Prince Harry still fears the worst.
In an interview with ITV for the new documentary series Tabloids on Trial, the 39-year old explained why he remains scared to bring Meghan Markle with him on any visit to his native United Kingdom.
Simply put?
Harry is afraid for his wife’s life.
“It’s still dangerous, and all it takes is one lone actor, one person who reads this stuff to act on what they have read,” the Duke of Sussex said.
“And whether it’s a knife or acid, whatever it is, and these are things that are of genuine concern for 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, resigning from their Royal Duties at the time.
Harry still doesn’t talk to his family, but he has returned to Great Britain on occasion over the past four years.
In 2022, however, Neil Basu, the former head of counterterrorism for the Metropolitan Police, said that there were legitimate threats to Markle’s life while she lived across the Atlantic Ocean.
“We had teams investigating it. People have been prosecuted for those threats,” Basu said back then.
In response, Prince Harry previously said he “felt forced” to step back from his royal role and leave the country… citing security concerns for his family.
Back in 1997, of course, in a different sort of incident, Harry’s mother, Princess Diana, was killed in a car accident when the vehicle she was in tried to speed away from the paparazzi.
Harry has experience with losing a loved one.
On December 15, Prince Harry was awarded $178,255 by a British high court, which said there was “extensive” phone hacking by Mirror Group Newspapers from 2006 to 2011.
The judge overseeing the case declared that there was clear evidence that private investigators had been “integral” at the red top tabloids in terms of delving into Harry and Meghan’s personal lives.
A father of two, Harry has often expressed extreme concern over the safety of his immediate family as a result of such invasion of privacy.
“They pushed me too far,” Harry noted to ITV, explaining why he took Mirror Group Newspapers — which oversees The Mirror, The Sunday Mirror and The People — to court last year:
“It got to a point where you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t. But I don’t think there’s anybody in the world better suited and placed to be able to see this through than myself.”
Due to his father’s cancer diagnosis, among other factors, Harry has taken a couple trips of late to the United Kingdom.
But this isn’t the first time he has emphasized his worry over what might happen if Markle or his kids joined him.
“The U.K. is my home. The U.K. is central to the heritage of my children and a place I want them to feel at home as much as where they live at the moment in the United States,” Harry said several months ago.
“That cannot happen if there is no possibility to keep them safe when they are on U.K. soil.
“I can’t put my wife in danger like that, and given my experiences in life, I’m reluctant to unnecessarily put myself in harm’s way too.”