Prince Harry still fears the worst.
In an interview with ITV for new documentary series Tabloids on Trial, the 39-year-old explained why he remains wary of taking Meghan Markle with him on any visits to his home country of the UK.
Simply put?
Harry fears for his wife’s life.
“It’s still dangerous, and all it takes is a lone actor, a person who reads these things to act on what they read,” the Duke of Sussex said.
“And whether it’s a knife or acid, whatever it is, and those are things that are a genuine concern to me. It’s one of the reasons why I won’t bring my wife back to this country.”
Harry and Meghan moved to California in 2020, stepping back from their royal duties at the time.
Harry still doesn’t speak to his familybut he he has has returned to Britain occasionally over the past four years.
In 2022, however, Neil Basu, the Metropolitan Police’s former head of counter-terrorism, said there had been legitimate threats to Markle’s life while she was living across the Atlantic Ocean.
“We had teams investigating this. People were prosecuted for these threats,” Basu said at the time.
In response, Prince Harry previously said he “felt forced” to step back from his royal role and leave the country… citing concerns for his family’s safety.
In 1997, of course, in a different incident, Harry’s mother, Princess Diana, died in a car crash when the vehicle she was in tried to flee from paparazzi.
Harry has experience with the loss of a loved one.
On December 15, Prince Harry was awarded $178,255 by a British high court, which said there had been “extensive” phone hacking by Mirror Group Newspapers from 2006 to 2011.
The judge overseeing the case said there was clear evidence that private investigators were “essential” to the tabloids’ leading role in investigating Harry and Meghan’s personal lives.
Father-of-two Harry has long expressed extreme concern for the safety of his immediate family as a result of this invasion of privacy.
“They put me under a lot of pressure,” Harry told ITV, explaining why he took Mirror Group Newspapers — which oversees The Mirror, The Sunday Mirror and The People — to court last year:
“It’s gotten to the point where you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t. But I don’t think there’s anyone in the world better suited and positioned to be able to see that than me.”
Because father’s cancer diagnosisAmong other factors, Harry has recently made a few trips to the UK.
But this isn’t the first time he’s stressed his concerns about what could happen if Markle or her children join him.
“The UK is my home. The UK is central to my children’s heritage and a place where I want them to feel as much at home as where they currently live in the United States,” Harry said several months ago.
“This cannot happen if there is no way to keep them safe when they are on British soil.
“I can’t put my wife in danger like that, and given my life experiences, I’m reluctant to put myself in unnecessary danger as well.”