Harry regret ‘threatens whole life plan’

After years of exposing family secrets, there is one revelation that could ruin the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s life in the US and force them out.

After years of exposing family secrets, there is one revelation that could ruin the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s life in the US and force them out of the country.

Regrets, we’ve all known a few, especially those of us who lived through the early aughties and still have the hipster jeans indentations to prove it.

But what of Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex? He has, last time anyone checked, a bobby dazzler of a wife (Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex), two adorable kids (Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet) and all the freedom a man could desperately hanker after, on what is, ironically enough, US Independence Day.

But could Harry’s American Dream™, all Stars and Stripes and gluten-free apple-pie, be about to come crashing down around his ears? And thanks to, err, him and what might prove to be his magnum dopus?

The Sussexes’ future in California is ‘under threat’ because of revelations the duke made in Spare, according to a new report.

Biographer Tom Quinn authored Kensington Palace: An Intimate Memoir from Queen Mary to Meghan Markle and Gilded Youth: An Intimate history of growing up in the Royal Family

and now regularly pops up to issue forth generally fairly negative pronouncements about the Sussexes. (Consider this your grain of salt.)

Meghan and Harry my be forced to flee the states. Picture: Chris Jackson/Getty Images for the Invictus Games Foundation

He has now told the Mirror that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been talking to lawyers about Harry’s visa situation over fears that, should tantrum-having, tangerine toddler Donald Trump be re-elected, Harry could be booted out of the country.

In Harry’s 2023 memoir, he admitted using marijuana, magic mushrooms and cocaine, at which point the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation sued the US government for access to the duke’s immigration paperwork.

The Foundation is alleging, according to the Times, that either the Duke of Sussex “lied about his drug use on his visa application or received preferential treatment from the US government.”

President Joe Biden’s administration has been fending off the Foundation’s challenge but should the repugnant Republican nominee and his signature Diet Coke button be returned to the Oval Office, it could spell trouble for the Sussexes.

According to Quinn, the duo has “taken legal advice because they’re seriously worried that if Donald Trump wins the next election Harry’s visa may be revoked.”

This is not just tabloid fear mongering. In February, Trump said of Harry, “I wouldn’t protect him. He betrayed the Queen. That’s unforgivable. He would be on his own if it was down to me”. In March said during an interview that he would consider deporting the duke if he was found to have lied.

Harry, Quinn told the Mirror, had “initially thought this couldn’t possibly happen to him as the normal rules don’t apply to a royal Prince, but he is increasingly realising that in the United States being a Prince doesn’t actually count for very much.

Being a prince doesn’t count for much in the US. Picture: Chris Jackson/Getty Images for the Invictus Games Foundation

“But one thing is for sure – Harry deeply regrets ever making his drug-taking public. It never occurred to him that this might end up threatening his whole life plan.”

If Trump, a multiple bankrupt and rapist, is returned to power and if he does decide that high on his priority list of retribution and demagoguery is going after the Netflix producer duke, it would surely have to qualify as a doomsday scenario for the alterna-royals.

For one thing, where the dickens would they go? Harry has made abundantly clear that he does not feel safe taking his family back to the UK since the Home Office revoked his taxpayer-funded security in 2020.

Moreover, given that Meghan has not spent any meaningful time there since the ink was still wet on their Megxit deal, it seems unlikely she would be particularly keen to return to the land of the long, warm pint.

Prior to 2020, it was reported that the duke and duchess might relocate, or spend part of the year, in Africa somewhere, possibly a Commonwealth nation. It’s hard to imagine them considering this route, if nothing else because it would look like a massive climb down and could create all sorts of fresh hell for Buckingham Palace.

Maybe Canada would be an option, but see above.

The next question is nearly as big – but what could possibly having to leave the US do to their careers? The Sussexes chose the States not only for their home but as the base of their professional operations and commercial dealings.

Africa may be an option for the couple. Picture: Andrew Esiebo/Getty Images for The Archewell Foundation

Would Netflix be as keen or even able to use the couple to the same degree if they suddenly had to go to, I’m spitballing here, the Bahamas, for shoots or meetings? Netflix does Nassau?

This logistical and PR nightmare is all a vague hypothetical for now, but what isn’t, at least according to Quinn, is that Harry’s not having as bright and shiny a time in the US as he once was.

The Kensington Palace author told the Mirror: “During his first six months in the States Harry found everything new and exciting, but the glamour is definitely wearing off.”

This week has been a bruising case in point. The announcement that the duke will be honoured with the Pat Tillman Award at next week’s ESPY Awards is facing a continuing backlash, with Tillman’s mother Mary having heavily criticised the choice of Harry (“There are recipients that are far more fitting” she told the Mail) and with a change.org petition urging a the ESPYs to rethink Harry nearing 60,000 signatures.

Leaving aside this controversy, even far away from public ire, the Duke of Sussex is at something of a loose, desolate end, per Quinn who says, of the 39-year-old, “after he’s taken the dog for a walk in the morning, he finds the day long and lonely.”

“However big your garden – and Harry and Meghan’s garden at Montecito is enormous – there’s only so much you can do when you have no practical skills and you have always paid people to cook, clean and garden for you. Harry has never done any of these practical things.

“Meghan does her best to support Harry, but she is in her natural environment and he is in a strange unfamiliar world which grows increasingly unfriendly.”

When Penguin Random House announced that they were publishing the duke’s autobiography in July 2021, he said in the press release, “I’m writing this not as the prince I was born but as the man I have become.” And that man, if the Democrats don’t get their act together, could end up being one who is in the market for a new place to call home…No pressure now Kamala, no pressure at all.

Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and a royal commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.

Originally published as Harry regret ‘threatens whole life plan’