Six years after leaving royal life, the Sussexes are coming back
Six years after one of the most dramatic departures from the modern Royal Family, Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, are preparing to bring their family back to Britain for an extended period. The Duke and Duchess are expected to live privately outside London rather than return to a royal residence, while their children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, are due to attend school in Britain from September. Their homes in California and Portugal are expected to be retained and, crucially, there has been no suggestion that Harry and Meghan intend to resume their former positions as working members of the Royal Family.
Yet geography has a habit of changing relationships. For the first time since the Sussexes stepped away from royal duties in 2020, Harry, Meghan and their children will again be living in the same country as the King, the Prince of Wales and the institution from which they once felt compelled to escape. It therefore has the potential to become something much larger than a change of address. It could become a test of whether a royal family fractured in public can reconcile in private.
A father, a son and the passage of time
At the centre of the story is King Charles III. The King announced in February 2024 that he was receiving treatment for cancer, although Buckingham Palace has never disclosed the type of cancer involved. He has continued carrying out public duties while undergoing treatment and has spoken openly enough about the disease to encourage greater discussion of cancer diagnosis and care without surrendering the medical privacy to which he remains entitled.
For Harry, that inevitably changes the emotional arithmetic. Whatever has been said in interviews, documentaries and memoirs, Charles remains his father. Harry flew to Britain shortly after the King’s diagnosis became public in 2024, and relations between father and son appear subsequently to have thawed. Reports have suggested that Charles has had opportunities to see Harry and his family again, and the possibility of spending more time with Archie and Lilibet gives the relationship a dimension that cannot easily be reduced to royal protocol or public controversy.
Their forthcoming return gives those relationships something they have lacked for years: ordinary time. Royal reconciliation does not necessarily require balconies, state occasions or carefully choreographed appearances before photographers. It may instead be built over cups of tea, children’s birthdays, Sunday afternoons and conversations that never reach a newspaper. That may prove considerably more important than any formal palace statement.
The shadow of Diana
To understand Harry’s relationship with Britain and its press, it is impossible to ignore his mother. Diana, Princess of Wales, died in Paris in August 1997 while being pursued by photographers, although the subsequent British inquest concluded that her death resulted from the grossly negligent driving of Henri Paul and the pursuing paparazzi. Harry was twelve years old at the time, and the experience has remained one of the defining events of his life.
He has repeatedly spoken of his fear that history might repeat itself with Meghan, and much of his increasingly bitter confrontation with sections of the British newspaper industry has been framed through that experience. His battles over press intrusion cannot therefore be reduced simply to celebrity irritation. They sit within a much older psychological landscape in which newspapers, photographers, family and loss became entangled while he was still a child. That does not mean every criticism Harry has made of the media is automatically justified, nor does it erase the controversies created by his own decisions to reveal intimate details of royal life, but it does help explain why security has become almost existential for him rather than merely ceremonial.
The unresolved security question
Harry lost the automatic police protection previously available to him after ceasing to be a working royal. He subsequently challenged the arrangements through the courts and lost a major legal case in 2025. A further risk assessment concerning protection for him and his family has remained unresolved, and the Government has declined to discuss the details publicly.
That issue could determine how comfortably the Sussex family can establish a life in Britain. Harry’s argument has long been that Britain is difficult for him to bring his wife and children to without protection he considers adequate, while his critics counter that leaving the ranks of working royalty inevitably changed the security arrangements surrounding him. Both things can be true. A prince may cease performing public duties while still remaining an unusually recognisable individual facing risks that an ordinary private citizen does not. The final arrangements will therefore require something less exciting than royal melodrama but considerably more useful: a professional assessment of actual risk.
And then there is Meghan
No discussion of the Sussexes’ return can avoid the most polarising member of the family. Meghan arrives back in a country where public attitudes towards her remain deeply divided. To admirers, she was a newcomer confronted by an ancient institution that failed to understand either the intensity of modern celebrity culture or the racial and social dimensions of the abuse directed at her. To critics, she helped turn private royal disagreements into an international media enterprise through the Oprah Winfrey interview, the couple’s Netflix series and other projects.
There are also longstanding allegations concerning Meghan’s treatment of palace employees, but those claims should be handled considerably more carefully than they sometimes are. In 2021 Buckingham Palace commissioned an external review after claims emerged that Meghan had bullied or humiliated members of staff and that two personal assistants had left. Meghan strongly denied bullying anyone. The Palace later said its human resources procedures had been changed following the review but declined to publish its findings, citing the confidentiality of those who participated.
Consequently, the public record does not establish that Meghan bullied staff, nor does it provide sufficient evidence to dismiss every complaint as fictitious. Stories claiming that Queen Elizabeth II personally reprimanded Meghan over her treatment of staff have circulated for years, but such accounts were never authoritatively established by the late Queen herself. That distinction matters, because a reconciliation built upon the reopening of every accusation from 2018 would probably collapse before the removal van reached the driveway.
The American woman and the prince who left Britain
There is, however, an extraordinary historical echo hanging over the Sussex story. Ninety years ago another member of the Royal Family fell in love with an American woman, surrendered his position within the institution and spent much of the remainder of his life abroad. King Edward VIII abdicated in December 1936 after deciding that he could not continue as King without marrying Wallis Simpson, an American who was twice divorced.
Edward became Duke of Windsor and married Wallis in France the following year. They subsequently lived much of their lives abroad, particularly in France, and Edward died in Paris in 1972. The comparison with Harry and Meghan is irresistible, but it is also dangerously easy to exaggerate. Edward surrendered the throne itself. Harry was never King and did not abdicate anything. He and Meghan voluntarily stopped performing duties as senior working royals while retaining their places within the family and Harry’s position in the line of succession. The constitutional circumstances are therefore entirely different.
There is another enormous distinction. Edward’s reputation was permanently damaged by his association with Nazi Germany. He and Wallis visited Germany in 1937 and met Adolf Hitler, while during the war Nazi officials considered exploiting Edward in schemes intended to influence Britain’s government. He was eventually sent to serve as Governor of the Bahamas. Nothing remotely comparable belongs in the Sussex story.
And yet the emotional echo remains fascinating. Two princes separated by almost a century found themselves outside the central machinery of monarchy after marrying American women. Both sought freedom from the expectations surrounding royal life. Both discovered that leaving the Palace does not necessarily mean escaping the monarchy, and both eventually looked back towards Britain.
Edward discovered that royal exile could become permanent
Edward’s relationship with his family never entirely recovered. Queen Elizabeth II did nevertheless maintain contact with her uncle. She visited the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in Paris shortly before Edward’s death in 1972, and Wallis was subsequently permitted to travel to Britain for his funeral. Edward himself was buried at Frogmore in Windsor, bringing him home in death after decades spent largely abroad.
That story contains a lesson for the present Royal Family, although perhaps not the obvious one. The monarchy of the twentieth century frequently dealt with family rupture through distance, silence and exclusion. The monarchy of the twenty-first century may discover that reconciliation is less damaging than permanent estrangement.
Harry and Meghan do not need to become working royals again for Charles to be their father, William to be Harry’s brother or Archie and Lilibet to know their British family. Those are separate questions from constitutional duty, and perhaps they always should have been.
The greater obstacle may be William
The relationship most resistant to repair appears to be that between Harry and Prince William. The brothers once presented themselves as unusually close, bound together by the trauma of losing their mother and by the peculiar experience of growing up beneath relentless public observation. That relationship deteriorated dramatically.
Harry’s memoir, Spare, contained intimate and sometimes damaging accounts of William, including Harry’s allegation of a physical confrontation between them. Interviews and documentaries added further grievances, while William has largely responded with silence. Reports surrounding the Sussexes’ return suggest that while Harry’s relationship with Charles has improved, his estrangement from William remains unresolved.
There is no requirement that the brothers become best friends again, because families do not work that way, royal or otherwise. Forgiveness can exist without forgetfulness, and reconciliation can mean civility rather than intimacy. But Harry’s physical return to Britain removes one convenient feature of their estrangement: the Atlantic Ocean. Sooner or later the brothers are likely to occupy the same weddings, funerals, birthdays and family occasions, and the question will be whether distance has cooled the conflict enough for conversation to replace communiqué.
The grandchildren may change everything
Perhaps the most hopeful part of this story is also the least political. Archie and Lilibet are grandchildren of the King. They are also niece and nephew to the Prince and Princess of Wales and cousins to Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis.
Children possess an inconvenient habit of making adult feuds look rather small. King Charles is understood to welcome opportunities to spend more time with Harry’s children, and their attendance at school in Britain creates the possibility of a family connection that was extremely difficult while they were living thousands of miles away in California. No constitutional principle is involved in a grandfather wanting to know his grandchildren, and no palace protocol is required.
For all the extraordinary architecture surrounding the House of Windsor, this part of the story is remarkably ordinary. Time passes, parents age, children grow, and arguments that once appeared enormous begin to compete with the possibility that opportunities for reconciliation do not remain available forever.
Meghan’s second British chapter
For Meghan, returning may prove more complicated. She left Britain amid hostility, tabloid warfare and an extraordinary level of public scrutiny. She has subsequently constructed a life and commercial identity in California largely independent of Buckingham Palace.
Returning therefore does not mean returning to the life she left. She can continue her business interests while Harry maintains his involvement with charitable causes, and that distinction could be crucial. The original Sussex experiment attempted to combine royal status, public service, financial independence and international celebrity within a structure that ultimately proved impossible to sustain.
This time the boundaries are clearer. Harry is the King’s son, but not a working royal. Meghan is the King’s daughter-in-law, but does not represent the Crown. Their children are prince and princess, but are growing up primarily as private citizens rather than functioning members of the royal household. Perhaps ambiguity caused some of the original conflict. Six years later, everyone knows where the lines are drawn.
Can you ever really leave the Royal Family?
The question surrounding Harry and Meghan in 2020 was whether somebody born into the monarchy could successfully leave it. The answer appears increasingly complicated. Harry certainly left the job, but he did not leave the family.
Edward VIII learned something similar. A royal title can be altered, duties can disappear, residences can change and an ocean can be crossed, but history remains stubbornly packed in the suitcase. Harry remains Diana’s son, Charles’s son and William’s brother wherever he lives, and Britain remains part of his children’s inheritance whether their home is Montecito, Lisbon, London or somewhere in the English countryside.
History does not have to repeat itself
There is a temptation whenever royalty is involved to believe that history moves in circles. Edward and Wallis. Harry and Meghan. American wives, unhappy princes and lives beyond Britain’s shores. But history does not repeat itself nearly as neatly as newspaper headlines suggest. Sometimes it merely leaves an echo.
Edward VIII’s departure became permanent exile, and his relationship with the institution he once headed remained damaged for the remainder of his life. Harry’s story need not finish the same way. The monarchy he left in 2020 has already changed. Elizabeth II is gone. Charles is King. William is heir to the throne. Harry and Meghan are older. Their children are growing up. Illness has reminded the family of time’s rather brutal habit of moving forward regardless of unresolved arguments.
A return to Britain will not magically erase the Oprah interview, Spare, the allegations, the lawsuits, the newspaper battles or the painful words exchanged over six extraordinary years. Nor should reconciliation require pretending those things never happened. It requires something considerably more difficult: accepting that they did and then deciding what happens next.
Harry and Meghan can come home without returning to royal duty, and perhaps that distinction offers the family its best opportunity. This time there need be no negotiations over balconies, uniforms or who represents the Crown. The remaining questions belong mainly to a father, two sons, their wives and their children.
Somewhere between California and Windsor lies the possibility that one of the bitterest royal ruptures of modern times may eventually end not with another television interview or palace announcement, but with something much quieter: a family learning how to sit in the same room again.
