It turns out that Prince Harry believes he’s still deeply embedded in royal history.
“No, I will always be part of the royal family,” Harry, 41, told ITV News on Friday, April 24, when asked whether he identifies with the label “not a working royal” six years after stepping back from his official duties. “I’m here [in Ukraine with the Halo Trust] working and doing the very thing that I was born to do.”
He continued, “I enjoy it, and I enjoy doing it. I enjoy being able to do these trips and come and support the people that I’ve met before, the friends that I’ve made and, hopefully, bringing attention to issues that, for one reason or another, drop out of the news because something else has popped up.”
Harry and his wife, Meghan Markle, stepped down from their positions as senior working royals in 2020 in order to pursue a more private life across the pond in California. (Harry and Meghan, 44, live in Montecito with kids Prince Archie, 6, and Princess Lilibet, 4.)
“The U.K. is my home and a place that I love. That will never change,” Harry said during a Sentabale fundraiser in January 2020. “I’ve grown up feeling supported by so many of you and I’ve watched as you welcomed Meghan with open arms as you saw me find the love and happiness that I’d hoped for all my life.”
He added at the time, “The decision I have made for my wife and I to step back is not one I made lightly. It was so many months of talks after so many years of challenges and I know I haven’t always gotten it right but as far as this goes there really was no other option. What I want to make clear is, we’re not walking away.”
While Harry stressed that he didn’t want to “walk away” from community outreach, he and Meghan wanted a “more peaceful life.”
Harry and Meghan’s move soon spurned a rift between the duke’s father, King Charles, and older brother Prince William.
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“I want a family, not an institution. … They’ve shown absolutely no willingness to reconcile,” Harry claimed in a 2023 interview with ITV. “I would like to get my father back. I would like to have my brother back.”
Harry, who started making gains in his relationship with 77-year-old Charles amid the king’s 2024 cancer battle, has also remained focused on his advocacy efforts. The Duke of Sussex stressed on Friday that he is “grateful” that the ITV crew was “here telling these stories that so desperately need to be told.”
“I understand focus will shift to different places, but ultimately, what I see, what I hear and what I learn is that the vast majority of people, whether you’re in the U.K. or whether you’re anywhere else in the world want to see proper leadership,” the prince stated. “They want to see an end to these conflicts, whether that’s through diplomacy [or] however we can bring these conflicts to an end for the sake of everybody now [and] also for the future of younger generations coming through.”
