Where’s Meghan? Why Harry is going it alone

Royal observers say there is a new strategy to remind people of the Prince ‘they loved’

On Monday night, Prince Harry bounded into the WellChild Awards in London with a smile and set about making a fuss of the children who had gathered to meet him.
Picking up soft toys that had been thrown on the floor, calling the young winners “little legends” and crouching down among animal balloons, he seemed at home among the staff and beneficiaries of the charity he has supported as patron for 16 years.
He looked “very jolly”, one observer said, and a line of his speech in which he told parents of seriously ill children, “You’ve got this. And we’ve got you” earned the shouted response “we’ve got you too” from one member of the audience.
Unusually, though, the event was the seventh solo engagement the Duke of Sussex had undertaken in seven days.
The Duchess and their children did not travel to London, or to New York where the Prince gave five high profile speeches last week and appeared on Jimmy Fallon’s The Tonight Show. 
Nor was the Duchess accompanying Harry when he arrived in Lesotho on Tuesday for what became his eighth solo appearance in as many days.
Particularly given the couple’s previous joint trips to Nigeria and Colombia in recent months, the Duke’s solo appearances have raised, perhaps inevitably, the question: Where’s Meghan?
For a couple who have described themselves as “salt and pepper” because they “always move together”, and bought their Montecito house because two “connected” palm trees were reminiscent of their relationship, their professional separation is new.
While the Duchess focuses on her commercial venture, American Riviera Orchard, which is expected to launch next year alongside a Netflix series on gardening and cooking, the Duke, it seems, is going it alone.
The question of the Duchess’s whereabouts is easy to answer in technical terms: she is at home, with her two young children, while her husband travels. She is also working on plans for American Riviera Orchard, including a range of jams which have been distributed to influential friends.
Prince Harry has made it abundantly clear that his wife and children will not travel back to Britain for now. In an ITV interview earlier this year, in which he talked about the media and security, he said plainly: “It’s one of the reasons why I won’t bring my wife back to this country.” (Harry himself has been four times so far this year, known to have seen his father just once immediately following his diagnosis with cancer).
But the couple have, since they left the Royal family, tended to work together. Their new Parents’ Network, a support group for those whose children have suffered harm online, is a joint venture; their Netflix and Spotify deals were signed together; Meghan has joined the “Invictus family” arising from the Games founded by the Duke; they have cheered one another on at awards shows and famously work from a shared office at home.
They have previously had an outing to New York together – the trip which inspired the description of “quasi-royal tour” which has followed them ever since – followed by a trip to Nigeria in May 2024 and another to Colombia in August. 
In the last week, by contrast, Harry has appeared alone at New York events for the Diana Award, landmining clearance charity Halo Trust, African Parks, eco-tourism firm Travalyst and for a speech on young people’s digital wellness.
The schedule has prompted speculation among royal observers that he is hankering for his royal life. With the exception of a televised haunted house skit with Jimmy Fallon, the US comedian, and a private hour spent in a tattoo parlour, the programme could have been plucked from any week of his former role as a working royal.
Today (Tuesday October 1), he flew straight from his solo London outing to southern Africa for events with Sentebale, the charity he founded in 2006 to help children affected by HIV in Lesotho and Botswana.  
“There has been a separation [of their work] for a while,” notes PR strategist Mark Borkowski, who has followed coverage of the Sussexes closely. “It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to think there’s something going on. She has been doing the jam thing, the Martha Stewart play. He seems to be going back to basics.”
The “star power” they were expected to have together when they first left Britain, he says, “didn’t work” as hoped.
“They had to change the narrative. They need a venture that deflects from the failures. The charity aspect impresses upon everybody that he [Harry] does have value beyond the controversial stuff. It has the effect of separating them from the bad press and the failed content ideas.
“The punters still have time for Harry.”
Reports that Prince Harry is seeking a form of return to Britain have been emphatically denied by sources close to the Sussexes, who have pointed out how happy he is now with “amazing” new friends and projects on the horizon. He has “no interest” in returning to royal duties, they say.
Nevertheless, royal commentators have observed something of a return to royal-style duties after a long period of controversy.
Ingrid Seward, editor in chief of Majesty magazine and author of  royal biographies including the recent My Mother & I, says: “Prince Harry has finally realised – or been advised – that dissing his own family did him no favours.
“The golden ticket is for him to remind us why we loved him: For his Diana-like ability with children, the disabled and the disadvantaged.
“He might have finally appreciated he is far more powerful on his own without the distraction of Meghan as Diana was without Charles.”
Phil Dampier, a royal correspondent of nearly 40 years and author of Royally Suited: Harry and Meghan in their own words, describes the Prince’s recent reputation as “starting to lose ground”, “looking like a bolt-on accessory” to the Duchess “rather than the Prince that he is”.
“It’s fairly obvious that on these trips to Nigeria and Colombia, Meghan was the dominant partner and Harry looked and possibly felt a bit like a spare part,” he said.
“This looks like a definite attempt by him to strike out on his own and carve out a niche for himself that isn’t Invictus. I think we’re going to see him do more of this, him travelling and doing things on his own, restoring some kind of prestige.”
The opinion of critics is often at odds with those who meet Prince Harry and Meghan.
For WellChild chief executive Matt James, his patron creates a “magical experience for our winners”. For Tessy Ojo, Diana Award chief executive, “he is a passionate advocate for mental health”.
For Prince Seeiso, co-founder of Sentebale: “It fills me, the team, and our wider community with joy to welcome Prince Harry, or Mohale, as we affectionately refer to him by his Sesotho royal name which means ‘warrior’.”
For their office staff and former staff, recently quoted at length on record in a US tabloid magazine, they are the “best bosses I have ever had”.
And despite the recent working apart, Meghan, Archie and Lili have been ever-present in the background.
At the Diana Awards, Harry called the Duchess and their children via FaceTime ahead of his on-stage appearance to show them where he was. At the WellChild Awards, he was given three coloured crystal hearts by a little girl, and told her he would squeeze them when he is away to remind him of his “lovely wife”.
It is all a far cry from the 2015 television interview in which the Duke, who at the time was single, said: “It would be great to have someone else next to me to share the pressure.”
Joint life in the royal spotlight in Britain did not, as the world knows, work out. But with the Duchess in support behind the scenes, perhaps those old royal-style duties seem less of a strain.
In 2020, the Duke of Sussex made his last speech before boarding a plane out of Britain. It was at an event for Sentebale.
He told the audience: “What I want to make clear is we’re not walking away, and we certainly aren’t walking away from you.
“I will continue to be the same man who holds his country dear and dedicates his life to supporting the causes, charities and military communities that are so important to me.”
Since then, there has been an Oprah interview, six Netflix episodes, a memoir, countless interviews, a security row, multiple court cases, and a family estrangement.
As he arrived in Lesotho on Tuesday to promote Sentebale, there was a chance to revisit that promise.
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