Meghan Markle and Prince Harry with their son Archie in South Africa in 2019.Credit : 

Pool/Samir Hussein/WireImage

For Meghan Markle, motherhood didn’t pan out the way she’d originally imagined.

The Duchess of Sussex, 43, shares son Prince Archie, 6, and daughter Princess Lilibet, 3, with her husband, Prince Harry. During the May 20 episode of her Lemonada Media podcast, Confessions of a Female Founder, she reflected on the expectations she had for motherhood within the royal family before welcoming her children.

“I will say, for myself, especially when they are baby babies and before I was a mom, I’ve always wanted to be a mom,” she revealed. “I was like, ‘Oh gosh I’m going to give a speech with a baby on my hip.’ I had a whole vision.”

However, things didn’t go according to the Suits star’s plan.

“Granted, I had a lot of external things happening by the time I had both pregnancies and both babies,” she shared. “But it was not the way I envisioned it.”

Meghan and Harry, 40, welcomed Archie while they were still senior members of the royal family. They brought their son with them on a royal tour of Africa in 2019, introducing him to Bishop Desmond Tutu during a public appearance.

But several months later, the couple announced their intention to “step back” as working royals and relocate their family to California. Amid the public scrutiny, the Sussexes kept their son out of the spotlight.

In 2021, they welcomed daughter Lilibet and were continuing to settle into life in their new home in Montecito, opting to keep photos of both kids to a minimum and not having them attend public events.

Despite the shift in Meghan’s plans, she said that one constant remains a priority for her.

“For me, it’s so important my kids see me as a working mom,” the As ever founder noted on her podcast.

For his part, Harry has spent much of fatherhood concerned for his family’s safety. The son of King Charles and the late Princess Diana recently lost his appeal to reinstate his state-funded security in the United Kingdom.

“Look at the risk, look at the threat, look at the impact that if anything was to happen to me, my wife, or my father’s grandchildren. If anything was to happen to them, look where the responsibility lies,” Harry told the BBC earlier this month.

Harry stated that the original security decision was made “to keep us under the roof,” implying that it was done to keep Harry and Meghan as senior members of the royal family.

Harry’s mother, Princess Diana, was left without police protection after choosing to decline it following her divorce from the future King. In 1997 she died in a Paris car crash while being pursued by paparazzi and guarded only by private security.

“I don’t want history to repeat itself,” the Duke of Sussex said. “I think there’s a lot of other people out there, the majority, that also don’t want history to repeat itself. Through the disclosure process, I’ve discovered that some people want history to repeat itself, which is pretty dark.”