Prince Harry officially changed his listed country of residence from the United Kingdom to the United States on paperwork following his 2020 move to California with Meghan Markle.
The Duke of Sussex, 39, filed a notice with the switch in documents at the U.K.’s Companies House connected to Travalyst, his environmental tourism initiative. Although the “date of change” was listed as June 6, 2023, according to documents obtained by PEOPLE, the update was only recently made public.
The dated change in country of residence came around the same time that the Keeper of the Privy Purse announced that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex had “vacated” Frogmore Cottage, their U.K. residence in Windsor. Five months earlier, a spokesperson for Prince Harry and Meghan’s Archewell Foundation told PEOPLE the couple had been asked to leave the residence. “We can confirm The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have been requested to vacate their residence at Frogmore Cottage,” the spokesperson said in March 2023.
After starting their life together at the two-bedroom Nottingham Cottage at Kensington Palace in London, Harry and Meghan moved to the larger Frogmore Cottage before their son, Prince Archie, was born in May 2019. Extensive renovations took place before they moved in, said to cost around $3 million. After their step back from their royal roles, the couple “fully covered” the taxpayer-funded renovations as the revamp had originally been backed by the Sovereign Grant, the U.K. fund set aside for royals and fueled by taxpayers.
After spending time in Vancouver Island then Tyler Perry’s Los Angeles residence amid their step back from their working roles in the royal family, Meghan and Prince Harry bought a home in the Montecito neighborhood of Santa Barbara in summer 2020, where Princess Lilibet was born in June 2021.
However, they continued to use Frogmore Cottage as a base during visits to the U.K. It’s where the Duke and Duchess of Sussex stayed with both children in June 2022 amid Queen Elizabeth’s Platinum Jubilee festivities, and they celebrated Lili’s first birthday with a backyard party at the residence. Prince Harry stayed at the home again a few weeks later when he traveled to London to testify against Mirror Group Newspapers for alleged unlawful information gathering.
In the Netflix series Harry & Meghan, the couple appeared in photos showing them packing up Frogmore Cottage after their final engagements as working members of the royal family.
“We were going through so many boxes, just literally looking at everything, going, ‘Oh my gosh, this blanket I missed, that hat was so funny,’ ” Meghan said. “Just taking it all in, and it really just gave us a chance to look back at our whole love story.”
“We always saw Archie running around the garden at Frogmore Cottage, and maybe jumping in the Queen’s pond. That was all part of our future, and everything changed really, really quickly,” Harry added. “We knew we were going to get some breathing space from this very painful experience that we’d been stuck in, but also at the same time, it was really sad.”
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During a February interview on Good Morning America, Will Reeve asked Prince Harry if he was enjoying life in the U.S.
“It’s amazing,” the Duke of Sussex replied. “I love every single day.”
When asked if he felt American, Prince Harry laughed and said, “Do I feel American? Um, no. I don’t know how I feel.”
Harry said he had “considered” becoming a U.S. citizen, but it wasn’t a “high priority.”
Referring to the Invictus Games Winter Training Camp he was focused on at the time, Prince Harry said, “I’m here standing next to this with these guys, and the American citizenship is a thought that has crossed my mind but certainly not something that is a high priority for me right now.”
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After Meghan and Prince Harry announced their engagement in 2017, PEOPLE confirmed that she planned to become a U.K. citizen following their wedding. Although she didn’t complete the notoriously lengthy process, she talked about the difficulty of the U.K.’s citizenship exam on an episode of her Archetypes podcast.
Meghan said, “That citizenship exam is so hard! I was studying for it, and I remember going, ‘Oh my goodness.’ I would ask my husband, ‘Did you know this? Did you know this?’ And people went, ‘Oh, I had no idea.’ “
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Prince Harry most recently returned to the U.K. solo in February after his father, King Charles, revealed he was diagnosed with cancer. During the 24-hour trip abroad, the Duke of Sussex had a brief private meeting with the monarch, 75, at Clarence House in London.
“That is good,” a source close to the royal household told PEOPLE exclusively. “Hopefully [Harry] will bring the grandchildren at some point too, as that would be lovely for all of them.”
