By relocating back to Britain with his family, Prince Harry will shortly open a new chapter in his ever-eventful life which once seemed improbable amid royal feuds, battles over security and lawsuits against the UK tabloids.
The 41-year-old royal misfit has long struggled with the monarchy's strictures, shaking off the angry young man and "playboy prince" tags only to find himself at loggerheads with his closest relatives.
After swapping Britain for California six years ago, he and wife Meghan Markle return still estranged from Harry's heir-to-the-throne brother Prince William and wife Catherine.
Whether their ties can be repaired -- as Harry appears to have done with his cancer-battling father, King Charles III -- is just one of many questions swirling as their self-imposed United States exile ends.
"I think one of the motivating factors for this return ... is reconciliation with the king and with the wider family," Ed Owens, a historian of Britain's royals, told AFP.
"If those wounds are not healed it can have a really detrimental impact, not only on the people concerned but also on the reputation of the institution."
'Lack of trust'
Meghan faces a particularly tough challenge in re-assimilating to life in the UK, where she remains deeply unpopular, while managing uneasy ties with the royal family, currently gathered at their Scottish retreat Balmoral for their annual summer holiday.
Just days after it was reported she was in talks to join Netflix's UK-filmed series "The Gentlemen", a commentator on the royals wrote on X that the offer had been cancelled.
"Public backlash was too fierce. This does not bode well for Meghan's acting comeback in the UK," Tina Brown wrote.
The feud between Harry and his family has tarnished the family's image.
The monarchy has faced allegations of racism and bullying, among others, potentially alienating younger, more diverse British generations.
Yet Harry and mixed-raced Meghan are highly divisive in Britain. According to polls, they attract more negative opinions than any other royals, barring his scandal-plagued Jeffrey Epstein-associate uncle, the ex-prince Andrew.
"They've got to come to terms with the lack of trust in Britain," Richard Fitzwilliams, a commentator on the royal family, told AFP. "They've said some very unkind things about Britain, and also about the monarchy."
As a military and charity trailblazer with the fiery red hair and rebellious streak, Harry was at one time among Britain's most popular royals.
But the boyhood trauma of losing his mother Diana, Princess of Wales, has dogged much of his life.
Diana's death in a Paris car crash, caused by her intoxicated driver who broke speed limits while being chased by paparazzi, also instilled in him a life-long hostility towards the press.
In recent years, Harry has sued three different UK newspapers, becoming the first senior royal in more than a century to enter the witness box as he won settlements from two.
'Traumatised'
Henry Charles Albert David was born third in line to the throne, on September 15, 1984.
The 1997 image of the 12-year-old prince walking stony-faced and head bowed behind his mother's coffin earnt enduring global sympathy.
He attended the elite Eton boarding school, later revealing his hurt over William allegedly ignoring him while also there.
Harry then spent a sabbatical year in Australia and Africa, caring for orphans in Lesotho, where he founded a charity in Diana's memory.
Youthful scandals -- dressing as a Nazi for a fancy dress bash, being pictured partying naked in Las Vegas -- fed endless tabloid coverage.
"He had a very difficult childhood," trauma expert Gabor Mate told the BBC this week.
"He was traumatised," he added, noting "the lack of emotional closeness in the family".
The tall, athletic rugby and polo fan embarked on a decade-long military career that included two Afghanistan deployments, one as a helicopter pilot. He resigned in 2015.
The previous year, Harry founded the international Invictus Games for wounded soldiers, which still holds annual events.
After his 2018 fairytale Windsor Castle wedding -- watched around the world -- he and Meghan were touted as future monarchy rejuvenators, branded the "fab four" alongside William and Kate.
The couple's son, Archie, was born a year later.
'Arch-nemesis' William
But by early 2020, growing tensions surfaced, with the pair quitting the UK and as working royals. They were allowed to keep their titles as duke and duchess of Sussex, but lost other privileges of the monarchy.
Harry waged a years-long, ultimately unsuccessful legal battle with the government to re-instate his publicly funded security.
The prince's six years in America were marked by his apparent eagerness to settle scores -- in a tell-all documentary, TV interviews and explosive memoir -- in a public fashion previously unseen by typically tight-lipped British royals.
The unprecedented access the couple granted in multimillion dollar deals with Netflix and Spotify, among others, also prompted criticism of monetising their monarchy links.
Harry's 2023 autobiography, "Spare", lifted the veil on his royal rifts, describing William as his "arch-nemesis" and alleging his brother physically attacked him in a blazing 2019 row about Meghan.
His daughter Lilibet was born in the US in 2021.
"He misses his family... but also his friends, his country of birth," Owens explained.
"Whilst America has offered them a more peaceful retreat ... they've struggled to reinvent themselves in a dynamic way."
