It was a tale made for Hollywood: a young family escaping oppression and bigotry, crossing the ocean to 'find freedom' and a new beginning.

'I fled my home country with my wife and my son, fearing for our lives,' Prince Harry told his friend, ITV journalist Tom Bradby, in early 2023.

No matter that – with an £11 million mansion in Montecito, an astonishing story to sell about racist royals freezing out a suicidal American princess and media giants brandishing mind-blowing cheques as they fought for the right to tell it – the Sussexes hardly constituted the traditional rags-to-riches American Dream.

Sadly for them, however, Hollywood soon woke up to the fact that the couple had only one story to tell and negligible talent in finding a new string to their bow. 

In fact, it's hard not to conclude that if things had worked out better for them in the Golden State, they surely wouldn't be having to swallow their pride by returning to the country that they say ruined their lives.

It once all looked so promising. The US media, so instinctively sympathetic to the Sussexes, lapped up their sob story – at first. 

Their explosive chat show interview with Oprah Winfrey, in March 2021, as was surely intended, laid down a marker of what they were willing to say – stunning suggestions of racism in the Royal Family and the failure to support a suicidal Meghan – if they were approached with lucrative TV and publishing deals.

They weren't long in coming, with a $100million five-year deal with Netflix, followed by a reported $20million multi-year deal with Spotify to produce and host podcasts.

Within months of the death of Queen Elizabeth in September 2022, the Sussexes let rip with more damaging claims about their time in The Firm with Harry & Meghan, a six-part Netflix documentary – in which they provided a predictably one-sided account of their split from the Royal Family – and Harry's ghost-written memoir, Spare, which detailed his troubled relationship with them.

Though it was a bestseller (1.43million copies worldwide on its first day), many critics were unimpressed, scenting that the Sussexes were running out of things to say beyond settling scores with the Royal Family.

They were right. Subsequent programmes to justify that eye-watering figure from Netflix were relentlessly worthy, mind-numbingly dull or, too often, both.

They included Live To Lead, a series of interviews with liberal-minded 'thought leaders' such as Greta Thunberg and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Polo, a five-part series about Harry's favourite sport, earned an embarrassing critics' score of 25 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes.

This summer, the couple's first jointly produced documentary about America's Girl Scouts, Cookie Queens, fared so badly on its opening weekend in US cinemas that it was beaten by a compilation of silly cat videos.

The Sussexes' output for Spotify was even more unimpressive, leading to the company ending the deal – officially by mutual agreement – early in June 2023 after they'd made just 12 episodes of their only show, Archetypes, in which the Duchess interviewed friends and celebrities including Serena Williams and Mariah Carey. 

Bill Simmons, a Spotify executive, branded the Sussexes 'f***ing grifters' on his own podcast.

But the show which perhaps had the biggest impact on the couple's image is one they didn't produce.

In February 2023, they were savaged in the acclaimed animated sitcom South Park. The episode, titled The Worldwide Privacy Tour, mocked the couple's plea for privacy and introduced Meghan as a 'sorority girl, actress, influencer, victim' – a devastating blow to their carefully curated image. 

It was time for change. Insiders said Meghan had always seen herself following in the footsteps of the original domestic goddess Martha Stewart. 

So, in March 2024, she unveiled American Riviera Orchard. 

The brand's unveiling was widely ridiculed as Meghan sent numbered jars of jam to famous friends – with no official launch to follow.

The following February, the brand's name was changed to As Ever. Products eventually hit the shops and some sold out (although nobody seems to know how many were on sale in the first place), but she was no Martha.

Any doubts on that score were settled by an accompanying TV series for Netflix called With Love, Meghan in which she shared her recipes for 'single-skillet spaghetti', crudites adorned with daisies and the perfect 'fluffy' scrambled eggs made with a 'splash' of sparkling water. 

If they weren't making programmes and podcasts, at least Harry and Meghan could be doing good works for charity.

But here was another record of under-achievement. 

In early 2022, it was revealed that the Sussexes' US charity, the Archewell Foundation, had told the IRS – America's taxation body – that in its first year of existence in 2020, it had raised 'less than $50,000' – £36,681. 

While its donations did improve, the couple's philanthropic pretensions were further undermined by revelations that, while speaking at climate change conventions, they were travelling in private jets.

The Sussexes weren't just failing to make money; they were also failing to keep Americans on their side. 

In January 2023, a poll for Newsweek revealed that in the month Spare came out Harry's popularity plunged 45 points among the US public, with Meghan suffering a 36-point fall.

This slide was all too apparent in the US media, initially so smitten with the theme of a mixed-race American refusing to be crushed by British racism and snobbery but over time losing faith (and interest) in a rich and entitled couple's endless victimhood.

In 2022, New York magazine's The Cut website interviewed Meghan and mocked the 'marshmallowy' splendour of their lives, writing that the Duchess talked like she had a tacky reality TV producer 'directing what she says'.

In 2023, even the usually supportive New York Times described Harry's battles with his critics in Spare as 'tiresome'. 

By the end of that year, the Hollywood Reporter included the Sussexes in its list of Hollywood's 'biggest losers', criticising their Netflix series and Harry's memoir as 'whiny' and describing the couple's brand as a 'sanctimonious bubble just begging to be popped'.

Vanity Fair delivered the coup de grace in its January 2025 edition. Seven years after running an adoring piece about how Meghan – ahead of her marriage to Harry – was a breath of fresh air, the magazine royally trounced the Sussexes in a long investigation headlined 'American Hustle'.

Its many criticisms ranged from the couple having antagonised their Montecito neighbours with all the attention they brought to the area, to a representative of the Duchess allegedly discussing the potential for a 'post-divorce' book deal in the event she splits up from her husband, though this was strongly disputed.

According to the magazine's sources, some of Meghan's underlings in her podcast venture found her so difficult that they ended up leaving early or even needing therapy.

The Duchess, who has vehemently denied bullying staff, 'would be warm and effusive at the beginning,' said the magazine, but 'When something went poorly, often due to Meghan and Harry's own demands, Meghan would become cold and withholding toward the person she perceived to be responsible.'

One might have assumed from their celebrity-packed 2018 wedding at Windsor Castle, that the Sussexes had plenty of A-list friends to make their California exile bearable.

Yet although guests at the nuptials included Oprah Winfrey, Serena Williams, James Corden, David and Victoria Beckham, and George and Amal Clooney, it soon became clear that many of them barely knew the couple.

According to sources, some – including the Clooneys, the Beckhams, plus Barack and Michelle Obama – distanced themselves from the Sussexes in embarrassment over their relentless attacks on the Royal Family.

Meghan and Harry did make the guest list of reality TV star Kris Jenner's glitzy James Bond-themed 70th birthday party last November but even this ended in unhelpful headlines after Kim Kardashian (Jenner's daughter) revealed that she had been asked to remove photos of the couple from her Instagram page.

So the Sussexes are heading back to a country where – to borrow the lyrics of The Mamas & The Papas' hit song California Dreamin' – all the leaves will be brown and the sky grey.

Will they also soon succumb to wistful memories of the sunny days they've left behind?