The British royal family is learnt to have asked the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Harry and Meghan, to vacate the Frogmore Cottage, their UK home. A request was made to the couple, who quit as working royals in 2020, to give up the country house close to Windsor Castle in Berkshire, a spokesperson for Harry and Meghan was quoted as saying by the British media.
“We can confirm the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been requested to vacate their residence at Frogmore Cottage,” the spokesperson said, according to a report in The Guardian.
The move comes weeks after the release of ‘Spare’, Harry’s explosive autobiography, and is said to have King Charles’s sanction, the report said. No statement has been issued by Buckingham Palace, though.
In the book, Harry has reportedly claimed that he was physically attacked by his brother William, the Prince of Wales, and that two brothers, when younger, had begged father Charles not to marry Camilla, who is now the Queen Consort.
According to a BBC report, ‘Spare’ became the fastest-selling non-fiction in the country since 1998, when records began.
It was in January 2020 that Harry and Meghan announced they would be stepping back from their roles as senior royals, confirming all the signals that the couple was not on good terms with other members of the royal family. They had, however, said at the time they would continue to “fully support” Queen Elizabeth II. Harry and Meghan, who now live in the United States with their two children, Archie and Lilibet, were in London last year to attend the Queen’s funeral events.
With King Charles’s coronation just a couple of months away, the couple leaving Frogmore Cottage will show their ties have weakened further.
Frogmore Cottage, An 18th-Century Royal Home
Frogmore Cottage, a gift from Queen Elizabeth to the couple after their wedding, is a 10-bedroom property owned by the Crown Estate and located in the grounds of Windsor Castle in Berkshire, according to a BBC report. Harry and Meghan refurbished the property in 2018-19 at an estimated cost of £2.4 million, with the cost initially covered through the Sovereign Grant before Harry repaid it in full, the report said.
According to reports, the house had been earlier offered to Prince Andrew, another former royal.
The cottage has a history dating back to 1792 when Queen Charlotte, wife of King George III, got it built “as a place for her and her daughters to escape the court”, the BBC report said.
It is also reported that surviving relatives of Tsar Nicholas II lived there when they fled to the UK after the Bolsheviks murdered other family members in 1918. After World War Two, the house served as a home for the royal household staff members, before Harry and Meghan started to live there.