Prince Harry, his wife Meghan Markle and their two children live in a 16-bedroom Montecito mansion they call their "safe haven".
The Duchess of Sussex once said of the Californian abode, "you walk in and exhale, it's so calming, you feel free".
The pair escaped the gilded cage of royalty hoping for a quieter, less complicated life in America, but the serenity has done little to temper the prince's unbridled compulsion to take on an industry he loathes — the British tabloid press.
This week, the renegade royal traded the sunny West Coast for drizzly London and dove back into the fishbowl he fled to give evidence in a "super claim" against the publishers of the Daily Mail and the Mail on Sunday, Associated Newspapers.
He's one of seven high-profile claimants who allege the Daily Mail was using shadowy and illegal tactics to gather sensitive, personal information in pursuit of a salacious front page.
But the case, which has taken three years to get to trial, has been plagued by issues and many of them have revolved around Harry's legal team.
The Daily Mail has described the prince's allegations as preposterous, while others have said Harry is "clutching at straws".
The trial is complex, but the stakes are particularly high for Harry because royal insiders say that not only is the British press on trial, but so is the prince's judgement.
The prince who hates the press
Harry has long loathed British tabloids and believes a toxic culture on Fleet Street was to blame for the death of his mother, Diana Spencer.
Living a life of constant paranoia, the duke was convinced he was being spied on by private investigators on the tabloid's payroll for nearly two decades.
Royal commentator Afua Hagan said Harry's lifelong issues with the media led him to hate it.
"I think Harry looks at the tabloids with utter contempt. I think he doesn't think they're worth the paper they're written on," she told the ABC.
In court this week, Harry said he was instructed to "never speak out about it because of the institution I was in".
"We're told to never complain, never explain. I accepted it as part of my life," he said.
But his passive approach to the media's intrusion began to shift when he first met Markle and introduced her to the British public.
Writing in his witness statement, he said he "became increasingly troubled by the approach of not taking action against the press" in the wake of "vicious, persistent attacks on, harassment of and intrusive, sometimes racist articles".
By then, several Fleet Street outlets had already been exposed for having a nefarious culture of hacking the phones of everyone from pop stars and politicians to police officers and families of murder victims.
The Leveson inquiry into the culture of the British press found illegality was rife in the London tabloid scene and that the "outrageous" tactics used to uncover secrets had caused "severe harm to innocent people".
After the inquiry came a rush of lawsuits, with angry phone hacking victims eager to make the tabloids pay for the extraordinary breaches of privacy.
By 2019, the prince was on the verge of what became known as "megxit," a term used by the tabloids to seemingly blame the royal's exit from the firm on his wife.
It was also at this time it became clear Harry was now eager to sue.
His first target was Britain's most notorious rags: the Rupert Murdoch-owned The Sun and the now-defunct News of The World.
The latter's former editor admitted to hacking Harry's phone nine times.
The case against the Murdoch press was settled in 2025, with the prince receiving an apology and reportedly a cheque for the equivalent of $20 million.
Harry also took on The Mirror, citing similar allegations of egregious privacy breaches.
In 2023, he gave evidence against the tabloid and became the first royal in more than a century to testify in a courtroom and break ranks from the "never complain, never explain" ethos.
The high court ruled in favour of the duke, and he won about $280,000 of the $900,000 in damages he was seeking.
But the prince still wasn't satisfied and was after one last tabloid scalp — the Daily Mail.
Harry versus the Daily Mail
Harry's pursuit of the tabloid is less cut and dry than his previous lawsuits.
Unlike the Mirror and the Murdoch papers, there has never been a police inquiry into the Daily Mail, and no journalists at the title have ever admitted illegality.
There are also serious concerns over how the royal's legal team have gathered evidence.
A key member of Harry's legal research team is journalist-turned-anti-tabloid evangelist Graham Johnson.
Johnson is a self-confessed phone hacker himself and was charged and convicted of the offence in 2014.
In November last year, one of the private investigators who supposedly blew the whistle on the Daily Mail said his signature on a witness statement was forged.
In a statement submitted to the court, Gavin Burrows, who was central to the case brought by Harry and the other claimants, said he was on painkillers and drinking heavily when Johnson approached him and asked him to help him with research into phone hacking.
The statement goes on to say he "never" carried out illegal work for the Daily Mail.
The legal team taking on the Daily Mail is also likely to call infamous phone hacker and former private investigator Jonathan Rees.
Rees, a convicted criminal who planted drugs on a woman so a client could win a custody battle, had initially said he carried out bugging and phone hacking for the Daily Mail, but in an interview with UK network Channel Four, he said Harry and the other claimants "would have to rethink that".
"Yes, I did hear about it. I know it was going on, but I can't provide any evidence for it," Rees told journalist Cathy Newman on Channel Four.
The Mail says it has never used the services of Rees.
The prince has been a key driver of the case, but it's unclear whether he is comfortable with his legal team's willingness to involve shady former crooks in their case against the tabloid.
Harry the recruiter
A critical element of the case against the Daily Mail's publisher revolves around the mother of murder victim Stephen Lawrence.
In 1993, when Stephen Lawrence was 18 years of age, he was murdered while waiting for a bus in what was determined to be a race-based hate crime.
His mother, Doreen Lawrence, now a member of the House of Lords, became frustrated with the London Metropolitan Police's perceived lack of enthusiasm for the case and the lack of interest from the press.
Stephen Lawrence's father, Neville, however, was a friend of Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre, who took an interest in the case and ordered journalists to chase down the story and eventually two men were convicted of the murder.
The Daily Mail's intrepid pursuit of Stephen Lawrence's killers was praised because mainstream tabloids had a reputation for showing editorial bias when it came to matters of race, which often meant the deaths of black people were under-reported.
Lady Lawrence had been grateful for Mr Dacre and the Daily Mail for their effective investigative journalism, until 2022 when a call changed everything.
According to court documents, Lady Lawrence received a call from Harry, who told her he believed the Daily Mail had been hacking her phone.
She told the BBC, "[Harry] was busy looking at his own case and then my name kept cropping up and so he felt that I should know about it".
Lady Lawrence said she met with Harry's lawyer, David Sherborne, who also said she'd been the victim of illegal surveillance.
"I would like an apology for what they've done. We as a family [have] been going through so much, and they've added to the trauma," she said.
Mr Dacre is expected to be called as a witness in the case and the Daily Mail has described the allegations of illegally spying on Lady Lawrence as "groundless smears and appalling".
Lawyers for Lady Lawrence had previously pointed to statements given by Mr Rees as key evidence she was hacked, but it is unclear whether they will still prosecute this in court.
Harry's role in recruiting Lady Lawrence into the case has never been made clear, but the fact she is part of it ups the ante for the prince.
Lady Lawrence is not a royal or a pop star and her harrowing story has added a human element to the case.
But it also means that if the suit against the Daily Mail is unsuccessful, Harry could be blamed for roping her into a losing side that will owe the publication millions of dollars in court costs.
Hagan said she believed Harry had taken a risk, but a calculated one.
"As well as the Daily Mail being on trial, Prince Harry is on trial a little bit for his credibility," the royal commentator said.
"But it's not just him suing, there [are] six others, and for him that means strength in numbers."
For a very lonely prince, estranged from his family, bereaved by the death of his mother and his monarch grandmother, the risk of recruiting others might be offset by its comfort.
When Harry left court, he smiled and waved at the dozens of waiting photographers, many of them employees of the tabloid press he is on a crusade to crush.
For now, the boy who always knew he was the spare will return to his "safe haven" in Southern California, where he'll await the ruling of the High Court, and the judgement of his public.
