Opinion: Why Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Will Not Return to Live in Britain Together

Pool / Getty Images Are Harry and Meghan really “moving back” to the United Kingdom from California? Ever since the big royal story of the week was handed to grateful U.K. newspapers last Wednesday, suspicion has been growing that there’s more to it than meets the eye.

It’s now clear that the family is not re-relocating, at least not in the way any normal person understands the words “moving back.” Sure, they will arrive on a plane at some point in the next week, and they will enroll their kids at a school where pupils wear straw boaters, but now their camp is telling the London Sunday Times that they might only be here for six months, while an official source tells The New York Times they are only here for the fall! Frankly, this sounds about right.

The Royalist would be amazed if Meghan can make it through November in the Cotswolds, let alone February, especially as it now transpires Meghan is no longer needed to act in the third series of Guy Ritchie’s The Gentlemen for the simple reason that a third series has not been commissioned.

Even Tina Brown, the sainted founding editor-in-chief of the Daily Beast, fell for that one.

She touted Meghan’s new job as an exclusive revelation before performing a rapid, classic “reverse ferret,” trumpeting the news that the deal (or the non-deal) had fallen through.

Now the whole thing is unraveling yet further.

The London Sunday Times has a source, described as close to Harry, saying they might only be here for six months.

The exact quote reads: “It’ll be an extended period of time.

It could be six months, it could be a year, it could be more.

I don’t think even they know yet.

They might suddenly go, ‘Why don’t we try Canada for a while? Why don’t we try Australia?’” This isn’t a gap year, folks! You’ve got kids! Who puts children into a new school in a new country on the basis that the family “might” be there for six months, or might “try Australia” instead? For a couple who have made mental health the centerpiece of their public identity, such a lack of focus on childhood stability and consistency is extraordinary.

If the children are being put into school in Britain, it would be profoundly unfair to pull them out after six months without giving the thing a proper go.

The only on-the-record line I can find anywhere is a quote given to The New York Times by a rep who said Harry and Meghan have “decided to spend an extended period in the UK this autumn.” The autumn? Is that September, October, November? Is there a legal definition of fall? Then there is the question of why they left California in such a rush.

Nile Gardiner of the Heritage Foundation has suggested in The Daily Mail that it may be connected to Harry’s visa.