Meghan Markle Recalled ‘Bittersweet’ Return to UK With Prince Harry, ‘Knowing None of It Had to Be This Way’
Meghan Markle called her return visit to Frogmore Cottage when she and Prince Harry were in the UK for the queen’s Platinum Jubilee “surreal.” She touched on the “bittersweet” experience as she reflected on packing their belongings left behind when they exited the royal family in 2020.
Meghan Markle and Prince Harry returned to the UK and packed up Frogmore Cottage
During an August 2022 interview with The Cut, Meghan shed some light on what it was like to return to Frogmore Cottage to pack their belongings earlier this year. Their home was “mostly untouched” since their 2020 departure so she discovered things still in drawers and the items she had shipped from her Toronto apartment.
Interviewer Allison P. Davis wrote, “There’s nothing that affirms a ‘right place’ contentedness more than a trip back to the place you felt you had to leave. In June, the couple attended some of the events for the queen’s Platinum Jubilee in London. It was their first time appearing at a public event alongside the rest of the royal family since they’d left.”
She continued, “While there, Meghan had quietly seen to more personal matters, slipping back into their former residence, Frogmore Cottage, to pack up their belongings.”
Meghan Markle said ‘none of it had to be this way’
The Duchess of Sussex reflected on what that experience was like. “You go back and you open drawers and you’re like, Oh my gosh. This is what I was writing in my journal there? And here’s all my socks from this time?,’” she said.
Meghan was wearing pants for the interview that she brought back from Frogmore cottage. She called the return “surreal” as she still had items she shipped from her previous apartment, like a sofa and posters in “good old Ikea frames,” with the interviewer calling it “a past message from a single self she hadn’t fully wanted to leave behind.”
Meghan remarked, “It was bittersweet, you know? Knowing none of it had to be this way.”
Meghan said they weren’t ‘reinventing the wheel’ with their half-in/half-out request
After the brutal media coverage they endured, the Sussexes hoped they could ease some stress with a different working arrangement. “They suggested to the Firm that they be allowed to work, still on behalf of the monarchy, and make their own money,” the interviewer explained.
Meghan said, “Then maybe all the noise would stop.”
That request wasn’t granted, however, and Prince Harry and Meghan made their plan to step down. “Anything to just … because just by existing, we were upsetting the dynamic of the hierarchy. So we go, ‘Okay, fine, let’s get out of here. Happy to,’” she says, putting her hands up in mock defeat,” the interviewer wrote.
The couple wasn’t “reinventing the wheel” with their request. “That, for whatever reason, is not something that we were allowed to do, even though several other members of the family do that exact thing,” Meghan said.
