The real reason Prince Harry and Meghan Markle paid back £2.4 million for Frogmore Cottage

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle paid back £2.4 million of taxpayer money that was spent on refurbishing Frogmore Cottage, as they wanted to completely cut themselves off from being working royals.

The couple were gifted the home by the late Queen Elizabeth following their wedding in 2018, but there was an outcry when money from the Sovereign Grant was spent on renovating it for them.

However, Harry and Meghan paid back every single penny in order not to “justify” the British tabloids having access to their lives, according to a royal author.

In his book Battle of the Brothers, published in 2020, Robert Lacey wrote: “It was crucial that they should pay off – and should clearly be seen to pay off – the £2.4million that had become a persecutory refrain in almost every story about their base at Windsor.

“As they would later explain via sussexroyal.com, the website that they developed during their Vancouver sabbatical, coming off the Sovereign Grant – the royal payroll financed by the British taxpayer – would ‘remove the tabloids” justification in having access to their lives.”

King Charles was also “quite sympathetic” to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex and offered to help them with payments at the time, even though just a few years later he was asking them to vacate Frogmore.

Before Harry and Meghan’s renovations, the property was divided into five separate residences for staff, but the couple turned it back into a family home complete with private garden.

The Sussexes only lived at Frogmore for six months, as in 2020 they quit the Royal Family and headed across the Atlantic, eventually buying their home in Montecito for £11 million.