Prince Harry reportedly lives as a ‘recluse’ while Meghan Markle socialises

Surprising new details about life inside the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s compound suggests theirs is a strangely reclusive existence.

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Howard Hughes spent decades holed up in hotel penthouses, JD Salinger all but disappeared from public life for more than 50 years and when, at age 36, Greta Garbo announced she was temporarily retiring, that break ended up lasting half a century until her death.

There is something about the wealthy, famous but tortured American-based recluse as a trope that just won’t go away.

So, is Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex staging a low-grade attempt to join their withdrawn ranks?

I know, I know, the 38-year-old has just spent a week practically skipping with glee around Asia, first hitting Tokyo and then Singapore, the smile on his face one seemingly impossible to wipe off.

However, back in grey London, The Sun has been busy digging into recent speculation about Harry and his wife Megan, the Duchess of Sussex’s marriage, a union which has become like the Hollywood equivalent of Area 52 – much debated, much discussed and with the truth firmly still out there.

Prince Harry has been having a whale of a time in Asia. Picture: Instagram

And what concerns us here is not what the paper has to say about le marriage (in short: they’re fine) but about its depiction of what is going on behind the gates of the couple’s farm-sized California estate.

According to The Sun, the Sussexes’ life is one of “self-imposed isolation … behind the heavily guarded walls” of their whopper of a mansion with its 16 loos. (I will never get tired of that fact or the myriad ‘throne’ puns one can make …)

Harry, you see, “has an obsession with security and privacy” and the couple’s children Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet “are rarely seen beyond the family’s £11 million Montecito mansion”.

Leaving aside where one might expect to see a four and two-year-old outside the home (do preschoolers in California go to the opening of a new Nobu?) The Sun’s characterisation of the Sussexes’ life makes it sound less like Harry has found freedom rather than acquired for himself the world’s most luxurious, beige-accented prison.

Is this what the duke served up his family as sacrificial TV lambs for? To spend his days hunkered down behind high walls and angsting about the lurking paps outside their front gate?

According to that Sun story, the duchess “wants to move back into public life — with Archie, four, and Lilibet, two, by her side”.

But most of the time, he looks miserable in public. Picture: Timothy A. Clary/AFP

The couple “have different ideas on parenting, and … Harry has been very affected by his public upbringing. While Harry, 38, has an obsession with security and privacy, Meghan wants to raise them openly in California”.

A source told the paper: “There is a difference in how he has grown up. He fears for his own children because of what he has gone through”.

Does any of this sound pleasant or easy or aspirational? Exactly.

The sad irony is that it can be argued that the duke and duchess actually gave up on being able to have certain paparazzi-free zones, if you will, when they packed their steamer trunks full of dream journals and Boujis nightclub wristbands to leave the UK.

If Harry is “obsessed” with privacy, one has to wonder at the logic of moving to what would have to be the epicentre of the paparazzi universe.

Last year, in Meghan’s first print interview in years and years, she spoke to The Cut’s Allison P. Davis. Davis writes that the duchess had “remarked upon how, if Archie were in school in the UK., she’d never be able to do school pick-up and drop-off without it being a royal photo call with a press pen of 40 people snapping pictures”.

“Sorry, I have a problem with that. That doesn’t make me obsessed with privacy. That makes me a strong and good parent protecting my child,” Meghan told Davis.

Meghan Markle and Lilibet were snapped at Fourth of July celebrations. Picture: Instagram

But Prince Harry wants to spare his kids from the public spotlight he grew up under. Picture: Tim Graham Photo Library via Getty Images

However … there has never, ever been “a press pen of 40 people snapping pictures” at Prince George, Princess Charlotte or Prince Louis’ various schools over the seven years of the trio being educated at campuses in Norfolk, London and Windsor.

The royal who has been papped near their child’s preschool? Meghan in California with Archie in 2021.

In the last few months, Meghan alone has been photographed enjoying a farmers market, being shadowed by a monolith-like bodyguard on multiple occasions, leaving an office with Harry, out to dinner with Harry twice, hiking with friends, and most recently wearing a strangely wintry coat in the middle of summer with a “calming” sticker on her wrist.

The couple and daughter Princess Lilibet were also photographed enjoying last month’s Fourth of July parade.

In none of these instances have the Sussexes’ called in their high-powered, razor-sharp incisored legal team, which might suggest that they have no choice but to suck this up.

And interestingly, for one of the Sussexes, that period of “self-imposed isolation” looks to have come firmly to an end, with the duchess seeming to amp up her social life in recent weeks.

On Wednesday, the duchess made her voluntary return to Instagram. Picture: Instagram/@highbrowhippie

She was also recently snapped looking fabulous while out to lunch. Picture: Instagram/@deuxmoi

She reportedly went to see Barbie with Portia De Rossi and other friends before later hitting the San Ysidro Ranch hotel in Santa Barbara where she “posed for photos and made videos with a bachelorette group” and turned up at one of Taylor Swift’s Los Angeles shows.

The Instagram celebrity account Deux Moi featured a photo of her out to lunch looking so quintessentially, perfectly moneyed and chic you nearly need sunglasses to view it and then on Wednesday this week came a photo of her posing with celebrated writer Cleo Wade and her hairdresser Kadi Lee.

Clearly the duchess’ demi-shut-in phase is over – but will Harry’s ever be?

The couple works out of a shared office on their property. (When a French camera crew visited the external Archewell offices in April, they were found totally empty).

💸 90 % de l'argent n’a jamais aidé personne !

Nous nous sommes plongés dans les comptes officiels des fondations de Harry et Meghan. Accrochez vous, ça vaut la peine.

📺 “Harry & Meghan : royal business”, l’enquête sur leur face cachée c’est ici ➡ https://t.co/2lhOyOIQSspic.twitter.com/RsBZNDgWoh

— Envoyé spécial (@EnvoyeSpecial) April 14, 2023

Meanwhile, Page Six has reported that Meghan’s uber agents at WME make the two-hour drive each way from LA to see her at home. If that is the same for the couple’s other meetings, then how often is Aitch actually seeing people who are not his wife or paid staffers?

In the past, there have been Harry sightings in the wilds of Montecito and surrounds – for example, he and Meghan went out to dinner with Princess Eugenie and her husband Jack Brooksbank early last year, and he went to the Superbowl with his cousin too.

However, since then, the only times the 38-year-old has been photographed in public have been when he’s walking his dog and on a few occasions out to dinner with his wife.

Meghan Markle attended a Taylor Swift concert with good friend Lucy Fraser, who featured prominently in the Sussexes' tell-all Netflix series. Picture: Instagram

All the indications suggest that the Duchess of Sussex is gearing up to, in the coming months, return with gusto to public life via whatever projects WME might have secured for her, a possible entrepreneurial outing online and a long-expected return to Instagram. (The @Meghan account is believed, but not confirmed, to be hers).

Where will Harry be in all of this – happily by her side enjoying the reflected stardust and revelling in his wife’s new-found star? Or at home, slumped on the couch in a ramen-stained hoodie disconsolately trying to do the day’s Wordle, stuck in “self-imposed isolation”?

That handy source of The Sun’s also said of the duke and duchess: “They have a beautiful life … Harry is very outdoorsy, he loves it there”.

Maybe Joni Mitchell got it wrong all those years ago – paradise is not paved, but it does have a bloody great wall around it.

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 Prince Harry reportedly lives as a ‘recluse’ while Meghan Markle socialises