked their relationship with the royal family, they seem ready to start a new chapter in the UK.
King Charles III was informed of the decision on Sunday, according to People. Intriguingly, the family’s relocation was reportedly not discussed when Harry and Meghan returned to Britain this summer and met with the King.
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