Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan are returning to the United Kingdom after six years based in the United States and a long public rift with the royal family.
The couple and their two kids, Prince Archie, 7, and Princess Lilibet, 5, will relocate in August before starting school in September, People and The Telegraph
reported Aug. 19. Harry and Meghan will reportedly maintain their homes in Montecito, California, and Portugal.USA TODAY has reached out to Buckingham Palace and Harry and Meghan's representatives for comment.
Their return comes after the Duke and Duchess of Sussex visited England in July, their first trip there together since Queen Elizabeth II's 2022 funeral.
During the trip, King Charles and Queen Camilla welcomed the family of four
at Buckingham Palace on July 10. The visit reunited Charles with Archie and Lilibet after years apart, according to BBC.
Since Harry and Meghan stepped back from royal duties in 2020 in a move dubbed "Megxit," tensions with the royal family have persisted. Security has also become a major issue for Harry, who has repeatedly expressed concerns about bringing his wife and children to Britain without the level of police protection he believes they need.
From the pair's 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey and Harry's 2023 autobiography to his 2025 reunion with the king, here's a timeline of the royal family rift over the years.
2018: The royal 'fab four' is born
After years of third-wheeling, Prince Harry found love with Meghan and proposed to her in November 2017. In 2018, the pair were married at a ceremony at Windsor Castle. Charles, who was then prince, escorted Meghan down the aisle amid tensions with her father, Thomas Markle.
Harry and Meghan joined William and Kate as the foursome dubbed the "Fab Four" by the British press. The couples worked together through The Royal Foundation and delighted the public whenever the princes and their partners stepped out together.
That same year, a string of royal events followed, with the group attending Trooping the Colour in June, which celebrated Queen Elizabeth II's official 92nd birthday. A month later they all appeared on the Buckingham Palace balcony to mark the centenary of the Royal Air Force.
In December, the four attended the traditional royal Christmas church service at the Sandringham estate in Norfolk.
On the surface, they appeared closer than ever.
2019: Cracks begin to show
In June 2019, Harry and Meghan split from The Royal Foundation, which they shared with William and Kate, announcing plans to establish their own charitable foundation.
It did not take long for the "fab four" moniker to disintegrate. British media reports frequently pitted the royal women against one another, reporting they clashed over some of Harry and Meghan's wedding plans and that animosity was growing between both houses.
“Very quickly it became Meghan vs. Kate,” Harry told Britain’s ITV News in an interview in October 2019. He acknowledged that he and William had drifted apart, were not seeing each other very often and that they were "certainly on different paths.”
"As brothers you have good days, you have bad days," he said, adding that the "majority of stuff" written about their relationship is "created out of nothing."
2020: 'Megxit'
Harry and Meghan started 2020 with a bang, announcing in January they were stepping back from their roles as senior royals, citing plans to become "financially independent" and split their time between Britain and North America.
The move was unprecedented, stunning much of Britain and even reportedly blindsiding then-reigning monarch Queen Elizabeth. "They didn't even tell the queen," read the front page of the Daily Mirror. Their decision was swiftly dubbed "Megxit," a play on Brexit, Britain's exit from the European Union and another polarizing moment in British history.
"My family and I are entirely supportive of Harry and Meghan’s desire to create a new life as a young family," read a statement from the queen. "Although we would have preferred them to remain full-time working Members of the Royal Family, we respect and understand their wish to live a more independent life."
In March 2020, Harry and Meghan carried out their final royal engagement alongside William and Kate before heading to Canada and then California to start a new life.
The palace agreed to a 12-month review of the decision, to see if some common ground could be reached. It could not.
2021: The Oprah interview
In February 2021, one month before Harry and Meghan sat down for a tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey, Buckingham Palace announced that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex would lose their remaining royal patronages and Harry's honorary military titles.
“While all are saddened by their decision” not to come home and return to royal duties, they “remain much loved members of the family,” the palace said.
In March, CBS aired a 90-minute interview with the pair who, in a bombshell interview with Winfrey, alleged racism within the royal family and indifference to Meghan's requests for help while she was experiencing suicidal thoughts.
The pair revealed that a royal family member had expressed "concerns" when Meghan, who's biracial, was pregnant about how dark their son's skin color might be. The pair did not name the family member but later confirmed it was not the Queen or her husband, Prince Philip.
Meghan also shot down reports that, in the lead-up to her wedding to Harry, she made Princess Kate cry. It was in fact, the other way around, she told Oprah. "She made me cry. It hurt my feelings," Meghan said, confirming that the subject was flower girl dresses.
Harry shared he was cut off from his family's money in the first quarter of 2020 and that his inheritance from Diana helped him build a new life across the pond. He said he felt let down by his father's handling of the situation.
The interview sent the British tabloids into a frenzy, with the Daily Mail roaring "WHAT HAVE THEY DONE?" The couple's claims prompted William to defend the family, telling a reporter, “We’re very much not a racist family.”
2022: Queen Elizabeth II dies
Before Queen Elizabeth II died in September 2022, Britain spent the summer celebrating her 70-year reign. Meghan, Harry and Meghan returned to the U.K. with their two children, Archie and Lilibet, to join the Platinum Jubilee celebrations. It would be the family's last trip to Harry's home country together for four years.
Harry and Meghan returned again when they attended the queen's funeral in September. The brothers, united in grief, walked shoulder-to-shoulder behind the late monarch's coffin and sat together with their wives during the service. Harry, no longer a working royal, wore civilian clothes to the funeral rather than a military uniform.
While some interpreted walking behind their grandmother's coffin alongside one another as a step toward unity, Harry later told Anderson Cooper that as the royals raced to Balmoral Castle in Scotland to be with the queen in her final moments, he felt abandoned by his brother who did not offer him a seat on the plane.
By the time Harry reached Balmoral on his own, his grandmother was dead.
2023: Harry releases tell-all autobiography 'Spare'
Harry did not hold back when writing his 2023 autobiography "Spare," accusing William of physically attacking him during an argument over Meghan in 2019. He also documented his partying and subsequent drug use and how he struggled to accept his mother's tragic death.
“It all happened so fast. So very fast,” Prince Harry wrote of the alleged incident with William. “He grabbed me by the collar, ripping my necklace, and he knocked me to the floor."
The book detailed how Harry and William weren't actually each others' best men at their weddings and that their rift had been bubbling under the surface since their school days. The prince wrote how he and William begged their father not to marry Camilla and that Charles joked he wasn't Harry's "real father."
In the book, Harry said his father pleaded with him and William, "Please, boys – don't make my final years a misery."
At the May 2023 coronation of King Charles, Harry attended without his wife or children. Inside the ceremony at London's Westminster Abbey, he sat two rows behind his brother. It was the first time the prince was seen publicly with members of the royal family since the release of "Spare."
2025: King Charles holds in-person meeting with Harry
In September, Harry and his father held their first face-to-face meeting in over a year at Clarence House in London, where the king and queen live. Their first meeting in 19 months lasted less than an hour and was widely seen as a possible first step toward ending a much-publicized rift.
Before the September meeting took place, Harry last saw his father in February 2024, shortly after it was announced that the monarch was undergoing treatment for cancer.
The meeting followed a May 2025 interview with BBC, where Harry said he "would love a reconciliation" with the royal family while also saying "I can't see a world in which I would bring my wife and children back to the U.K. at this point."
2026: King Charles reunites with Harry's family
King Charles and Queen Camilla hosted the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, along with Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet on July 10, Buckingham Palace told BBC. The family gathered at Highgrove house, the king and queen's private country residence in Gloucestershire, England.
The reunion came during Harry and Meghan's family trip to the U.K., their first visit to Britain with Archie and Lilibet since Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jubilee in June 2022. The visit followed weeks of negotiations about security and accommodations, which hinted at ongoing tensions.
Contributing: KiMi Robinson, USA TODAY
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Harry and Meghan's royal rift: What went wrong before their UK return
