Prince Harry and Meghan Markle had at least one thing all figured out before their daughter Lilibet Diana was born four years ago.
“To have a boy and then a girl, you know, what more can you ask for?” Harry remarked to Oprah Winfrey during his and Meghan’s bombshell-packed sit-down with their Montecito, Calif., neighbor in 2021.
Knowing their son Archie Harrison would soon have a little sister, Harry added, “We’ve got our family. We’ve got the four of us and our two dogs, and it’s great.”
Added then-pregnant Meghan, “Two is it.”
So when Harry pulled their “precious daughter from that world into this” on June 4, 2021—as he described in his 2023 memoir Spare—their family was, indeed, complete.
The familial drama has been ongoing, however. Harry recently revealed that his father (a.k.a. Archie and Lili’s granddad) King Charles III wasn’t speaking to him amid the 40-year-old’s U.K. court battle over security financing, a year after they seemed on the road to mending fences in the wake of the monarch’s cancer diagnosis.
“There’s no point in continuing to fight people,” Harry told the BBC in May, acknowledging that some members of his family may “never forgive” him for various things, including writing a book. “Life is precious. I don’t know how much longer my father has. He won’t speak to me because of this security stuff, but it would be nice to be able to reconcile.”
Harry has expressed concern that his young family isn’t safe in the U.K. without the level of security he was provided as a senior royal, and which the government has refused to pay for since he and Meghan stepped away from their duties in 2020.
And there’s no way the Sussexes are going back to that life anytime soon.
“I’m the happiest I’ve ever been,” Meghan said in April at the TIME100 Summit. “To have a husband and a partner who is so supportive and kids who are healthy and happy, I never imagined at this point I would feel so happy and grateful, and I really do.”
Not that she and Lili couldn’t have harvested honey from their own bees in Windsor, but getting to do so on the grounds of their southern California idyll feels like a considerable upgrade from that fishbowl life in the U.K.
Two years after their refusal to share a birth plan ahead of Archie’s arrival —followed by their desire for a relatively private christening—scandalized some longtime royal watchers, the was no one to cater to, other than general inquiring minds, when Lili was born at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital.
“We’ve been really conscious of protecting our kids as best as we can,” Meghan said in the 2022 Netflix series Harry & Meghan, which provided an unprecedented peek into their private world, “and also understanding the role that they play in this really historic family.”
And though Harry and Meghan have made use of their global platform to air certain grievances—and the world remains their Netflix- and Instagram-enhanced oyster—they still share only rare glimpses of Archie and Lili. (And by they, we mean Meghan, social media being her, er, jam.)
However, like most parents, they do enjoy talking about their kids.
For instance, when the couple toured Nigeria in May 2024, their children were there in spirit.
“That’s Lili’s favorite class,” Meghan told a class of kindergartners at Lightway Academy in Abuja who danced and sang for the VIP visitors.
Speaking to a group of older children, Meghan applauded the inner strength the kids exhibited just by showing up when times were tough.
“Our daughter, Lili, she’s much, much tinier than you guys,” she noted. “She’s about to turn 3. And a few weeks ago she looked at me and she would just see the reflection in my eyes. And she said, ‘Mama, I see me in you.'”
Of course, Lili literally was seeing tiny images of herself in her mom’s retina. “But I hung onto those words in a very different way,” Meghan added. “And I thought, yes, I do see me and you, and you see me and you, but as I look around this room, I see myself in all of you as well.”
At the time, Meghan lamented not being home for Mother’s Day (which was far less eventful than the royals’ U.K. Mother’s Day on March 10, 2024), telling an audience at the State Governor House in Lagos that “of course we are missing our children.”
Though even at home there still isn’t such a thing as feeling you’re spending the so-called right amount of time with family while also working.
“What I think that to mean now is that that balance will always change for you,” she reflected during a Women in Leadership event during the trip. “That balance, what seems balanced 10 years ago is going to shift. And so being a mom has always been a dream of mine. And I’m so fortunate that we have two beautiful, healthy, very chatty sweet children.”
Lucky for Meghan, then, that Lili sounds like a fan of her cooking, the child telling her mom in an April Instagram Stories clip that her preparations for another pot of homemade preserves looked “beautiful.”
“Lili and I actually made this batch together,” Meghan noted during an episode of her Netflix series With Love, Meghan, which premiered in March. “She picked all those berries with me.”
But while the sumptuous-looking cooking and lifestyle show—shot on location at an obliging nearby home, not the family’s own 18,000-square-foot abode—featured scenes with Harry, the kids only appeared in anecdotes.
And yet, private as they may be, it’s hard to not show off your children at all when you’re bursting with pride.
See the sanctioned glimpses of Archie and Lili that Harry and Meghan have shared through the years:
Mom & Daughter
Meghan and Princess Lilibet enjoyed some time in the garden in April 2025.
Smelling the Roses
Prince Archie also enjoyed examining the roses in a garden in April 2025.
Dad & Daughter
Harry and Princess Lilibet shared a sweet moment on a boat ride in March 2025.
Valentine’s Day 2025
Prince Archie enjoyed the holiday celebration with fresh strawberries to boot.
Auntie Serena Williams
Princess Lilibet played a game with her mom’s friend in early 2025.
Archie and His Papa
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex included this image of their “2019 in review” Instagram video on New Year’s Eve.
South Africa Tour
In 2019, the couple brought Archie, then 3 months old, on their Royal tour of South Africa, during which they met Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
Birthday Story Time
Meghan was seen reading the book Duck! Rabbit!” to Archie on his first birthday, May 6, 2021.
Royal Baby
Meghan and Harry present their newborn son Prince Archie, then known as Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, in St George’s Hall at Windsor Castle in Windsor, England in May 2021.
(Originally published June 4, 2024, at 3 a.m. PT)
