The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are set to return to the UK 'within days' but it is unclear how their homecoming will impact the Royal Family's interpersonal dynamics. 

While Prince Harry, 41, remains estranged from his older brother, the Prince of Wales, and has allegedly 'lost touch' with his closest ally, Princess Eugenie, the Spencers are believed to be much friendlier towards the Sussexes. 

When Harry and his wife Meghan Markle travelled to Britain last month, it was Princess Diana's younger brother, Earl Spencer, who graciously hosted them at his family's ancestral seat, Althorp House. 

But Charles Spencer, 62, is not the only relative Prince Harry will be leaning on for support as he returns to the country after six years living away in the United States amid claims the royal has 'very few friends left' from his past life.  

In addition to spending more time with Charles and his new wife, Norwegian archaeologist Cat Jarman, the Duke and Duchess could become better acquainted with the families of Diana's two sisters, Harry's 'red aunts' Lady Sarah McCorquodale and Lady Jane Fellowes. 

The pair, along with Charles, even travelled to Montecito - where the Sussexes have lived since 2020 - to attend the christening of Harry and Meghan's daughter, Princess Lilibet, three years ago; none of the royals was present for the event. 

Amid speculation that Harry and Meghan will call the Cotswolds home when they are in the UK, the proximity to the Spencer siblings could bring Harry closer to his six maternal cousins while Archie, seven, and Lilibet, five, are introduced to a new brood of Spencers.

Lady Sarah McCorquodale is the oldest of the Spencer siblings and famously dated now-King Charles as a teenager before settling down with farmer and former Coldstream Guard Neil McCorquodale.

Charles first met Diana at the Spencers' Althorp home on a shooting weekend in November 1977.

Sarah and Charles' relationship continued until February 1978, when they suddenly broke up during a ski weekend to the Klosters in Switzerland.

Sarah, who is now 71, went on to marry Neil in 1980 before settling in Grantham, Lincolnshire. They have three children, Emily, George, and Celia, and six grandchildren.

Sarah was close to her sister, sometimes accompanying Diana on engagements as a lady-in-waiting, and accompanied now-King Charles to Paris to bring back her body after she died in 1997. 

Lady Sarah was a guest at the christening of Harry’s children - Prince Archie in 2019 and Princess Lilibet in 2023 -  and was invited by both princes to attend the unveiling of a statue of Diana in 2021.

Lady Sarah also showed her support for Prince Harry during the Invictus Games anniversary in May 2024, when they were pictured together at St Paul's. 

Throughout his controversial memoir Spare, Harry gave a 'stand out thanks' to Lady Sarah, Lady Jane and Earl Spencer but failed to mention the late Queen, King Charles or his brother. 

Known fondly as ‘Emils’, she was just a 19-year-old student at Leeds Metropolitan University when she was diagnosed with plasmacytoma, a rare form of spinal cancer, but was later given the all-clear.

Diana's niece beat the disease and went on to marry James Hutt, whom she met on a blind date. Prince Harry, along with William and Kate, attended the wedding in Lincolnshire in 2012. 

She gave up work at Savills estate agents when she had Isabella, 12 and Henry, 10. She is now office manager at James's engineering firm in Cambridge.

Born two months after Prince Harry, George, 41, is the middle child of Lady Sarah and Neil McCorquodale and is believed to be close to his royal cousin.

Harry was a guest at George’s stag do, reportedly responsible for stripping one of his friends naked after downing beer, cider, gin and tonics and Jägerbombs.

The Prince was also guest of honour at George's wedding to Bianca Moore at Netherwood in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

George previously said he has a close relationship with his cousins after joining them for family holidays on Necker, Sir Richard Branson’s private island.

Once described as a ‘naughty boy from England’, George is now a far more sensible father of three children - Sybil, eight, Molly, six, and Joseph, four.

The youngest of the McCorquodale offspring, Celia, 37, shares a wild streak with her cousin Harry and brother George.

When she was at Leeds University in 2012, photographs emerged of her enthusiastically partying, clutching bottles of wine and flashing her tongue piercing.

In one image she posed as the Queen in a grey wig while sitting on the lap of a male friend in a Prince Philip mask. In another, a student was drinking from her cleavage.

The media studies graduate went on to become a private tutor and married George Woodhouse, a sales negotiator at Savills, in 2018.

Wearing the Spencer tiara, a family heirloom worn by her aunt on her wedding day to the then-Prince Charles, they exchanged vows, watched by newlyweds Harry and Meghan.

The couple, who tied the knot at St Andrew and St Mary’s Church Stoke Rochford, Lincolnshire, share two children, son Walter, five, and daughter Winifred, three. 

 The middle Spencer sister - she is younger than Sarah and was older than Diana - Lady Jane acquired a ‘hatful’ of O and A Levels at West Heath boarding school.

She eschewed any professional calling, however, instead choosing to settle down at the relatively young age of 21 after marrying Robert Fellowes, then assistant private secretary to the Queen and first cousin of Ronald Ferguson, the father of Sarah, Duchess of York.

The now 69-year-old went on to have three children, Laura, Alexander, and Eleanor, and is now the proud grandmother of four grandchildren.

She was a guest at the wedding of the Prince and Princess of Wales, and subsequently gave a reading at her sister’s funeral. Like older sister Sarah, she was also invited to attend the 2021 unveiling of the Diana statue.

She remains particularly close to Harry and was asked to do a reading from the Song of Solomon at his 2018 wedding to Meghan Markle. 

Before their nuptials, Harry ensured that Meghan met both of his mother's sisters and, during an engagement interview, he emphasised how important Jane and Sarah were to him.

Meghan acknowledged this, responding: 'I think in being able to meet his aunts, I'm able to, in some way, know a part of her (Diana) through them and of course through him. And it's - it's incredibly special.'

One of her godparents is the Queen's cousin, the Duke of Kent. In June 1999, Robert Fellowes was granted a life peerage as Baron Fellowes, of Shotesham in the County of Norfolk, after first being knighted as Sir Robert Fellowes.

When Lord Fellowes died in 2024 at the age of 82, Harry secretly travelled to the UK to attend his uncle's funeral, where he came face-to-face with Prince William. 

At the time, Harry chose to stay at Althorp House rather than with the Royal Family.  

She bonded with William when they were bridesmaid and pageboy at disgraced former prince Andrew’s wedding in 1986, and she is also a godmother to Princess Charlotte. 

A former economist, Laura, 46, writes fiction under the pseudonym Mave Fellowes.

She married equity analyst Nicholas Pettman in 2009 in Snettisham, west Norfolk, where her parents live in an old rectory. William and Kate were both guests. 

Laura and Nicholas share three children, two sons and a daughter. 

Known affectionately as ‘Beetle’ to his friends, Jane’s only son Alexander, 43, is a respectable investment banker.

He went on to marry designer, illustrator, and calligrapher Alexandra Finlay in 2009 at the Palace of Westminster - Harry was a guest - and had the reception at Claridge’s.

Alexander and Alexandra, who is a great-great-great-granddaughter of Whisky distiller Johnnie Walker, have two children, Robert, 11, and Rose, 10.

The youngest of Jane and Robert’s children, Eleanor followed her brother to Oxford University.

After graduating, she trained as a probation officer and has written for the London Review of Books.

The 41-year-old, who attended Diana’s funeral in 1997 and Harry’s wedding in 2018, also lectures for the Howard League for Penal Reform.

She is also a domestic violence advocate for Al-Hasaniya Moroccan Women’s Centre.