Prince Harry said his concern for wife Meghan Markle’s safety is why he hasn’t brought her back to the United Kingdom in recent years.

Prince Harry will not spare the risk of Meghan Markle‘s safety.

That’s why the Duke of Sussex is reluctant to bring his wife of six years—with whom he shares son Archie Harrison, 5, and daughter Lilibet “Lili” Diana, 3—back to the United Kingdom. (Meghan has only visited the U.K. a handful of times since her and Harry’s 2020 relocation to the United States, with the most recent being her attendance at Queen Elizabeth II‘s funeral in 2022.)

“It’s still dangerous,” Harry said of the British tabloids’ coverage on the couple in a recent ITV interview, “and all it takes is one lone actor, one person who reads this stuff to act on what they have read.”

He continued, “And whether it’s a knife or acid, whatever it is, and these are things that are of genuine concern for me. It’s one of the reasons why I won’t bring my wife back to this country.”

In fact, Harry believes that “anything I say about my family results in a torrent of abuse from the press,” which he said further puts Meghan and their kids’ safety at risk.

“They pushed me too far,” he noted, explaining why he took Mirror Group Newspapers—which oversees The Mirror, The Sunday Mirror and The People—to U.K. court. “It got to a point where you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t. But I don’t think there’s anybody in the world better suited and placed to be able to see this through than myself.”

And Harry came out victorious against the publisher. Last year, a judge in London’s High Court ruled there was “extensive” phone hacking by the company from 2006 to 2011 and that Harry’s devices were likely hacked “to a modest extent.”

The Spare author and MGN reached a settlement earlier this year, with the publisher agreeing to cover legal costs and damages, as well as an interim payment of approximately $505,000 for invading his privacy, according to his attorney David Sherborne.

Patrick van Katwijk/Getty Images

Still, Harry’s clash with British tabloids has taken a toll on his life, particularly his strained relationship with dad King Charles III and brother Prince William. As he explained to ITV, the royal family’s unwillingness to push back against tabloids is a “central piece” of their rift.

“I’ve made it very clear that this is something that needs to be done, it would be nice if we did it as a family,” Harry shared. “I believe that from a service standpoint and when you’re in a public role, these are the things that we should be doing for the greater good.”

He added, “For me, the mission continues, but yes, it’s caused part of a rift.”

The couple’s rift with the Royal family had had a fallout right from the start:

In Spare, Prince Harry recalls being so excited for Prince William and sister-in-law Kate Middleton to meet Meghan Markle. So he was “a bit hurt” when William allegedly advised him to “slow down,” saying, “‘She’s an American actress after all, Harold. Anything might happen.'” (Harry notes that these are his memories of what was said.)

And when he did introduce his brother to his beloved in October 2016, Harry wrote, Meghan—an admitted hugger—leaned in to embrace William and “he recoiled.” But “Willy got over it,” Harry continued, and “exchanged a few warm words with Meg.”

Kate wasn’t at that first meeting, William explaining she was busy with the children, but in Netflix’s 2022 docuseries Harry & Meghan, Meghan detailed a similar hugging issue with her future sister-in-law when they finally met in early 2017. However, all was not frosty: Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand reported in their 2020 book Finding Freedom that Kate told Meghan to reach out to her anytime, that she understood what she was going through (as a royal love interest, that is).