How will the British press cover Harry and Meghan this time around?

When Prince Harry and Meghan Markle return to Britain this month, they will be stepping back into a country that has spent six years talking about them from afar.

Their children, Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, are due to attend school in Britain in September, and the couple are expected to live privately outside London for an extended period, according to reports. They will remain non-working royals.

Many questions have already been asked about the couple's return — but after being away for years following a tumultuous relationship with the British press that appeared to have been a factor in their decamping to California, could the tabloids' fascination with the couple peter out this time?

Speculations about the life plans and movements of Royals are nothing new in Britain, but in the mythology that can sometimes be fomented around them, Harry and Meghan were often seen as "the evil, the bad cops, it's all very black and white," said Steven Barnett, a professor of communications at the University of Westminster.

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"It's very binary… There is a tendency in certain elements of the British press to go in for very personal witch hunts."

The early coverage included the Daily Mail's "(almost) straight outta Compton" headline about Meghan's mother and The Sun's "Harry's girl on Pornhub," which involved the tabloid discovering scenes from Markle's time on the American TV series Suits on a pornographic website, then apologizing for it months later.

A Guardian analysis of 843 articles across 14 U.K. newspapers from May 2018 to January 2020 found 43 per cent of coverage about Meghan was negative, compared with just eight per cent of 144 articles about Kate Middleton.

Royal commentator Afua Hagan said that interest would ramp up in Britain as they return.

She told Reuters while the couple were essentially walking back in to the "lion's den" they were better prepared this time: "They're not bringing a knife to a gunfight. They know what they have to do, what ​they're going to come up against, and will prepare themselves better."

It's not just the couple that has changed, Barnett said; "other soap operas" may be occupying the minds of the British public.

When Meghan and Harry first lived in the U.K., Barnett said, the country was in a different place.

"We didn't have, you know, two wars; the possibility of this country being drawn into a war with Russia; the ravages of climate change. Not to mention, cost of living problems and people struggling to get by."

Still, the court loss Prince Harry and several others recently suffered in privacy lawsuits they had filed against the Daily Mail could lead to more "nasty and vitriolic" coverage, Barnett said.