Meghan Markle's sobering realisation after she packed up her belongings in royal residence

When Meghan, Duchess of Sussex packed up her belongings from her royal residence and said goodbye to her former home for good, she admitted that she had a pretty sobering realisation

Shortly after their marriage, Prince Harry and Meghan moved into Frogmore Cottage, which had been given to them by the late Queen Elizabeth as a place where they could start their family away from the public eye. Located in Windsor Home Park, the five-bedroom property offered the couple privacy and safety for their growing family and more space than their London home of Nottingham Cottage, in Kensington Palace.

Frogmore Cottage had reportedly been uninhabited for some time, so the Duke and Duchess of Sussex got to work with extensive renovations on their new property - but little did they know that it would end up only being somewhere they called home for a short time. When the couple decided to step back as working royals in 2020, they initially hoped they would be able to represent the crown in an official capacity, but on a part-time basis - spending half of their time in North America. However, this was quickly deemed an unworkable option by the Royal Family, and after a transitional year, a full break was made with the Sussexes, and they handed back their royal patronages.

This meant that Frogmore Cottage would not be the family home that they had hoped, and in June 2022, the couple returned to the UK for the late Queen's Platinum Jubilee celebrations and packed up the last of their belongings in their former home. Speaking in an interview with The Cut, Meghan explained how it felt to go back to the property and get the last of their belongings together, with Frogmore Cottage "mostly untouched" since the couple moved across the Atlantic.

"You go back and you open drawers and you're like, 'Oh my gosh. This is what I was writing in my journal there? And here's all my socks from this time?" the Duchess said. Meghan added that the experience was "surreal" and temporarily stepping back into the life she and Harry had hoped to build in the UK was "bittersweet".

"It was bittersweet, you know? Knowing none of it had to be this way," the Duchess said. At the time of her interview with the magazine, Frogmore Cottage still belonged to Meghan and Harry but early in 2023, the couple were evicted from the property and handed back the keys to King Charles, who is reported to want his younger brother Prince Andrew out of his long-term home of Royal Lodge and into the the smaller property of Frogmore Cottage instead.

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