In early January 2020, Prince Harry and his wife Meghan announced on Instagram that they were retiring as senior members of the royal family and wanting to be financially independent in the future. This news came as a complete surprise to outsiders, but Harry and Meghan had "planned for years" as the two revealed in their Netflix documentary.
Accordingly, in 2018, a few months after their wedding, there were considerations that they could move to New Zealand. "Nothing came of it," says Harry in the fifth episode of the series. In 2019 there were concrete ideas that the couple would emigrate to South Africa. "We planned (...) to support charities in Africa from there. The palace approved our South Africa venture. My father's office, my brother's office and my grandmother's office knew about it. Nobody else. It was an internal document. Yes it was leaked to The Times. The whole plan was then scrapped because it was now being discussed publicly," reports Harry.
Indirectly, he lets it sound that someone from the inner circle must have pierced the plans to the press and thus harmed him and his wife Meghan. Harry and Meghan repeatedly describe in the documentary how much they allegedly suffered from the smear campaigns of the British press - and the royal family did not defend them. On the contrary: Meghan was made the "scapegoat of the palace". Fictitious, negative stories were printed about her to protect senior members of the family.
"We had to change something. For our own sake. We had to think: How could we shape our relationship with the institution in such a way that we are protected and it's psychologically acceptable for us?" says Harry. The couple decides to move to Canada and continue to work for the Crown from there without being funded by British taxpayers. They also wanted to escape the British media, most of which are based in London. Harry shared his thoughts with his father Charles in an email after Charles asked him to put it in writing.
But the British press also got wind of these relocation plans before Harry and Meghan could put them into action. The 38-year-old royal employee once again blames it: "Obviously, the institution had leaked that we wanted to move to Canada. Our plans, our lives, were literally ripped out of our hands."
The conditions for Harry and Meghan's final exit were negotiated in mid-January 2020 during a crisis summit at Sandringham Castle. Harry doesn't say a good word about this meeting in the documentary either. "It was terrifying how my brother would yell and yell at me, how my father would say things that just weren't true, and how my grandmother would take it all in silence," he says. He also claims that the date was deliberately chosen to prevent his wife Meghan from being there. At the time, she was already back in Canada with her son Archie.
