Prince Harry made a desperate plea to King Charles when he forced the Duke of Sussex to cut all ties with the U.K., but as a grandfather not as a king. Family spats are only made more complicated when the family in question happens to be the ruling dynasty of the Commonwealth, and things got very nasty indeed when Harry and Meghan Markle split from the sovereignty in 2020.
By all accounts, it seems the Sussexes expected it to be a lot easier for them to cling onto their status as semi-Royals after renouncing their official roles than it actually was. For instance, the couple initially hoped to move to Canada, but Canada’s status as part of the Commonwealth made this impossible. Hence why they had to relocate to the independent U.S. instead.
Likewise, Harry and Meghan clung onto roots in the U.K. for as long as possible, until King Charles ultimately gave away their royal residence back in 2023. The duke was stunned by his dad’s decision, and it’s very likely this only further widened the wedge between father and son.
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle made a desperate plea to King Charles after he evicted them from their Royal residence
In early 2023, the king left his estranged son blindsided when he officially evicted Harry and Meghan from their U.K. residence, Frogmore Cottage. The four-bedroom, four-bathroom estate situated in Windsor was originally gifted to them by the late Queen Elizabeth II as a wedding present, but Charles elected to reclaim the property when he took the crown following his mother’s death in 2022.
As per Endgame (via Express), the latest book from Harry and Meghan biographer Omid Scobie, the duke was dumbfounded to find out the news when his father phoned Harry to let him know his decision at the time. He had one seven-word question for the king. “Don’t you want to see your grandchildren?” Harry asked him. As per Scobie, Charles responded with a “half-hearted declaration that they would always have ‘somewhere’ to stay.”
In actual fact, while Harry has made the occasional trip back to the U.K. over the past two years, Meghan and the Sussexes’ two children — Prince Archie (5) and Princess Lilibet (3) — have yet to make a return visit to the U.K. In fact, Lilibet has never set foot on British soil. Nor, to date, has Charles visited her in the U.S.
To be fair, however, Harry and Meghan weren’t exactly visiting much before 2023 either, and Scobie notes that Charles would’ve been heavily influenced in his decision to reclaim Frogmore by his advisors. Nonetheless, in retrospect this does seem to have been the final nail in the coffin of the king’s chances of watching his grandchildren grow up. In Spare, Harry writes at length about his fondness for Frogmore so it must’ve stung when it was snatched away from him. It looks like this is one more reason why he’s in no hurry to bury the hatchet.
