By the fall of 2019, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle seemed fully engrossed in their roles as senior members of the Royal Family.

Having celebrated a fairytale wedding at St George’s Chapel in Windsor the previous year, the couple was embraced as symbols of a modern monarchy. Their union marked a fresh chapter for the Royal institution, merging tradition with contemporary appeal.

The pair made their home at Frogmore Cottage, a charming residence on the Windsor estate, where they hoped to find tranquility for their growing family. It was here that they welcomed their son, Prince Archie, in May, envisioning a serene setting for his upbringing.

Fresh off their inaugural official royal tour in South Africa, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex were still basking in the excitement of their travels. They even permitted an ITV documentary crew to capture their journey, offering the public an intimate glimpse into their lives.

However, a veneer of perfection began to fracture during this tour. In a revealing interview with ITV’s Tom Bradby, Meghan candidly expressed her struggles, a poignant reminder that the life of a royal isn’t always as enchanting as it seems. “I wasn’t okay,” she admitted, hinting at the challenges she faced behind closed doors.

When questioned about her wellbeing, Meghan’s response was telling: “Thank you for asking, because not many people have asked if I’m okay… But it’s a very real thing to be going through behind the scenes.” Her words resonated deeply, shedding light on the often unseen pressures of royal life.

Just days later, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced they were due to take an extended break from royal duties for some ‘much-needed family time’. 

It was later confirmed by Kensington Palace that the pair had been spending their time away from the spotlight in Canada, the country Meghan had called home for six years while filming Suits. 

But rather than a mere hiatus, their Canadian retreat marked the beginning of the end – an ominous gateway to their notorious departure from the Royal Family altogether.

 In January 2020, the pair went one step further by announcing they were to step back from senior royal duties, a bombshell decision that was later dubbed ‘Megxit’. 

‘After many months of reflection and internal discussions, we have chosen to make a transition this year in starting to carve out a progressive new role within this institution,’ the couple posted to their now-defunct Instagram account.

‘We intend to step back as “senior” members of the Royal Family and work to become financially independent, while continuing to fully support Her Majesty The Queen.’

They went on to declare their plans to divide their time between the UK and North America, and to ‘focus on the next chapter’.

It turned out to be a bitter end to the short-lived love affair Britain had enjoyed with Meghan Markle, who brought an injection of Californian can-do attitude to the monarchy.

The decision also marked the beginning of the end of Harry’s once inseparable relationship with his brother Prince William.

Within reportedly just 10 minutes’ notice of their post, the Queen and Prince Philip were said to have been left ‘devastated’ by the Duke and Duchess’ shock departure. 

In response, Buckingham Palace rushed out a statement of its own: ‘We understand their desire to take a different approach, but these are complicated issues that will take time to work through,’ it said.

Yet, while the decision was branded as responsible for an immeasurable degree of heartbreak, anger and betrayal, others have suggested that it was merely indicative of the Duke’s prior years of unhappiness and disengagement. 

Writing in his book Courtiers, royal expert Valentine Low reveals that one courtier, who he said knew Harry personally and ‘remains upset about what he and Meghan did’, believed that the Duchess of Sussex actually did the Prince ‘the greatest kindness anyone could do to him’.

They claimed that Harry had felt ‘desperately unhappy in the last couple years in his working life’, with Meghan actually acting out of kindness by managing to finally provide a ‘solution’ to this longstanding issue.

With the couple’s hopes of staying half-in, half-out firmly rejected, their decision meant giving up their royal titles, repaying the £2.4million spent to refurbish Frogmore Cottage and a swift end to handouts provided by the state-funded sovereign grant. 

Harry and Meghan subsequently relocated to California, purchasing a sprawling Montecito mansion at a price of $14million. While undergoing a fresh start in the United States, they welcomed their second child, Lilibet, born in June 2021.

Initial interpretations of the couple’s decision to abandon the Royal Family had been perceived as predominantly dominated by Meghan’s unhappiness during her short time in the Palace. 

During the couple’s 85-minute tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey in March 2021, Meghan, then heavily pregnant, described her time in the Royal Family as a nightmare that she’d barely survived.

She claimed the situation had deteriorated to the point that she’d even contemplated suicide.

‘I didn’t want to be alive any more,’ she told Oprah. ‘It was a clear and real and frightening constant thought.’

But the Prince’s explosive memoir Spare, released in early 2023, provided the world with an astonishing insight into the acute unhappiness Harry himself was experiencing even before he first laid eyes on the American actress in July 2016.

Deliberately choosing to abandon the Royal Family’s long-standing creed of ‘never complain, never explain’, Harry laid bare his significant inner turmoil during his years as a young royal. 

While the life of a Prince sounds appealing to most, for Harry, the fact that he was only second in line to the throne and not first, or the ‘spare’ as he likes to call it, seemed to have left a bitter taste in his mouth.

During his early childhood years, Harry learned that instead of inheriting a kingdom and becoming the sovereign, his role was to support his elder brother William as he took on the responsibility.

In his tell-all memoir, he describes how his position left him seemingly bubbling away with resentment, writing: ‘I was the shadow, the support, the Plan B. I was brought into the world in case something happened to Willy.

‘I was summoned to provide back-up, distraction, diversion and if necessary, a spare part. Kidney, perhaps. Blood transfusion. Speck of bone marrow.’

Indeed, according to the Prince, his royal upbringing caused him to suffer from ‘generational trauma’. 

Meanwhile, royal historian Robert Lacey states that he believes Harry was the victim of a certain ‘cruelty’ from the royal family as a result of his role as the ‘spare’.

In an interview with GMA in 2020, the royal expert claimed he and Meghan began to be ‘edged out’ by aides who felt that they were taking too much attention away from the more senior members of the family.

‘The British royal system can be very cruel, and it’s particularly cruel to the spare,’ Lacey said, adding: ‘Harry came to realise in his teens that he was typecast as the court jester, the number two.’  

Lacey also suggested that Harry’s unhappiness with his role as the ‘spare’ only continued to grow stronger over the years, particularly as they grew older and it became increasingly obvious that William – and his wife Kate – were being primed to take over the throne, while the younger sibling was given less attention and status. 

Meanwhile, royal author Tom Quinn wrote in his book Yes Ma’am: The Secret Life of Royal Servants, that senior courtiers had desperately tried to explain to Harry that he was actually in a much better position than his brother.

They tried to persuade Harry to understand that this was due to William never being able to escape the full focus of the media, especially when he became king.

But increasingly Harry couldn’t see this, according to the author’s source.

And, when Britain’s most eligible royal bachelor married Meghan married in May 2018, things seemed to get worse for Harry as he once again felt his ‘spare’ label was being used against him.

In 2021, speaking to Dax Shepard, host of the ‘Armchair Expert’ podcast, Harry revealed the challenges he faced during his upbringing, particularly regarding how he had been treated by his father, King Charles.

During the interview, he stated that his father had treated him ‘the way he was treated’, which had later forced Harry to ask himself: ‘so how can I change that for my own kids?’ 

The Duke then went on to add that he and Meghan had made the move to the US to ‘break the cycle’ of ‘genetic pain’ he had experienced growing up. 

‘Sometimes you have got to make decisions and put your family first and your mental health first,’ he said. 

The young prince’s struggle and perceived angst towards his life within he Firm was no doubt worsened by the tragic death of his mother when Harry was just 12 years old. 

In the first three episodes of Apple TV’s The Me You Can’t See, Harry revealed to his series co-host Oprah Winfrey that the trauma of the beloved Diana’s death led to him using alcohol and drugs to ‘mask’ his emotions and ‘feel less like I was feeling’. 

Explaining the impact his mother’s death had on the trajectory of his life, the Prince said: ‘I was willing to drink, I was willing to take drugs, I was willing to try and do the things that made me feel less like I was feeling.’

Describing how when he was a working senior royal he would often be left in ‘fight or flight mode’, the Prince continued: ‘Every time I put a suit on and tie on … having to do the role, and go, “right, game face”, look in the mirror and say, “let’s go”.

‘Before I even left the house I was pouring with sweat. I was in fight or flight mode.’

But Ingrid Seward, who has spent 40 years following The Firm, claimed that Harry’s emotional problems had been caused by him allowing the ‘spare’ label to ‘dominate his life – to the extent that he has now made a career out of it’.

She said: ‘He chooses to be the victim and wreak vengeance on the slights he thought he had suffered; on his family, on the press and through the courts.’

As a further indication of Harry’s seemingly pre-existing deep unhappiness within the Royal Family – Two years before ‘Megxit’, The Mail on Sunday revealed how Harry had confided he ‘wanted out’ of the Royal Family and yearned for an ‘ordinary life’.

During an extraordinarily candid interview with journalist and author Angela Levin, the then 32-year-old Harry spoke about his struggles to find a meaningful role for himself at the heart of what he called the ‘goldfish bowl’ of royal life and admitted he had come close to a breakdown on several occasions.’

Making it clear he was primarily motivated by his loyalty to Queen Elizabeth, he added: ‘I spent many years kicking my heels and I didn’t want to grow up. I felt I wanted out, but then decided to stay in and work out a role for myself.’

Poignantly, Harry also revealed his view that the monarchy would have to change once his grandmother passed away – a transformative event that would unfold just over five years after that interview, in September 2022 – as well as his astonishing assertion that ‘no one in the Royal Family wants to be King or Queen’.

Just days after the news of ‘Megxit’ broke to the world, the Prince insisted that there had been ‘no other option’ but for the pair to step back, adding that it had been a decision which was ‘not one I made lightly’. 

It seemed clear that while Harry’s pre-existing upset may have prompted their decision to ‘quit’, Meghan’s grave unhappiness during her time in the family may have been the final straw.

Explaining the impact of Meghan’s challenges in detail, Mr Quinn added that while Harry undoubtedly faced his own difficulties during his royal tenure, it was ‘clearly Meghan who felt she could not find her place’.

Due to her constant clashes with the courtiers who run things behind the scenes, Mr Quinn writes that Meghan was sidelined, commenting ‘she too was a spare’.

During the couple’s explosive Oprah interview in March 2021, Meghan made it abundantly clear that she had experienced her own respective issues while working as a senior royal.

The Duchess described how she had been ‘silenced’, with her mental health getting so bad that she’d contemplated suicide. 

Meghan also suggested that the Royal Family was collectively racist, pointing the finger at one unnamed member who, they alleged, had speculated about the colour of their son Archie’s skin while Meghan was pregnant.

What the members of the Royal Family feel about the interview isn’t known as most of them have remained silent in response, but Prince William’s own response to a reporter was simply the passing comment: ‘We are very much not a racist family.’

It also remains unclear whether Harry’s seeming unhappiness during his royal childhood still dominates his feelings towards his estranged family today.

While the Prince has not held back in revealing his angst and difficulties with life inside The Firm, in 2022 he shared that he missed the UK and his ‘weird family gatherings’.

When asked in the sixth episode of his and Meghan’s bombshell Netflix series what he misses most about being a working royal, Harry said: ‘I miss the weird family gatherings, when we are all sort of brought together under one roof for certain times of the year.’

He then added that ‘being part of the institution meant I was in the UK. So I miss the UK, I miss my friends’, and he admitted he has ‘lost a few friends as well’.

Meanwhile, the Prince, who spoke to the BBC from California in a striking interview earlier this year, revealed that he now hopes for a ‘reconciliation’, adding that despite there being ‘so many disagreements’, he had now ‘forgiven’ his family.

But after Harry lost his battle for taxpayer-funded armed police bodyguards when in the UK, the Prince equally made clear that he had no intention of bringing his family back to Britain.

He explained: ‘I can’t see a world in which I will be bringing my wife and children back to the UK at this point and the things they are going to miss is everything.

‘I love my country and always have done. Despite what some people in that country have done. So I miss the UK. I miss parts of the UK. Of course I do. I think it’s really quite sad that I won’t be able to show my children my homeland.’

Six years after the couple sensationally ‘quit’ as working royals, their former life in Britain feels somewhat reminiscent of a dream as the rift between the Sussexes and The Firm holds strong.

Far from the palace walls, the couple are now based 5,500 miles away among their celebrity pals in sunny California, pictured hand-in-hand on the red carpet as they attempt to forge a new life.

Yet, hopes of a reconciliation between the couple and the Royal Family have continued to prevail – particularly following the Prince’s shock face-to-face meting with his father  for the first time in 19 months at Clarence House in September.

But while Meghan’s role in assisting Harry to leave life in The Firm behind may have been made with kindness, the tumultuous events that followed forged a seemingly devastating finality that may be challenging to overcome.