Prince Harry timeline: key dates before UK return

Prince Harry and Meghan are set to return to Britain within weeks and settle in a private, non-royal residence outside London, but they will not return as working royals.

Harry, whose full name is Prince Henry Charles Albert David, was born at St. Mary’s Hospital in London on September 15, 1984. He was born third in line to the British throne, two years after his brother Prince William.

His mother, Diana, Princess of Wales, died in a Paris car crash in 1997. Harry, then 12, walked behind her coffin at her funeral. He later said he blocked out his grief for years before seeking help from a therapist at 28, and has long blamed the media for his mother’s death.

Harry served in Afghanistan in 2007 and again in 2012, when he flew Apache attack helicopters during a 20-week deployment. In 2014, he created the Invictus Games, a Paralympics-style international event for wounded service personnel.

Harry married Meghan in 2018 at St George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle. Queen Elizabeth II gave them the titles Duke and Duchess of Sussex. Their son, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, was born in 2019, and their daughter, Lilibet Diana Mountbatten-Windsor, was born in southern California in 2021.

Harry and Meghan quit as working royals in 2020 and later settled in Montecito, California. In a 2021 interview with Oprah Winfrey, Meghan said she had contemplated suicide after joining the royal family, and the couple said a family member had raised a question about the skin colour of their son before he was born.

Harry published his memoir, “Spare,” in 2023. He also pursued several legal cases in Britain over alleged historical phone hacking, other alleged press intrusion and the loss of police protection. In 2023, the High Court awarded him £140,600 in damages in his claim against Mirror Group Newspapers. In 2025, he settled out of court in an action against Rupert Murdoch’s UK tabloid publisher, and in 2026 he lost a case against the Daily Mail’s publisher over alleged unlawful information gathering.