Prince Harry will be spending Valentine’s Day apart from his wife Meghan Markle after she flew home early from the Invictus Games in Canada.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex had arrived in Vancouver together on Friday before heading on to Whistler to attend a series of events connected to the competition.
But Meghan has now returned alone to the couple’s £12million home in Montecito, California, to see their children Prince Archie, five, and Princess Lilibet, three.
Harry, meanwhile, will stay in Canada to watch the rest of the tournament for injured service personnel and veterans, which will end with Sunday’s closing ceremony.
While this means the couple will be apart on Valentine’s Day this Friday, aides said that Meghan had always planned to leave and let Harry attend the remaining events solo.
Plans were not given in advance for security reasons, and a source close to the couple said: ‘This was always planned. Meghan is going home to be with her children.
‘Meghan left the Games in Dusseldorf early after five days to go home. This is Prince Harry’s event and she is there to support him, but this was planned.’
It comes after Meghan was said to have told fans at a wheelchair basketball game in Vancouver on Sunday that she was missing her children.
Cynthia Phelps, 39, her husband James, 44, and their seven-month-old baby Laramie had breakfast with the Sussexes at their hotel in the city on Saturday.
Mrs Phelps, from Alaska, then spoke to Meghan at the match on Sunday, and told reporters: ‘She said [Laramie] was a very happy baby. She said her kids were at home and she missed them and she was excited to see a baby that was so happy.’
The Duchess attended events held in Whistler yesterday morning, before being driven back to Vancouver and then flying to Los Angeles.
Meghan enjoyed tubing down a snowy slope – sharing a clip on Instagram yesterday of her screaming as she span down in a purple inflatable inner tube.
In earlier clips, she could be seen walking hand-in-hand with Harry towards the slope, before being given instructions about her tubing run.
Meghan could then be heard asking about ‘keeping your body weight back’ on the inflatable, before saying ‘No, I really don’t want to do it’ during a countdown.
More than 500 competitors from 23 nations are taking part in the seventh edition of the games in Vancouver.
Harry, a former British Army captain, launched the Invictus Games in 2014 as an international sports tournament for injured service personnel and veterans.
The games were held in London in 2014, in Orlando in 2016, Toronto in 2017, Sydney in 2018, The Hague in 2022 and Dusseldorf in 2023.
It comes as Harry and Meghan have been carrying out more events separately in recent months, amid reports of a ‘professional separation’ to pursue more of their own personal business and charity passions.
Last December, Harry used a New York media summit to challenge persistent online rumours that his marriage to Meghan is on the rocks.
With the Duchess 2,500 miles away at a gala event in Los Angeles with friend Tyler Perry, Harry was asked about the public’s fixation on their relationship.
But the Duke told the DealBook Summit: ‘Apparently we’ve bought or moved house 10, 12 times. We’ve apparently divorced maybe 10, 12 times as well.
‘So it’s just like, ‘what?’ It’s hard to keep up with, but that’s why you just sort of ignore it. The people I feel most sorry about are the trolls.
‘Their hopes are just built and built, and it’s like, ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes’, and then it doesn’t happen. So I feel sorry for them. Genuinely, I do.’