Prince Harry was born on September 15, 1984, and, as the grandson and now son of a monarch – not to mention brother and uncle to the next two kings – has lived a life of unique challenges, especially when every move or utterance is analyzed and criticized by the world’s media.
Then, five years ago, Harry joined hands with his wife, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, and together they leapt off the proverbial cliff, leaving the strictures of royal life for one that they could shape and control more to their liking (the continued gaze of the world’s media notwithstanding).
Now, as the Duke of Sussex turns 40 this weekend, Harry is building his own life away from the comforts of palaces and castles, and he’s doing just fine. He has remade himself into a producer, entrepreneur, and even the chief impact officer of a wellness firm, while continuing his charitable work with The Archewell Foundation and championing the Invictus Games – an international sports event for wounded, injured and sick troops, which he started in 2014.
Meanwhile, he and Meghan have two young children – Prince Archie, 5, who just started kindergarten, and three-year-old toddler Princess Lilibet – and live in a mansion set on a lush estate in Montecito, California.
While the “What could have been for Harry” wishcasting continues, this year and the beginning of 2025 hint at Prince Harry’s busy and evolving future:
- He and Meghan undertook two quasi-royal international visits – to Nigeria in May and Colombia in August – at the behest of government officials in both countries
- He’ll be speaking and visiting charities in New York during UN General Assembly week in late September, including at the Clinton Global Initiative
- In October, the paperback version of his raw and revealing memoir, Spare, will be released
- In December, his Netflix series, Polo, will premiere
- In January 2025, his unlawful information gathering lawsuit against Rupert Murdoch’s London tabloids is scheduled to begin
- In February, he’ll be in snowy Whistler for the first winter component of the Invictus Games
Harry also continues to plow his own money into “slaying dragons” – making tabloids that invaded his privacy for years answer for that conduct in court. And for his 40th, he’s reportedly getting a final multi-million-dollar tranche from a trust that Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother set up for her great-grandchildren before her death in 2002.
Eight years after they first met, he and Meghan are very much a package deal. “The fact that I fell in love with Meghan so incredibly quickly was a sort of confirmation to me that everything, all the stars were aligned. Everything was just perfect. It was this beautiful woman [who] just sort of literally tripped and fell into my life; I fell into her life,” he said on their engagement day. While social media obsessives pour over every image of the two to speculate about the state of their marriage, there’s never been a hint of any serious problems.
Of course, like many middle-aged folk, Harry has family problems. The Sussexes’ move to Canada in October 2019 effectively marked the end of their lives as working royals and led to the fraying of relationships with his father and brother that continue to this day.
At his birth, he was third in line to the throne, after his father, Charles, and elder brother, William. Now, four decades later, he’s fifth, behind William and his three children. In a few decades, he’ll likely be pushed out of the Top 10.
But as he prepares to mark his 40th, Harry has figured out his purpose. At the Dutch Invictus Games in 2022, he was asked what he wished for his young children. His answer: “To grow up in a fairer world, a safer world, a more equal world.
“It’s not going to be easy, but I will never, ever, ever rest until I as a parent have at least tried to make the world a better place for them,” he aded. “Because it is our responsibility that the world is the way that it is now. I don’t think we should be bringing children into the world unless we are going to make that commitment to make it better for them.”
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