Six years after “Megxit,” Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are reportedly preparing for an extended return to Britain with Archie and Lilibet. The family is said to be planning to live in a private residence outside London while the children attend British schools, even as they keep their Montecito mansion and holiday home in Portugal.

They are not expected to resume life as working royals.

Yet the symbolism of the move is difficult to ignore.

According to an article published by Jacobin, the reported return comes after six years in which Harry and Meghan attempted to build careers in America that were supposed to stand independently from the institution they had left behind.

That makes the real question larger than whether they are physically returning to Britain.

It is whether their post-royal identity ever truly became independent from the Crown.

Megxit Was Supposed to Create Something New

The original reasons for leaving royal life were not impossible to understand.

The couple had complained about an inflexible palace system, extraordinary tabloid scrutiny and the difficulty of living under constant observation.

Their move to California gave them something they had said they wanted: freedom.

In 2020, they bought a sprawling Montecito mansion for around $14 million, a property the article says is now valued at approximately $29 million.

They also gained access to enormous commercial opportunities.

Netflix reportedly offered them a deal worth as much as $100 million.

Spotify reportedly signed them for approximately $20 million.

Through Archewell Productions, Harry and Meghan planned documentaries, scripted television, children’s programming and audio projects.

In theory, this was their chance to demonstrate what they could create once the Royal Family was no longer defining their lives.

But the results became uneven.

Their Biggest Successes Still Had One Thing in Common

The most successful Netflix production associated with them was Harry & Meghan, the 2022 documentary series centered on their relationship, departure from royal life and conflict with the institution.

It reportedly set a record for a Netflix documentary debut.

Harry’s memoir Spare also became a major success.

Both projects shared the same essential ingredient: the Royal Family.

That is the tension at the heart of the story.

The projects that attracted the largest audiences were not the ones that proved Harry and Meghan could transcend their royal past.

They were the ones that returned directly to it.

Once the palace was removed from the center of the narrative, the results were far less consistent.

The Other Projects Struggled to Match the Attention

The article points to a long list of projects that failed to reproduce the same level of success.

With Love, Meghan, designed in part to reposition Meghan as a lifestyle figure, reportedly failed to reach Netflix’s top 300 shows in its first year.

Its second season did not enter the platform’s top 1,000 during the second half of the year.

Harry’s Polo failed to reach Netflix’s global top 10.

The animated series Pearl was canceled.

Netflix also reportedly withdrew support from Meghan’s As Ever lifestyle brand, although the products themselves remain available.

The couple were producers on Cookie Queens, a documentary about young girls selling cookies as entrepreneurs. The film reportedly earned around $328,000 across 446 theaters after opening earlier in August 2026.

None of these projects approached the cultural impact of the documentary about their royal departure.

Spotify Told a Similar Story

The audio side of their American experiment was also short-lived.

Meghan’s Archetypes podcast produced 12 episodes before Spotify ended its agreement with Archewell.

Spotify executive Bill Simmons later notoriously called the couple “f–king grifters.”

Meghan’s later podcast, Confessions of a Female Founder, lasted nine episodes and, according to the article, will not receive a second season.

Harry, meanwhile, did not release an original Spotify series after a lengthy development period.

The article even revisits a reported idea involving Harry traveling around the United States tasting hot chocolate.

The larger pattern is difficult to miss.

Harry and Meghan had money, distribution, celebrity access and powerful platforms.

What they struggled to find was a concept as compelling to audiences as Harry and Meghan themselves.

The Problem May Have Been the Brand

That does not mean every project was worthless or that their decision to leave Britain was automatically wrong.

It does suggest something more complicated.

Their brand was built around escaping the Royal Family — but escaping the Royal Family also removed the central source of narrative tension that had made them so globally fascinating.

Meghan’s Archetypes attempted to frame celebrity experience through feminism and social expectations.

Harry used Spare and documentary appearances to explain resentment toward the press, palace structures and his family.

But audiences seemed most engaged when those discussions still involved the monarchy.

That creates a paradox.

The more they tried to demonstrate that they were bigger than the Crown, the more their strongest commercial results depended on talking about it.

Meghan once compared Harry to Super Mario, describing him as someone who had “slayed the dragon” and “saved the princess.”

The metaphor is revealing.

Once the dragon was defeated, what was the next story?

Returning to Britain Changes the Meaning of the Experiment

The reported return does not mean Harry and Meghan are becoming working royals again.

They are expected to maintain their American home and continue living independently.

But moving the children into British schools and establishing a private residence outside London inevitably reconnects the family to the country and institution they spent six years trying to build distance from.

Perhaps this is simply a practical family decision.

No official explanation for the move has been given.

But symbolically, it closes an interesting circle.

America gave Harry and Meghan the chance to reinvent themselves as producers, podcasters, entrepreneurs and independent celebrities.

Their most successful moments, however, continued to be the moments when they were still talking about being royal.

That may ultimately be the lesson of their American chapter.

They succeeded in leaving the institution.

They had much more difficulty leaving the story.