The Prodigal Son Returns: Harry and Meghan Move Back to the UK

Six years after their "freedom flight", Harry and Meghan are moving back to the UK.

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One couldn’t be faulted for wondering if the imminent return of the Prodigal Son to the UK, wife and children in tow, is the plot of a new Netflix picture. Six years after their dramatic “Freedom Flight” out of London, settling first in Canada and then California, it appears the American Dream hasn’t quite panned out as anticipated. The irony, of course, is that they are now returning to the very country they have spent the better part of those six years telling us they had no choice but to flee after painting a picture of an uncaring, unwelcoming and even racist institution. According to reports, Harry will return to Britain with his wife and the children later this month, with both children enrolled to begin school in the UK in September. The family will reportedly live in a private residence outside London.

Where exactly does one begin?

To start, this is an interesting development seeing as Harry has spent the past few years arguing that Britain was simply not safe enough for his wife and children, even for a brief visit, without the level of police protection be believed they required, going so far as to take the British government to court over the matter. He ultimately lost that suit and yet, suddenly, it seems that Britain is safe enough after all, not simply for the occasional visit, but to live, to send the children to school, and to establish a family home. One can certainly understand Harry wanting his children to receive a British education. He is, after all, a British prince and his children are  grandchildren of the King. Wanting them to understand that heritage and develop a relationship with the country and Royal Family into which they were born is hardly unreasonable. But, it begs the obvious question: what, exactly, has changed? 

This is not simply a family returning home after discovering that life abroad wasn’t quite for them. Harry and Meghan built an enormous amount of their post-royal public identity around explaining why leaving Britain was so necessary in the first place. They didn’t move quietly to California to build a private life for themselves and their children. They made their departure a cause célèbre, which is why there is something undeniably ironic about watching the sorry Sussex experiment come full circle.

There is also the interesting timing of this news, which was announced shortly after Harry’s expensive defeat in his latest battle with the British press. On Friday, he and six other claimants were ordered to make an interim payment of £9.54 million toward the legal costs of Associated Newspapers following the dimissal of their privacy case. The publisher says its costs exceed £34 million, while the claimants are said to have £16 million in insurance coverage. Exactly how much Harry himself will ultimately be responsible for remains unclear.

Does that have anything to do with the decision to return? We simply don’t know. But after years of expensive litigation and the considerable cost of maintaining the Sussexes particular version of private life, one can’t help but wonder whether financial considerations may have played a part in this sudden change of heart.

Nor have the Sussexes commercial ventures become the triumphs they were expected to be. The lucrative partnerships they signed after arriving in California have, one by one, come to an end. Their Spotify partnership ended after a single series of Archetypes, their original Netflix deal was replaced with a more limited first-look arrangement and Netflix has also ended its involvement with Meghan’s lifestyle brand, As Ever. With Love, Meghan, which somehow managing to secure a Daytime Emmy nomination, despite its disappointing viewership, has no third season planned. As Ever continues, but whether sprinkle flowers and jars of jam can sustain the sort of lifestyle the Sussexes have become accustomed to remains to be seen.

Perhaps the explanation is much less complicated. Perhaps Harry genuinely misses home. Frankly, I have always suspected that he does. For all his anger toward the institution, Harry has never struck me as a man who ever stopped caring about Britain or his place within the Royal Family. You can reject royal duties much more easily than you can erase a lifetime of identity, family and history. And perhaps as his father grows older, Harry has begun to understand that there are things that cannot be endlessly postponed. 

If so, I hope the return brings some healing, especially for the King and for the children. But reconciliation doesn’t undo the past. Harry and Meghan are perfectly entitled to decide that Britain is once again the best place for their family. We’re all allowed to change our minds. But what they cannot reasonably expect is for everyone else to pretend that the last six years never happened.

After all the interviews, accusations, documentaries, lawsuits, Spare and the very public insistence that life within the orbit of the British monarchy was intolerable, the Sussexes have arrived at a remarkable and rather unexpected conclusion: the grass isn’t always greener on the other side.