Prince Harry 'Behaving Like a Grown Up' Over Money For U.K. Cottage

Prince Harry is "behaving like a grown up" after repaying public money on the U.K. home he shares with Meghan Markle, a royal author tells Newsweek.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have repaid $3.2 million used to renovate Frogmore Cottage so it was fit for them to raise baby Archie prior to their shock exit from royal life.

They are also no longer receiving public money from Prince Charles after signing a mega deal with Netflix last week, Newsweek confirmed yesterday.

The two developments mean they have achieved the financial independence they vowed to obtain when they first made their plans to step back as working royals in January.

Penny Junor, author of Camilla biography The Duchess, told Newsweek: "I think this is a very good outcome. I think it's the right thing for them to have done.

"They're grown up people who shouldn't really be living off their father still. I think it will earn them some brownie points.

"Harry inherited a lot of money before from his mother. I don't think he was short of a bob[British slang for money] or two already.

"While £2.4 million ($3.2 million) is a fortune to most of us, it may not be quite so much for him. But it's good that he's behaving like a grown up now."

Harry and Meghan had been heavily criticized in the U.K. for not returning the money when they abandoned their life within the palace and headed for America, via a short stay in Canada.

They have kept the Grade II listed home, set in Home Park, Windsor, and will still use it as their base when in Britain.

Frogmore had been five apartments set aside for household staff and the money was spent converting the building into a single coherent family home.

The couple paid for the interior design as well as fixtures and fittings themselves and the house has some emotional significance for them.

It is where they spent the first days and months of Baby Archie's life and is a short walk from their wedding venue, St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle.

Journalist Richard Kay, a close friend of Princess Diana and former royal correspondent, said the move for financial independence was part of an effort to be "truly free."

Writing in his Daily Mail column, he said: "For more than a year, it has been the millstone around Prince Harry's neck, a gold‑plated slice of taxpayers' largesse that reeked of privilege and entitlement.

"But to Harry and Meghan, the £2.4 million of public money, our money, that was lavished on renovating Frogmore Cottage, only for it to be shuttered and abandoned along with the rest of their royal lives, represented something far more intrinsic.

"He saw it as a chain that shackled them to the land of his birth, inhibiting their efforts to be truly free of the Royal Family and crucially of their media critics.

"In his eyes, the money was not a loan from a generous nation pleased to be helping this young royal couple find its feet after their joyful wedding, but rather a stick with which to beat them.

"So paying back every penny to the public purse, having previously offered to do so at the rate of £18,000 a month (a deal of such indulgence it would have taken them 11 years to repay the debt), is highly significant."

Joe Ventre, digital campaign manager at the TaxPayers' Alliance, said in a statement: "At long last the California couple have coughed up the cash.

"This was a hard-fought win for taxpayers, who were furious to see Frogmore upgraded at public expense before the couple swanned off and dodged the bill with a decade-long payback plan.

"This royal refund is exactly what should have happened in the first place."