And so, after all the drama and recriminations, the brickbats hurled and grievances aired; after all the glossy deals that have come – and gone – a remarkable royal U-turn hovers on the brink of completion.
Reverse Megxit, a manoeuvre once thought to be as likely as pigs taking flight, would appear to be just a couple of short weeks from completion.
Six years after they packed their bags, turning their backs on royal life in pursuit of the American dream (and freedom to reap the American dollar away from the confines of the Royal fold), Prince Harry, his wife Meghan and their children Archie, seven, and Lilibet, five, are, apparently, ready to return to Britain.
They are expected to arrive in the UK to begin their new life within a fortnight, ahead of the start of the school term, which typically spans the first two weeks of September.
That such a move was on the cards was exclusively revealed by this newspaper last month, in the wake of the family’s flying – but seemingly very successful – visit to meet with the King and Queen for tea at Highgrove. It was coupled with a visit to Harry’s Spencer roots at Althorp, the stately home in Northamptonshire where his mother Princess Diana grew up and was buried.
‘What is absolutely crucial is that Harry never fell out of love with Britain – he fell out of love with the circumstances he found himself living in, and those are very different things,’ Harry’s friend Alex Rayner, who went with him on a charity trek to the North Pole in 2012, and remains in regular contact with him, told the Daily Mail.
Others speak of ‘an increasing and significant shift in sentiment, a feeling the American dream might not be all it was cracked up to be’.
And it’s not a one-sided sentiment either: ‘This is coming from Meghan as well as from him. I hear that Meghan is all for rekindling with and reconnecting with Harry’s English side. She is fully behind it,’ a friend said.
‘Harry has never stopped being British or feeling British.’
Pictured: Prince Harry hugging his son, Archie, while Meghan Markle holds their daugther, Lilibet’s hands
Lilibet walking behind her brother and father as the family visited Althorp amid rumours the Sussexes visited Princess Diana’s grave during their visit to Britain this summer
Not that the move back should be seen as a whim, however. Although the pace of the shift took everyone by surprise (the King, we are told, only learned of his youngest son’s plans on Sunday), everyone insists it’s a serious – and permanent – move.
‘It’s a significant return and I think a forever return if I’m being brutally honest,’ the friend added.
That’s quite an about-turn. And that July visit to the UK was, it is understood, pivotal to decisions being made – and to schools being visited – although plans were actually being made as long ago as May.
The family enjoyed their time, however brief, with the King and Queen at Highgrove and are understood to have loved being with the family of Harry’s mother, Diana, Princess of Wales.
The children, for whom the UK must feel a distant place that Daddy talks about, may not have caught up with their uncle William (a sibling froideur yet to be addressed), nor with their cousins Princes George and Louis and Princess Charlotte, but they did apparently meet their aunts, uncles and cousins on their father’s mother’s side.
The visit to Europe also included time – documented by Meghan on Instagram – in Portugal where, in 2023, they were reported to have paid £6.3million for a holiday home in a fashionable corner of the country, known as the Iberian Hamptons, where Harry’s cousin Princess Eugenie also lives.
Indeed, we are told that so advanced are the couple’s plans they have been looking at property ‘at quite a serious level’ and have been looking at schools for the children since before they broke up for the summer holidays.
As a source close to the prince tells us: ‘They started to talk seriously about it at the beginning of the year and come May started to look at schools.’
Prince Harry, of course, like his brother Prince William, began his own prep school experience as a boarder at Berkshire prep school Ludgrove, aged eight, later proceeding to Eton.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex at the ESPY Awards in California on July 11, 2024
Meghan Markle and Prince Harry visiting a QuestScope Youth Centre in a refugee camp for displaced Syrians in Jordan
It is, however, unlikely that Archie, just a baby when his parents moved to California in March 2020, will be boarding anywhere any time soon.
The little boy, who speaks with an American accent and is sixth in line to the throne, will be, we are told, a ‘day boy’ at a mixed preparatory school and Lili, as she is affectionately known, will enter pre-prep at the same school.
As our source says: ‘This is a natural moment as Archie will start prep school in year one.
‘Harry knows from his time at Ludgrove that you want to start at the same time as everyone else; there is bonding and camaraderie.
‘Archie is really, really keen on sport and will play rugby and cricket which will be new to him. Harry has been throwing a rugby ball with him in the garden in Montecito; it’s a pretty strange concept if you have grown up with the NFL!’
The location of the chosen school has not yet been revealed, but it is understood that it is not in London. It is highly likely to be somewhere in the Cotswolds, a location long favoured by the couple.
If it were in the frame, there would be a significance in that particular location on multiple fronts.
Before their wedding, Harry and Meghan signed a two-year lease on a £2.5million Grade II-listed farmhouse on the 4,000 acre Great Tew Estate, also home to the Beckhams’ country house and location of trendy private members’ retreat Soho Farmhouse, where many of Meghan’s UK-based friends hang out.
Secondly – while far removed from Kensington, where Harry and Meghan once lived in ‘cosy’ Nottingham Cottage, Harry’s two-bedroom bachelor pad in the grounds of Kensington Palace and from Frogmore, the Grade II-listed home on the Windsor estate, on which they splashed £2.4million on renovation and lived in for less than a year – this well-heeled territory is within easy reach of Althorp, where his uncle, Earl Spencer resides.
Could it even be that Althorp serves as a staging post for the family?
Perhaps.
Call it hedging their bets or merely an abundance of caution, it does appear they will keep their Montecito mansion, although the local luxury property market was abuzz with speculation yesterday. What broker wouldn’t want that sale?
In the UK, we are told that, ‘initially, they are staying with someone’. But ‘they are looking to buy at a quite serious level which is a big commitment to putting down roots,’ says our source.
So much has unfolded since their bombshell announcement in 2020 that launched what became known as Megxit.
Since their bombshell exit from the UK, famously dubbed ‘Megxit’, there have been grievances aired and wounds opened after the couple’s interview with Oprah
Prince Harry’s memoir and the couple’s Netflix documentary are said to have strained relationships with the Duke and his family
Prince William and Princess Catherine (pictured on September 10, 2022) with are said to feel deeply betrayed by the revelations made in Spare
There have been grievances aired and wounds opened after Oprah (the interview) and Spare (the memoir) and Harry & Meghan on Netflix (the documentary). Relationships between Harry and his own family became strained, to say the least, indeed Harry and his brother are not thought to have spoken for years.
The Prince and Princess of Wales are said to feel deeply betrayed by the revelations made in Spare and in various interviews.
There has been precious little opportunity for rapprochement.
Harry, meanwhile, has pursued a legal challenge over the decision to remove his taxpayer-funded police protection, arguing that his family’s security arrangements require reassessment.
Until July’s visit, Meghan (who swept in privately with the children for tea with the in-laws after yet another kerfuffle over security arrangements), had not visited the UK since the Queen’s funeral, in September 2022.
The children, meanwhile, had not been here since the Platinum Jubilee, three months earlier, during which visit Lili celebrated her first birthday and met her paternal grandfather for the first time.
Friends say the Sussexes plan to visit the US regularly, where they have endeavoured to build commercial portfolios free from the shackles from life as working royals.
Harry currently earns money from business coaching company BetterUp and sustainable travel firm Travalyst and is also trying to expand the couple’s production company Archewell.
He is reportedly keen to spend more time supporting charities including WellChild, Scotty’s Little Soldiers and, of course, the Invictus community he founded with the first Invictus Games in 2014.
Meghan, meanwhile, runs her own lifestyle business, As Ever. The former Suits star recently appeared as a guest judge on MasterChef Australia, having hosted her own cooking and lifestyle show on Netflix and dipped her toe back into the world of acting for the first time in nearly a decade, with an upcoming cameo in the film Close Personal Friends, which also stars Lily Collins and Brie Larson.
How this all stacks up with a return to the UK remains unclear.
It was, of course, the late Queen who said Harry and Meghan could not maintain a ‘half-in, half-out’ approach to royal duties while also pursuing commercial opportunities.
Coincidental or not, there is certainly some business acumen in the timing of the Sussexes return.
‘Good to see Harry and Meghan achieve six full tax years of non-UK residency to manage the ‘temporary non-resident’ rules for capital gains tax,’ said accountant Nimesh Shah, CEO
of accountancy firm Blick Rothenberg on X. ‘They have clearly had some good tax advice and the timing of their move back to the UK is immaculate.’
The HMRC rules mean that if you leave the UK and come back within five years, you’re still liable for capital gains tax, but if you stay out of country for more than five years, you are not.
The tax benefits, it should be noted, would be even greater had Harry been a non-UK resident for ten consecutive tax years.
Whether Harry and Meghan are thinking about tax or business opportunities, as far as the Royal Household goes, there is said to be no interest in creating a ‘half-in, half-out’ arrangement for the duke and duchess.
The couple’s businesses will still be based in the US and the move is about something more personal. ‘Meghan has long been aware that Harry wants to ground the kids in the UK and give them the values of that particular education, to be a good loser, a humble winner and so on,’ the friend said.
There are other reasons too, he adds.
The Duke of Duchess of Sussex at a photo call where they marked their engagement on November 27, 2017
‘His father’s significant cancer also impacted on the decision; he realised the values of time and family.’
Quite how much discussion there has been between Harry and his family about the move remains uncertain.
As our source close to the Sussexes says: ‘I know that it [the move] was discussed when he came to the UK to see Diana’s grave; that visit was also about going to see schools. ‘What Harry didn’t say was that it was definitely this September, but at that point they were eyeing a move back.’
‘This is not about royal life at all; it’s about family and the children being educated in the UK.
‘Harry wants to ground his children in this country and to give them a strong understanding of where he grew up.
‘It’s not about him trying to recreate what they had in 2020, it’s about establishing their private family life.’
On the matter of family life, readers might recall that Harry has sometimes been less than complimentary about his stepmother, Queen Camilla.
She was reportedly hurt after he used Spare to describe her as ‘dangerous’ and a ‘villain’ who ‘left bodies in the streets’.
Note, then, what our source says now about his children’s step-grandmother: ‘He has a good relationship with his father – as a grandfather he is a softie, and Camilla is honestly a sweetheart.
‘Harry has been FaceTiming them since day dot with Archie and Lilibet.’
They also downplay the rift between Harry and William: ‘There is no real bad blood with his brother, and there are communications but a distance has grown between the families on either side of the Atlantic.’
As for Meghan, back in 2022, in an interview with US writer Allison P. Davis, she spoke a little about her journey and the ‘new chapter’ she was embarking on.
She made a handful of remarks about son Archie, one of them being about her fears over him attending school in the UK. She said she’d never be able to do school pick-up and drop-off without it being a royal photo call with a press pen of 40 people snapping pictures.
‘Sorry, I have a problem with that. That doesn’t make me obsessed with privacy. That makes me a strong and good parent protecting my child,’ she said.
Her fears, however, must have been allayed.
How the next new chapter unfolds remains to be seen.
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