Prince Harry could lose key royal post after renouncing UK residency
British law says that Harry needs to have a home in the U.K. to continue to serve in a post that would allow him to stand in for King Charles III under certain circumstances, a new report says.
To the likely disappointment of Prince Harry haters, he may not lose his Duke of Sussex title following news Wednesday that he has renounced his British residency. But there are questions about whether he could — or should — lose an important royal post since he now calls the United States his new home country.
According to British law, Harry should no longer be allowed to serve as a Counselor of State — one of a group of royal families members who are deputized to stand in for King Charles III if the monarch is abroad or somehow incapacitated. That’s the view of Richard Eden, the diary editor at the Daily Mail who has been one of Britain’s most outspoken advocates for Charles stripping Harry of the Counselor of State title, ever since he and Meghan left royal duties in 2020 and relocated to California.
Eden now says this issue takes on new urgency following revelations Wednesday that Harry has officially changed his residency to the United States in U.K. business records — news that led media outlets to report that he had “renounced” his British residency.
According to Eden, the late Queen Elizabeth II was very decisive about protocol and would have had no problem removing Harry from the Counselor of State position. After all, Eden said, she had no problem telling Harry and Meghan that they couldn’t be part-time royals after they moved to the United States to launch careers as media moguls and influencers.
Eden thinks Charles should be as decisive, considering that British law says that Counselors of State “are required to have a UK domicile.” He also said the title is “more than honorific.”
“Now, King Charles needs to take a leaf out of his mother’s book – and be decisive when it comes to his younger son and his role as a Counselor of State,” Eden wrote. “How on earth can someone who has officially left Britain be allowed to stand in for our country’s head of state?”
Harry has effectively called a $14 million estate that he shares with Meghan in Montecito his home since 2020, but he apparently maintained a U.K. address, with his legal representative saying in 2022: “The U.K. will always be Prince Harry’s home and a country.”
Harry’s address change was revealed in records submitted for Travalyst, the sustainable travel organization he founded in 2019, The Mirror reported. The records were filed with Companies House, the British government agency that maintains registers of companies.
The records also are public, and The Mirror noted that the address change was backdated to June 29, 2023. That’s when Harry famously lost his only known U.K. home after Charles asked him and Meghan to vacate Frogmore Cottage.
Permission to use the home near Windsor Castle had been a gift from the late queen. But Charles rescinded his mother’s gift to the couple, reportedly thinking it was impractical for his California-based son and daughter-in-law to have the cottage when they only spent, at most, a few weeks out of the year using it.
Until until the queen’s death in 2022, the Counselors of State were Queen Camilla, Prince William, Prince Harry, Prince Andrew and Andrew’s eldest daughter, Princess Beatrice, Eden reported. At the time, though, many thought the situation was untenable because Harry, Andrew and Beatrice were no longer working royals, Eden said. Moreover, Harry had left the U.K. to find his fortunes in the United States, while Andrew was forced to step down from royal duties, due to his scandalous friendship with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
In later 2022, Charles asked Parliament to add his sister, Princess Anne, and youngest brother, Prince Edward, to the list of Counselors, Eden reported. But Charles reportedly decided to not to remove Harry and Andrew from the list because he did not want to escalate family tensions; he also thought it was unlikely that either would ever be required to stand in for him.
But Eden suggested that Charles shouldn’t make such assumptions and argued that the situation “has become even more urgent” because of his cancer treatment. “Continuity matters,” he wrote.
Questions about Harry’s residency also have personal implications for the duke, as he continues to wage a legal battle over the level of U.K.-taxpayer-funded security he is to receive when he and visits Britain. Harry is expected to travel to the U.K. next month for the 10th anniversary of the Invictus Games.
Harry also is the target of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative U.S. think tank, which has gone to court to have Harry’s visa application for the United States made public. The Heritage Foundation questions whether the duke was given preferential treatment for a visa or lied on his application about his past drug use.
Admission of past or current drug use can be grounds for someone’s visa application to be denied, legal experts have said. In Harry’s 2023 memoir “Spare,” he shared stories about experimenting with cannabis, cocaine and other drugs when he was younger and suggested in an interview that he had used or continues to use hallucinogenic drugs recreationally and therapeutically.