The Duke and Duchess of Sussex spoke about moving to New Zealand less than six months into their life as a working royal couple.
The country’s governor-general Dame Patsy Reddy revealed Harry and Meghan spoke during their autumn 2018 trip to New Zealand about whether it would be ‘theoretically possible’ to move there from the UK.
The couple’s thoughts about moving to a Commonwealth country were aired during their bombshell Oprah Winfrey interview.
Meghan, who celebrated her 40th birthday yesterday, said at the time they wanted to ‘take a step back’ from their roles and had suggested New Zealand, South Africa or Canada as potential countries to move to.
Dame Patsy recalled the couple were tired when they met, adding: ‘I remember they’d just been down to the Abel Tasman National Park when we sat down and had a drink, and they said that they could imagine living in a place like this and wondered whether we thought it would be theoretically possible. Even possible for them to have a place in New Zealand.
‘Of course, we said, “Sure. It would be fine”. There are lots of opportunities to live in New Zealand, but that would be something that they’d have to explore.
‘They were looking at how they might raise their family. And obviously they’ve made some decisions since.’
Harry and Meghan had visited New Zealand over a few days at the end of October and beginning of November 2018, the last stop in a hectic 16-day royal tour of the South Pacific.
Dame Patsy, who spoke with Associated Press in an interview before stepping down in October, said she did not view it as a formal request for assistance but more of an informal discussion about the couple’s hopes for the future.
During that October, former royal aide Jason Knauf, who at the time worked for the Sussexes as their communications secretary, made a bullying complaint against the duchess to the Duke of Cambridge’s then private secretary, in an apparent attempt to force Buckingham Palace to protect staff.
Meghan revealed in her Winfrey interview how a few months later in mid-January 2019 when pregnant with son Archie, she told Harry she was having suicidal thoughts and said to her husband she could not be left alone, when he suggested she not attend an event at the Royal Albert Hall.
The Sussexes’ decision to leave the UK was effectively made a year after their New Zealand trip when, following a royal tour to southern Africa, they travelled to North America for a break in autumn 2019 and never permanently returned.
The governor-general was asked about her relationship with the Queen and added that she regularly expresses her confidential views of what is happening in New Zealand with its head of state, such as the nation’s response to the pandemic.
She said the communication ‘is quite touchingly old-fashioned, by letter’.
‘She has told me on the times that I’ve seen her that she finds it interesting to have a personal perspective on what’s happening,’ Dame Patsy said.
‘As she says, “I like to know what’s happening between the lines”.’
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