Our boy is coming home. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have dropped some bombshells in their time, but few have landed with such a bang as the shock announcement that they are set to move back to Britain.
One of the groups hit most strongly by the reverberations are Harry’s erstwhile gang. A very old friend of the errant Prince says, “You could have knocked me down with a feather. So, so surprised but excited too. Since he has left I saw him once when I was in the States when I flew to the West Coast for work. Hardly anyone sees him when he visits the UK, apparently he has back-to-back events.”
Though the royal family fall-out that followed Megxit is well documented, what has been less talked about are the bridges Harry burnt with his old gang. “Although lots of us felt like he was darking us since he went rogue,” says the friend, “I have to say everyone is pretty excited about him coming back. Maybe it will be like old times. Or if not old times, it would be nice if our kids could play”.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex in Australia earlier this year
AFP/Getty
Although rumour and counter-rumour have continued to swirl since the big announcement, the official information remains scant, and Harry’s old friends are either none the wiser, or as in the good old days, have closed impenetrable ranks. The only things known for sure are that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex will be back are back, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet have been enrolled in school and they will live outside of London.
What is so remarkable is how these seismic plans could have been set in motion with no one anyone the wiser. It is a remarkable feat of secrecy. The Sussex camp have either moved at a terrifyingly efficient pace to get their Brit affairs in order, or they are living within an impressively unleaky bubble, and the great resettlement has been in the works for a while now.
“I would be very surprised indeed if Harry had not consulted his father”
So many things remain unknown. Perhaps king among them, when exactly Harry told his dad about the plan? So far it has been widely reported that the King was informed on August 16, just three days before the rest of the world was briefed. If this was the case, it seems high-handed and inconsiderate. The Megtrance looking like an uncanny echo of Megxit, when the Queen and palace frequently felt blind-sided by fait accompli Sussex announcements.
And yet accounts differ. A source inside the palace says, “Although I admit that I myself was as dumbfounded by the news as anyone else, I would be very surprised indeed if Harry had not consulted his father. My suspicion is that even they would not have sprung this on the King. Even they would know that would be a bad idea and more than that, that the King holds the purse strings.”
Harry and Meghan have bridges to rebuild
On the face of it, the timing seems bizarre. The Sussexes stormed off last time ostensibly because of three things: family, press and public, and a grave sense of grievance that they were not getting a fair shake from any of them. They believed themselves to be unsupported by the family, persecuted by the press and trolled by the public. It is ironic that that was in fact at the height of their popularity. Although the palace was unbending and austere, there were various scurrilous stories in the papers and a sadly inevitable cadre of online bullies, whatever they believed, by and large Harry and Meghan were being rooted for. This all changed with Megxit and the toxic aftermath, which has added many of their badly treated friends and much of the wider public to the vast list of their detractors. A recent poll shows that our once beloved prince polls at just 34 per cent popularity while Meghan comes in at 26 per cent, and only 27 per cent of the country want them to come home.
“If the King is on for forgiving and forgetting, [the Queen] will try to forgive”
Family affairs are going to take some managing too. Though the King, who is ill with the cancer he has been battling since 2024, is bent on friendship with his prodigal son, Queen Camilla is said to be more wary. “She is suspicious of Harry and his motives, as well as understandably wounded over her treatment at his hands. Especially in that book he wrote,” says a palace source. “Her position, though, is that if the King is on for forgiving and forgetting, she will try to forgive, though forgetting will prove rather more challenging.”
The Prince and Princess of Wales, on the other hand, are said to harbour not the faintest intention of thawing, and what will have to be seen is whether Britain is big enough for the two warring princes. That the couple have chosen to come home now, though it might be convenient for school terms, seems an odd psychological moment in view of Prince Harry’s defeat against Associated Newspapers Limited. The lawsuit which accused the publisher of the Daily Mail of gathering information by unlawful means was dismissed, and Harry and co-claimants like Liz Hurley and Elton John, have been ordered to pay damages of £34.5 million, on the grounds that claims were “unreasonable to a high degree”.
The King with Prince Harry in 2022
AFP/Getty
The judgement, which compounded Harry’s almost pathological mistrust of the press and to a lesser extent the British establishment, will put dramatic pressure on the Sussex coffers.
And with rumours of a growing rift between the Prince and Elton John, who has no intention of footing the entire bill and is said to have complained of being used “as a human ATM”, it seems unlikely that Harry will get out of paying his fair share of the costs. What will the Sussexes do for cash? On the face of it their lifestyle looks set to be every bit as grand as the LA dream they have been living for the past six years, and the bills set to be equally as stratospheric.
That Harry is set on living, and educating his kids, in the Cotswolds, makes a lot of sense. The original “Glosse Posse” kid, Harry spent the happiest bits of his teenage years roaring around the manor houses of Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Wiltshire, where most of his friends had an attic or outhouse version of Club H, the Highgrove basement where the only rule was that there were no rules.
Though Harry’s Cotswold life might be radically different this time around, the hours set by school runs not pub openings, it is likely that his old mates — many of whom, as in the way of landed Sloanes, have returned to the family estates in some guise of other — will embrace him merrily back into the fold. However, for all this anticipated cosiness, it will be the security bill that’s causing a shiver down the Sussex spine.
After losing a case for state-funded security for his family last year, Harry told the BBC: “I can’t see a world in which I would bring my wife and children back to the UK at this point,” and so it would seem that something has changed behind closed doors since then, although yet no one is quite sure what.
The Home Office refuses to comment on what they call private security matters and Andy Burnham has remained wilfully vague, and yet although it does seem likely that the Government has agreed to some form of taxpayer-funded security, it seems almost certain that the incredibly security conscious Sussexes will have to take on a substantial chunk of the annual £5 million bill out of their own purses.
Theories about how the couple intend to pay their way are various. The initial rumour that Meghan was set to balance the books by bursting triumphantly back onto our screens in the Guy Ritchie series, The Gentlemen, was called into question over the weekend, with former Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown claiming that the offer of the part had been withdrawn because of an overwhelming anti-duchess “backlash”. Though there are sure to be other parts on offer, few British producers match the cash on offer from Netflix.
Meghan rose to fame as an actress in the TV show Suits
NBC Universal Media
A school friend of Harry’s, who works in property, says, “I have heard that they’ve got a stonking deal to rent out their Monte-whatsit place. Apparently it will more than cover the rent of the place they have found here, and then some.”
While a royal expert says: “Now that Prince Harry is back on terms with his father, I would not be at all surprised if he offers him some sort of allowance. There is of course huge precedent for this, in fact most of the royal family have their life subsidised to some degree or another personally by the King. It has always been thus”.
Why are Harry and Meghan moving home?
And this brings us to motive for the move. What everyone wants to know is what the Sussexes are really coming home for? And can it be achieved in a few months or are they really set to stay indefinitely?
Again theories are various. At the cynical end of the spectrum the line of argument goes that with the King nearing the end of his life, this is the moment for ingratiation. Though it has been made very clear that Harry and Meghan will not be taking on official duties, rather focusing on what Brown calls “ersatz royal” engagements, they might be hopeful that as grandchildren of the monarch, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet will one day become serving members of the royal family, which is not something likely to happen growing up thousands of miles away in California. Or, even more crucially, if Archie and Lilibet have not been established in royal circles before the Big Regime Change comes.
It is no secret that the American dream didn’t quite work out as planned
This then is the nub of it. Though there are countless positive reasons for the move: the Sussexes were entranced by a blissful summer holiday which made Harry pine for old friends and even family alike; the lure of a good sporting prep school education; and a very real desire to be there and make peace with the King before it is too late.
I would also bet that our once favourite prince is profoundly homesick for the old country. It is no secret that the American dream didn’t quite work out as planned. Between unrenewed Netflix and Spotify contracts, and rumours of a slow disenchantment with the LA lifestyle, is it any wonder Harry wants to come home? And to win back the great British public too. Who, like spurned lovers, were belligerent and wounded when we were abandoned, but with the right coaxing might very well be so charmed by the big return that we’re willing to embrace them back into the national bosom.
There might also be a hope that a chastened press, having learnt their lesson, will give the couple an easier ride than last time.
And yet, for all this, I can’t help thinking that the biggest reason is likely to be less than positive. That it is about making hay and forming alliances while the sun shines, because, if palace sources are correct and the King is as gravely ill as is said, there might not be much time left to the Sussexes before the chill wind of William’s reign blows in.
Where, if still friendless and ostracised, Britain will become a very cold place for them to be indeed. Whatever the weather, we can’t wait to have them back.