One year ago this week, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry announced that they would be stepping down from their roles as senior members of the royal family. Since then, they've permanently
moved to the Los Angeles area, where they have a home with their son, Archie, in Montecito.
The couple officially wrapped their royal duties in March, and because of the pandemic, they've stayed close to home. But a source told People that Meghan and Harry are "hoping 2021 can be a time of healing not just for the world, but for their family."
There have long been rumors of a rift between Prince William and Harry, but in an interview with ELLE.com last week, Robert Lacey, author of Battle of Brothers: William and Harry–The Inside Story of a Family in Tumult, said there is hope for a reconciliation. He added that if the brothers' mother, Princess Diana, were still alive, there might never have been a conflict between them at all.
"She would say 'come on boys, it's time to end this social distancing.' No, I don’t think [the feud] would have happened if Diana had been alive. One of the tragedies of her death was that it deprived them [William and Harry] of their more active parent. There's a sense in which William become too close to his mother as things started to go wrong; she lent on him and relied on him which, I think, robbed him to some degree of his youth and is one of the sources of [William's] anger. I think her emphasis on getting the boys to speak their minds to each other and say what's on their minds would have come into play."
Last week, a source told Entertainment Tonight that Harry and Meghan have "no regrets" about their decision to move away from their royal roles and to their new home in the U.S.