Perhaps Harry and Meghan’s return is precisely what the British public and, rather more awkwardly, the royal family need at this particular moment.
Not because the Sussexes are about to resume royal duties. They are not. Not because the old quarrels have magically evaporated. They have not. And certainly not because Britain is suddenly suffering from a shortage of royal drama. Britain has never had that problem.
But the return of Harry, Meghan and their children to Britain after six years in California changes something important: it puts the family back into the same physical landscape. Archie and Lilibet will grow up with Britain not merely as a story told by their father, but as a place they actually know. Harry can be closer to his father. The royal family can, at least theoretically, become a family again.
That may sound terribly sentimental. It is also rather practical. The monarchy has always depended on an extraordinary mixture of symbolism and ordinary human theatre. The public does not merely watch constitutional functions; it watches families. It watches marriages, children, disagreements, reconciliations, funerals and Christmas lunches. The Windsors have survived precisely because, beneath all the ceremony, they remain recognisably human.
The Sussex rupture damaged that illusion. For years, the royal family has effectively been performing a strange television drama in which two of the principal characters have been written out but never quite disappeared. Harry and Meghan remained everywhere and nowhere: physically in California, emotionally entangled with Britain, permanently present in headlines and absent from family photographs.
Their return could finally end that peculiar arrangement. It does not require Charles to hand them a balcony seat or William to suddenly embrace his brother beneath the cameras. Indeed, that would probably be the worst possible approach. The Sussexes are returning as private citizens, not as a rival royal court. That distinction matters.
The opportunity is therefore much simpler. Let them come home. Let Harry see his father more often. Let his children know their grandfather. Let cousins become cousins rather than characters in competing media narratives. Let William and Harry, eventually and privately, discover whether there remains enough brotherhood beneath the accumulated grievances to have an actual conversation.
And perhaps Britain itself could try something similarly radical: move on. The country has spent an astonishing amount of energy deciding whether Harry and Meghan are victims, villains, opportunists, rebels, traitors, celebrities or misunderstood aristocrats. They are probably, like most married couples, a somewhat less exciting combination of all these things and several others.
Meghan remains deeply polarising. Harry remains deeply complicated. Neither deserves automatic absolution. But neither needs permanent exile from the national conversation—or, more importantly, from his own family.
There is also a delicious irony here. The monarchy's traditional strength has been continuity. Yet its current challenge is relevance. A younger generation wants authenticity, personality and some evidence that the institution understands ordinary human relationships. A family feud conducted through newspapers, documentaries, memoirs and lawyers is hardly an advertisement for emotional maturity.
Harry and Meghan returning to Britain offers the royals an unexpected opportunity: reconciliation without restoration. Nobody needs to pretend that the last six years did not happen. Nobody needs to rewrite history. Nobody needs to surrender.
They simply need to stop treating family life as a constitutional crisis. The palace has mastered pomp. Perhaps now it can master something much harder: forgiveness. And if Harry and Meghan can help remind the Windsors that, before they are a dynasty, they are a family, their return may prove rather more useful than anyone currently expects.
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