Family to be reunited for first time since couple announced they would drop royal titles

This article is more than 7 months old

This article is more than 7 months old

Prince Harry has arrived in Canada where he and his wife, Meghan, plan to start their new life outside of the royal family.

Photographs showed the Duke of Sussex stepping off a WestJet plane at Victoria international airport, flanked by security guards, and getting straight into a waiting car on the tarmac.

Harry will be reunited with his wife and their eight-month-old son, Archie, for the first time since it was announced the couple would give up their royal titles, repay the £2.4m it cost the public to refurbish their Windsor home and stop receiving money from the state-funded sovereign grant.

Speaking at a private dinner in London for his charity Sentebale on Sunday, Harry said he had not taken the decision to give up his official royal duties lightly, but there was “no other option”.

“What I want to make clear is we’re not walking away, and we certainly aren’t walking away from you,” he said. “Our hope was to continue serving the Queen, the Commonwealth, and my military associations without public funding. Unfortunately that wasn’t possible.”

Timeline Prince Harry's relationship with Meghan Markle Show Hide

The pair meet in London through friends and begin a relationship. News breaks that the prince and Markle are dating. Kensington Palace confirms in an unprecedented statement that they are dating. The prince attacks the media over its “abuse and harassment” of his girlfriend.

Markle reportedly meets the Duchess of Cambridge and Princess Charlotte for the first time in London.

The engagement looks set when Markle graces the cover of US magazine Vanity Fair and speaks openly about Harry for the first time, revealing: “We’re two people who are really happy and in love.” Markle makes her first appearance at an official engagement attended by the prince when she attends the Invictus Games opening ceremony in Toronto, Canada – although the pair sit about 18 seats apart. It emerges that the prince has taken Markle to meet his grandmother, the Queen, whose permission they need to marry. They met over afternoon tea at Buckingham Palace. The prince’s aides are reported to have been told to start planning for a royal wedding, with senior members of the royal family asked to look at their diaries to shortlist a series of suitable weekends in 2018. Clarence House announces the engagement, and the Queen and Duke of Edinburgh say they are “delighted for the couple and wish them every happiness”.

The couple marry before a celebrity-studded congregation at St George's Chapel in the grounds of Windsor Castle.

The couple's first child, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, is born in London. They announce that they are to step back from life as 'senior' royals, triggering a row with Buckingham Palace. After a crisis meeting with the Queen, Prince Charles and Prince William at Sandringham, the Queen issues a statement saying the couple will have a 'transition period' before ending their royal duties. It is announced that Harry and Meghan will drop their HRH titles and repay £2.4m of taxpayers money used to refurbish Frogmore Cottage.

The prince met Boris Johnson and world leaders at the UK-Africa Investment Summit in London on Monday in what was likely to have been one of his few remaining engagements as an official royal.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have previously complained about their treatment by the British press. In his speech on Sunday Harry said the media was “a powerful force”, while the Queen in her statement the previous day acknowledged the “intense scrutiny” the couple had been subjected to.

Meghan began legal proceedings against the Mail on Sunday in October after the paper published a letter she had sent to her estranged father. At the time, Harry issued a statement denouncing the media’s “bullying” of his wife, which he likened to the treatment of his mother, Princess Diana.

Harry and Meghan may be heading to Canada but does Canada want them? Read more

The Sun’s front page on Tuesday featured a paparazzi picture of Meghan with her son walking her dogs on a woodland trail on Vancouver Island, accompanied by the headline: “The joy of Sussex.”

The Sussexes issued a warning to the media on Tuesday not to use the picture.

The Times quoted Thomas Woodcock, Garter King of Arms and the man who, alongside the Queen, approved Meghan’s coat of arms as Duchess of Sussex, saying that the couple should not be allowed to use the name Sussex Royal after stepping down from official duties.



“I don’t think it’s satisfactory. One cannot be two things at once. You either are [royal] or you’re not,” he said.