After Prince Harry and Meghan Markle moved from the UK to North America in 2020, public sightings of the couple’s son, Archie, became few and far between. Unlike their relatives Kate Middleton and Prince William, the couple rarely bring their children to events and didn’t share an image of their daughter Lilibet's face until after her first birthday in June 2022. Though some interstitial footage of the children made it into their Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan, it’s clear that the couple is planning for their children to live much more private lives than their father, who has seen news photographers document most of his life, including his grief after the 1997 death of his mother, Princess Diana.

According to a friend who spoke to People, the same fears that are motivating his long-running battle for enhanced security in the UK have contributed to his decision to keep his children out of the spotlight. “Harry has been reluctant to show his children publicly, not out of a desire to hide them but to protect their privacy and safety from potential threats. He wants them to lead as normal a life as possible without the fear of kidnapping or harm,” the friend said. “As a dad and husband, Harry is determined to ensure that history doesn’t repeat itself.”

In a recent interview with ITV, Harry noted that his fears for his family have prevented him from taking them to visit the country and are motivating his long-running legal battle to reverse the UK government’s 2020 decision to strip him of armed security guards when he enters the country.

After Harry’s birth in September 1984, he was automatically entitled to security as the child of the heir to the throne. His protection officers were usually Metropolitan Police employees who were paid a salary by the British government. But when Harry and Meghan made their royal exit in 2020, the Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures, known by the acronym RAVEC, decided to end his publicly funded security.

Initially, Harry had offered to fund his own security when visiting the country, as he does in the US, but that request was denied in a May 2023 High Court ruling. In subsequent filings, Harry’s lawyers have argued that RAVEC, an official committee made up of senior government officials and representatives from the royal household, violated its own rules when making the decision to strip Harry of security. Following a series of legal setbacks, he won the right to appeal the decision on those grounds in June 2024.

A former employee of the couple told People that Meghan is less enthusiastic about the court challenges, in part because of the difficulty it has caused in his relationships with his family, but still supports her husband “100 percent” in his quest. “She wants him to be free of all of this, but she also knows that because of everything he’s been through and his love for [her and their children], he can’t,” the staffer added. “She wants him to live in a world where he is not burdened by this.”