Even though Prince Harry moved to Southern California in 2020, he has continued a series of legal battles in the UK, with the aim of improving his access to security and changing the culture at the nation’s tabloids. In a new interview with ITV, Harry mentioned that his fears for Meghan Markle and her safety are partly why he has kept his legal fights going, and why he has not considered moving back to his homeland with his wife.
“It’s still dangerous, and all it takes is one lone actor, one person who reads this stuff to act on what they have read,” Harry told reporter Rebecca Barry in a sit-down for the network’s documentary Tabloids on Trial. “Whether it’s a knife or acid, whatever it is—and these are things that are of genuine concern for me. It’s one of the reasons why I won’t bring my wife back to this country.” In 2022, the former head of counterterrorism for the Met Police said Meghan received credible threats during her time in the country, and in January 2024, two neo-Nazi podcasters were sentenced to prison terms following one of the podcaster’s comments encouraging listeners to commit violence against the prince and his son, Archie.
Though Harry has made multiple visits to London in 2024, most recently to host a May service of thanksgiving in honor of the Invictus Games, Meghan has not returned to the country where she lived from 2017 to 2020 since the September 2022 funeral of Queen Elizabeth II. The couple’s two children, Archie and Lilibet, have only visited once, during the Platinum Jubilee in June 2022.
Harry’s legal battle in the UK has proceeded on two fronts. Since 2022, he has been litigating a British government decision to deny him access to armed security when he visits the country. Though a High Court justice dismissed his claims in a February 2024 ruling, the Court of Appeal ruled that he is allowed to appeal the decision.
Beginning in fall 2019, he has filed suit against a handful of publications in the UK, alleging unlawful information-gathering practices. In June 2023, Harry testified on the stand for two days in a case against Mirror Group Newspapers, and last December the High Court ruled that the newspaper had used unlawful information in its coverage of the prince. The prince currently has ongoing suits against Associated Newspapers, parent company of the Daily Mail, and News Group UK, parent company of The Sun. (Both companies have denied any legal wrongdoing.)
In the ITV interview, Harry said that the late queen was supportive of his quest to take on the tabloids while she was alive. “We had many conversations before she passed. This is very much something she supported; she knew how much this meant to me,” he said. “She is up there going, ‘See this through to the end,’ without question.”
He also emphasized that his pursuit of justice was completely unrelated to his father, King Charles III, and sister-in-law, Kate Middleton, who both announced cancer diagnoses earlier this year. “The two things are completely separate,” he said. “My father and my sister-in-law and me following through on these legal battles are two completely different things.”