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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”.
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.”
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”.
