For six years, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s life in California was supposed to represent something larger than geography. America was freedom. Britain was the institution they had escaped. Montecito was where they would prove that the Sussex name could become powerful, profitable and culturally relevant without depending on the Royal Family.

Their reported return to Britain therefore creates an uncomfortable irony: the couple who crossed the Atlantic to build an independent identity may be returning before they ever fully established what that identity was supposed to be.

According to a Daily Mail article by Tom Leonard, the Sussexes’ American years began with extraordinary advantages. Harry later told Tom Bradby: “I fled my home country with my wife and my son, fearing for our lives.” Their story of escaping royal pressure, media hostility and alleged prejudice found a receptive audience in the United States.

The March 2021 Oprah Winfrey interview intensified that attention. Meghan discussed her mental-health struggles and allegations concerning conversations within the Royal Family about Archie’s skin colour. It was explosive television, and the Sussexes quickly became enormously valuable media properties.

Netflix reportedly signed them to a five-year deal worth $100 million. Spotify followed with a reported $20 million multi-year agreement.

For a while, their greatest commercial asset seemed obvious: their royal story.

That strategy reached its peak after Queen Elizabeth II’s death in September 2022. Netflix released the six-part Harry & Meghan documentary, offering the couple’s account of their relationship, royal life and departure. Then came Harry’s memoir Spare.

Commercially, Spare was formidable, selling 1.43 million copies worldwide on its first day.

But success created another problem. Once Harry had told the world about his family, his grievances and his battles inside the monarchy, what came next?

The subsequent entertainment record was considerably less spectacular.

Netflix’s Live To Lead featured figures including Greta Thunberg and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Polo, built around Harry’s favourite sport, received a 25 per cent critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes. Their jointly produced Girl Scouts documentary Cookie Queens performed so poorly during its opening weekend in American cinemas that it was beaten by a compilation of cat videos.

Spotify proved even more damaging.

The deal ended in June 2023 after Meghan produced 12 episodes of Archetypes, featuring guests including Serena Williams and Mariah Carey. Spotify executive Bill Simmons subsequently supplied one of the most brutal descriptions ever attached to the Sussex brand:

“f*ing grifters.”**

Then came a cultural humiliation they had no control over.

In February 2023, South Park released The Worldwide Privacy Tour, lampooning a royal couple whose similarities to Harry and Meghan were impossible to miss. Its Meghan-inspired character was labelled a “sorority girl, actress, influencer, victim.”

The significance was greater than a television joke. The Sussexes had once been treated by much of American media as serious figures telling a serious story. Now their public contradictions had become material for mainstream satire.

Meghan attempted a reinvention.

American Riviera Orchard appeared in March 2024, initially attracting attention through numbered jars of jam sent to celebrity friends. It was later renamed As Ever, eventually selling products including jams, teas and flower sprinkles, with some items selling out.

Netflix also delivered With Love, Meghan, featuring recipes and lifestyle advice.

Yet the comparison with Martha Stewart — the sort of lifestyle authority Meghan was reportedly interested in emulating — remained difficult to sustain.

Even philanthropy generated awkward headlines. Archewell Foundation reported raising less than $50,000 in its first year, 2020, although donations later improved. Meanwhile, Harry and Meghan faced criticism for using private jets while appearing at events concerned with climate change.

More damaging was the apparent deterioration in American public enthusiasm.

A Newsweek poll in January 2023 showed Harry’s popularity falling 45 points during the month Spare appeared, while Meghan dropped 36 points.

Parts of the American media also became noticeably sharper.

The Cut mocked the “marshmallowy” quality of Meghan’s California world. The New York Times described Harry’s score-settling battles in Spare as “tiresome”. By the end of 2023, The Hollywood Reporter included the Sussexes among Hollywood’s “biggest losers”, describing their brand as a “sanctimonious bubble just begging to be popped.”

Then, in January 2025, Vanity Fair published its investigation, American Hustle.

Among its claims were allegations about tensions with Montecito neighbours and difficult experiences reported by some people who worked with Meghan. It also reported a disputed allegation concerning discussion of a possible “post-divorce” book. Meghan has vehemently denied allegations that she bullied staff.

Even the Sussexes’ glamorous social circle appeared less straightforward than their celebrity-filled 2018 wedding suggested.

Oprah Winfrey, Serena Williams, James Corden, David and Victoria Beckham, and George and Amal Clooney had attended. Yet sources later claimed some prominent figures — including the Clooneys, Beckhams and Barack and Michelle Obama — distanced themselves amid discomfort over the Sussexes’ repeated attacks on the Royal Family.

Even an appearance at Kris Jenner’s lavish 70th birthday party in November 2025 produced an awkward subplot when Kim Kardashian revealed she had been asked to remove photographs of Harry and Meghan from Instagram.

None of this means the Sussexes achieved nothing in America. Spare was hugely successful. Their original media deals were extraordinary. Meghan built As Ever. They remained globally famous.

The deeper problem is different.

Their biggest cultural moments — Oprah, Harry & Meghan and Spare — were inseparable from the institution they had supposedly left behind.

That creates the central paradox of their return.

Harry and Meghan went to America to demonstrate that being Sussex could mean something independently of being royal. Six years later, Britain may once again become the centre of their lives.

Perhaps the most revealing question is therefore not why America stopped loving Harry and Meghan.

It is whether America ever truly fell in love with Harry and Meghan without the Royal Family attached to them.