Royals Who Moved To The US And Never Looked Back

In March 2023, Sweden's Princess Madeline announced she'd be moving back to her native country by the end of the year. The relocation is a big deal, as the royal has been living in the US for well over a decade, moving first to New York City and then later to Miami, Florida. Her decision to live in North America, which was motivated by her desire to work for her mother's World Childhood Division and her determination to give her family a more normal life, didn't come without consequences. According to Royal Central, it likely caused her children to lose their places in the line of succession and cost them their royal titles (according to Swedish succession laws, future Kings and Queens must be raised in the country). As a result, we can't imagine that the decision to return was an easy one.

And while we're happy for the princess and her family, we have to admit we are a little sad to be losing another royal resident. There have been plenty of princes and princesses who have called America home over the years— Princesses Eugenie and Beatrice both lived here for a bit in their early 20s, Thailand's Princess Ubolratana Rajajkanya spent decades in the country, and even former King Edward VIII spent a good chunk of time here after marrying Wallis Simpson— but their numbers are dwindling. So today, we're looking at the royals who moved to America and never looked back. Our list is, essentially, a complete rundown of every royal family member who still calls the good old US of A home.

In the mid-1970s, Greece officially abolished its monarchy, ridding the country of even a superficial figurehead in favor of a more classical democracy. As a result, King Constantine II and all of his descendants were banished from their homeland and stripped of their citizenship. Etiquette, however, allowed the family to retain their (ultimately powerless) titles, which is how we've wound up with His Royal Highness Crown Prince Pavlos.

The heir to the Greek crown would have taken the throne following the death of his father in 2023 had the monarchy not been abolished. Instead, he's spent much of his life outside Greece. As an adult, Pavlos splits his time between London, where his wife, Crown Princess Marie Chantal runs a clothing line and New York City where he works for a financial firm.

Prince Pavlos' NYC base is an Upper East Side townhouse that he purchased with Marie Chantal for $7.5 million in 2000. Photos of the impeccably decorated manse were published recently in Hello! Magazine, where the princess described it as "...very much stripped back to show off the real beauty of the house's bones, nothing too fussy." Although the use of the phrase "stripped back" here seems to be more in comparison to the ornate palaces Prince Pavlos spent his childhood in than to the average American home.

Following King Constantine's death, there were rumors that Prince Pavlos would be returning to Greece more permanently, but sources close to the couple maintain they have no intentions of selling their NYC home.

In 2021, Princess Mako, a member of Japan's imperial family, left behind everything she had ever known in order to marry her "commoner" husband. According to Page Six, the princess had met her future spouse, Kei Komuro, at a restaurant in 2012 when they were both studying overseas. Their courtship was initially approved by the palace and the public, but when Komuro found himself embroiled in some embarrassing family drama of his own that approval was quickly revoked. Unwilling to give up her love, Princess Mako decided she'd relinquish her title, an official imperial wedding, and her inheritance for a chance at her own happily ever after.

So at the end of the year, following their scaled-back ceremony where Mako reiterated that "Kei is irreplaceable for me. For us, marriage is a necessary choice to live while cherishing our hearts," the couple moved to New York City, desperate for some distance from the media storm that had surrounded them in Japan and the chance to live a more normal life. In the US, Komuro works for a prominent law firm and the former princess interns at the MET. By all accounts, it seems the couple really does lead a fairly typical life (as demonstrated by the way the American press largely leaves them alone), though paparazzi still land the occasional picture of the pair wandering the streets of their new hometown.

Japan's Princess Mako wasn't the only royal to leave her home country behind for love in 2021. Norway's Princess Martha Louise also took the plunge, ditching her European palace and royal duties for a shot at happiness with a Los Angeles-based shaman and healer named Durek Verrett.

The pair met in 2019 and got engaged shortly after. There was concern, almost immediately, that the happy couple was using the princess' title and connections for their own commercial gain (thanks to things like their European speaking tour called "The Princess and the Shaman"), so Princess Martha Louise did what she felt was best and essentially gave up her role as a working member of the royal family. The move, which resulted in her no longer representing the royal house, was seen as the best way to "create peace around the royal household," a representative told CBS News. Free of her royal obligations, the princess then decided that the time was right to join her fiance stateside.

The pair, along with Martha Louise's two younger daughters, now live somewhere in LA. Shaman Durek, as he's more commonly known, still works as a spiritual guide and healer, and has stayed close to many of his well-known celebrity clients like Gwyneth Paltrow and Nina Dobrev.

Prince Dimitri of Yugoslavia may not be a household name the way Prince Harry is, but he's actually the descendent of several royal houses, including those of Italy, Russia, and Greece. His family's official reign ended during WWII when Yugoslavia was invaded by axis powers, but, like Prince Pavlos, they've kept their royal titles, believing them to be theirs by birthright if nothing else.

Dimitri spent his younger years in Paris but moved to New York City in 1983 after graduating from university. He pursued a more traditional route at first, working in finance at a major brokerage firm, but eventually tired of the rat race and began following his true passion— gemology. After working in Sothbey's jewelry department for several years, he started his own line of opulent accessories, founding the Prince Dimitri Company in 2007. According to The New York Times, who wrote a profile of the royal focusing on his work as a designer, pieces in his collection tend to go from anywhere between $150,000 to $2 million.

Aside from his obvious professional success, Prince Dimitri says the ability to live anonymously is what's kept him in the US all of these years. He told Insider, "In New York, nobody cares as long as you are nice and fun and intelligent and mind your own business. Anything goes, it's very relaxed."