Prince Harry and Meghan Markle ‘Seemed to Have Unrealistic Goals’ About Moving to the United States

Prince Harry was living the California dream. In an October 16 Instagram video, he stood atop a surfboard at champion athlete Kelly Slater‘s Surf Ranch in Lemoore, California.

The inland facility, which also offers guests luxury accommodations and farm-to-table cuisine and costs from $5,000, was reportedly a birthday gift from wife Meghan Markle.

But while the 40-year-old’s form was good, many reactions were not. One online commenter branded the conservation activist prince “environmentally tone-deaf in water-strapped California.” Yet another lamented, “Once again they are out of touch with reality and the public.”

It was another Sussex wobble. Five years ago, support for Harry and his American bride, 43, was high. More than 1.9 billion people had watched their 2018 wedding, and the public cheered the birth of their first child, Prince Archie, a year later (daughter Lilibet came along in 2021).

Their decision to step back as senior royals and move to America to protect themselves and their young family from the hidebound monarchy garnered them worldwide sympathy. But in the years since, filled with botched deals, tell-all books and scathing interviews about the royal family, that support has waned, leaving some wondering what went wrong.

“Harry and Meghan seemed to have unrealistic goals from the beginning,” an insider exclusively tells In Touch. “They believed they could have the best of both worlds.”

In November 2019, amid growing scrutiny and attacks on Meghan in the U.K. press and worsening private tensions within the royal family, the Sussexes began a six-week break in Canada where they hoped to regroup. It was the beginning of the end of their working and personal relationships with his family, including the late Queen Elizabeth II, King Charles III, Prince William and Princess Kate Middleton.

In that first year, they moved to Meghan’s native California and bought a $14.65 million home in the celebrity enclave of Montecito. A $20 million deal with Spotify and $100 million Netflix deal followed.

“Harry didn’t look backward,” says the source.

From the start, he and Meghan traded on their royal connections to earn their keep. Their bombshell 2021 CBS interview teased claims the palace was harboring a royal racist and that Kate had made Meghan cry in the run-up to her wedding. Unflattering royal anecdotes made his 2023 tell-all memoir, Spare, a bestseller.

“Harry seemed to give no thought to the consequences of their actions,” says the insider. In 2022, he admitted, “I’ve lost a few friends in this process.”

Meghan also had trouble keeping friends, dumping onetime bestie Jessica Mulroney after the stylist was called out for allegedly racist behavior. As for the former Suits star’s old castmates, she seemed to have outgrown them.

“We don’t have her number,” her onscreen boss Gina Torres admitted earlier this year.

Their bid to be Hollywood players never panned out. Meghan’s first outing for Spotify, 2022’s 12-episode “Archetypes,” was initially a success, winning a People’s Choice Award — but nothing else followed. Spotify executive and sportscaster Bill Simmons groused that the couple were “f–king grifters” who had no idea what they were doing. Their non-royal Netflix projects, like Live to Lead, featuring interviews with notable figures around the world, and the children’s series, Pearl, which was canceled in development, also disappointed.

Meanwhile, their Archewell foundation faced scrutiny for questionable finances and ongoing staff turnover. (Meghan was called a “dictator in heels.”) More recently, their quasi-royal tours of Nigeria and Colombia raised eyebrows as to their purpose, and Meghan’s American Riviera Orchard brand became the butt of jokes. (Her lifestyle TV show is still in the works, and his series on polo is out in December.)

Tina Brown, the former editor of Vanity Fair, blames the failures on the California-born duchess. “She has the worst judgment of anyone in the entire world,” the royal expert said on the “Ankler” podcast October 20. “She’s flawless about getting it all wrong…. Her issue is that she doesn’t listen. She has all these people, asks them their opinion and then doesn’t follow it. She does what she wants to do.”

She’s kinder to Harry, suggesting that he might be better off out shaking hands at public appearances rather than building a media empire — which is exactly the life he left behind.

“The thing about Harry is he’s very good at being Prince Harry,” Tina said. “And that’s the tragedy of all of this, is that he is the most talented member of the royal family, without doubt, in terms of being a prince, which is all he does know how to do.”

The problem is that “he’s pretty much in the thrall of Meghan,” Tina explained, branding him “the lamb to the slaughter in this situation. He was terribly impressed by Meghan. He thought that she knew all, she persuaded him that she was the savvy Hollywood wheeler-dealer who could come in and make them stars and all the rest of it. And he just sort of blindly followed her like a child, really.”

Harry and Meghan haven’t given up. In recent weeks, they’ve had some success splitting up, with Harry embarking on a wildly popular trip that saw him supporting his patronages and philanthropic initiatives in NYC, London and Lesotho — without Meghan by his side.

They’ve also made some interesting moves, like buying a reported $4.7 million soon-to-be constructed home in Portugal’s CostaTerra Golf and Ocean Club development (Harry’s cousin Princess Eugenie and her husband live nearby).

The purchase could offer them a path to European Union citizenship and allow them to travel freely around 29 countries. If all else fails, adds the source, “It may be part of a larger plan to work themselves back into the royal fold somehow.”