The Duchess of Sussex has shared a rare glimpse into family life, posting a carousel of 11 pictures on social media with the caption “Summer holiday” and a sun emoji. Among the snaps, Prince Archie, 7, is pictured sitting in the cockpit of a plane, donning a pilot’s cap and holding the controls, while another shows Prince Harry, 41, playfully throwing Princess Lilibet, 5, into the air over a swimming pool. Further images capture the Duke and Duchess laughing over dinner, and Harry with their two children frolicking on a beach as Meghan watches on.
One photo may inadvertently reveal the family’s European hideout: it shows the menu of a beachside fish restaurant, O Melidense in Melides, a coastal town south of Lisbon often referred to as the “Hamptons of Portugal”. The Sun reported in 2024 that the Duke and Duchess had bought a home in Portugal, in the Alentejo region near Melides and just a short distance from Princess Eugenie and her husband, Jack Brooksbank. The family had been visiting Europe in recent weeks ahead of Prince Harry’s return to the UK to attend the Invictus Games in Birmingham; Meghan and the children had planned to accompany him but their arrival was delayed due to security concerns.
“Meghan Markle posted rare summer holiday photos of Archie and Lilibet, revealing a secret Portugal hideout and a visit to Charles.”
After their holiday, Harry and Meghan took Archie and Lilibet to meet King Charles and Queen Camilla at Highgrove for a “private family occasion”. It was the first time Charles, 77, had met his grandchildren in four years, and only the second meeting with Lilibet. That gathering also marked their first family reunion since the shock claims made by the Sussexes in their six-part Netflix documentary. Harry has met his father alone twice in the last two years — once after Charles’s cancer diagnosis and again at Clarence House last September.
The photo album offers a rare window into the Sussexes’ private summer, but the warmth of the beachside scenes and the cockpit adventure sits against a backdrop of ongoing family tensions, with the Highgrove visit representing a tentative step toward reconciliation.