Prince Harry, Meghan Markle Could Return As Part-Time Royals During Charles' Reign, Author Claims

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle may be able to serve the monarchy again if Prince Charles agrees to their terms, a royal author has suggested.

Royal author Tom Quinn recently weighed in on Prince Charles' reported plan to slim down the monarchy once he takes over the throne as well as Prince Harry and Markle's potential roles during the Prince of Wales' reign.

"We’ve already heard Charles say he wants to streamline the royal family, [to] modernize it," Quinn told Us Weekly while discussing his book "Scandals of the Royal Palaces: An Intimate Memoir of Royals Behaving Badly." "I think Meghan and Harry are hoping … Charles will be open to [them being] part-time royals, which is what they wanted from the start."

Prince Harry and Markle announced their decision to step down from their royal duties in January 2020, nearly two years after they wed. After attending the March 2020 Commonwealth Day service as their final public engagement as senior working royals, the couple moved to Canada before relocating to California for good.

Queen Elizabeth II gave them a year to decide whether or not they would make their decision to quit royal duties permanent. In February last year, Prince Harry and Markle ultimately decided to continue their lives away from the palace.

Royal correspondent Omid Scobie, co-author of the Sussex biography "Finding Freedom," said that Prince Harry and Markle had planned an arrangement that would have allowed them to carry out their royal duties while also doing private work. However, the royal correspondent claimed that the Queen vetoed their "one foot in, one foot out" approach.

Quinn predicted that "things will change" once Prince Charles takes over for his mother.

"Of course, the queen — who grew up with this sense that you’re either in fully or out fully — she wouldn’t allow [it]," the "Kensington Palace: An Intimate Memoir from Queen Mary to Meghan Markle" author claimed. "But … Charles may well allow this."

Quinn said he believes that the heir apparent may be "likely" to extend the olive branch to his younger son for better optics. He suggested that the Prince of Wales could allow Prince Harry and Markle to take on royal duties for six months and live the rest of the year in California.

"It would be better to say to Harry, 'OK, we’ll do it the way you want to do it. You can be here for six months,'" Quinn continued. "It's not as if being a working member of the royal family involves anything politically sensitive or controversial, because really, when they're full-time royals, they open hospitals. They, you know, give their names to charities. So that is possible that, that they could do that for half the year and, you know, do their other stuff in America."

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex recently reunited with Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles in the U.K. before they headed to the Netherlands for the Invictus Games, the couple's rep confirmed to Page Six.

Prince Harry and Markle's U.K. stop was not announced until after they landed in London, but the couple had revealed plans to visit the Queen last month when they announced that they won't be able to attend his late grandfather Prince Philip's memorial service on March 29.

"The Duke will not be returning to the U.K. in late March but hopes to visit his grandmother as soon as possible," a spokesperson for the couple told Page Six at the time.