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When it became clear this month that Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, would return to Britain, it touched on issues of money, power and family that make for a news moment.

Had the wounds that prompted a family separation healed? Would the couple return to royal duties? Had health concerns softened hard feelings?

To explore those questions, we turned to colleagues with a track record of reporting on the royal family: Michael D. Shear, the chief U.K. correspondent for The New York Times; Sarah Lyall, a writer at large; Mark Landler, who covered two monarchs while the London bureau chief; and Esther Bintliff, the U.K. editor.

These are edited excerpts from our conversation.

Let’s go back to the moment you found out Meghan and Harry were returning. Were you surprised?

MICHAEL SHEAR: It was after 10 p.m. here in London when the news broke, and it was one of those news moments you realize instantly that it was going to resonate across the world. I managed to confirm the move in a few minutes and wrote two short paragraphs so the night desk could get the headline up quickly. Then it was a two-hour mad dash to build the story out, a few paragraphs at a time, publishing a new version each time.

SARAH LYALL: I was shocked by its suddenness, and also by how different it was from Harry and Meghan’s decision to leave Britain in 2020. Then, it all played out in public — the couple spent a long time airing their grievances and explaining themselves — but this new move came as a complete surprise.

ESTHER BINTLIFF: We’ve had hints that Harry increasingly felt a desire to patch things up, particularly after Charles’s cancer diagnosis. In an interview last year, he said that he wanted to reconcile with the family and added, “I don’t know how much longer my father has.” After that he had a private tea with the king and then, in July, brought his children and Meghan to meet with Charles and Camilla. So I think the sense that time is short for his children to have time with their grandfather was probably a factor, as well as Harry’s own love for British culture.

But one of the issues we face with royals coverage is that clearly almost all of this is informed speculation. It’s notable that at the time of this conversation, neither Harry or Meghan has spoken or written publicly confirming their move, and neither have any representatives of the royal family.

Because they’ve relinquished their royal duties, Meghan and Harry are private citizens, though they continue to wield considerable influence. What right does the public have to know about them?

SARAH: I’d frame it a bit differently. Harry and Meghan have only intermittently behaved like private citizens. They’ve invited the public into their lives — remember their interview with Oprah Winfrey and Harry’s memoir, “Spare”? The issue for them is that while they need the press, they hate the press — particularly the British tabloids that turned against them years ago. Anything that is reported that the Sussexes haven’t explicitly authorized tends to make them very upset.

MICHAEL: As someone who spent 16 years covering presidents in the White House, I confronted this issue before in a different context. I remember a taxpayer-funded trip that President Obama and his family took to Africa early in his first term. When the couple wanted to tour a former slave prison with their young girls without reporters, it prompted a huge fight over their demand for a “private family moment.” It escalated again the next day when they posted a seven-minute, White House-produced video of the tour on Obama’s Facebook page. So much for a private family moment!

MARK LANDLER: Mike and I both come from the White House beat, which turns out to be good training for covering the royal family — never more so, perhaps, than with the current president. Harry and Meghan want press coverage on their terms. It was a big part of why they left Britain in the first place. But that’s not how the bargain works.

ESTHER: As a British person, I would just add that the royals inhabit a unique and curious position in this country. They have no political power. Their roles are ceremonial. Of course they have access to great wealth and luxury, but at a cost. If you are born into the inner royal family, you are in a fairly invidious position of being scrutinized and photographed from a young age. You lack any real choice about your career. That’s where I would say they are different from politicians, who have chosen a public life.

If Harry had wanted to be a doctor, say, or a lawyer, it would have been all but impossible. If he’d wanted to live entirely in private, that would have been extremely difficult. I think that helps explain the uneasy relationship between all the modern royals and the media, but especially Harry, who was a young boy when his mother died while being chased by the paparazzi.

Do we cover them as royals? Celebrities? Businesspeople? Politicians? Is there a difference?

SARAH: Harry is still a royal, even if he isn’t a “working” one. But because he’s outside the structure of the family business — not doing events for them, not being paid by them — I’d say he exists as more of a celebrity, for now. But a strange sort of celebrity because of the mystique around royalty. It remains to be seen if he’s somehow informally readmitted into the family circle and can again use royalty as a shield against scrutiny.

MICHAEL: I’m not sure you can really separate Harry’s royalness and his celebrity. They are so intertwined in the story of his life and the controversies that have repeatedly fanned the flames of the public’s fascination. And yes, I suspect we will be writing about the reconciliation question, especially as it relates to the relationship between Harry and William, the future king.

MARK: Sarah and Mike have it right. They are celebrities with an extra dash of stardust. The hard part for them is that, like other celebrities, they could face a sell-by date. When Edward VIII abdicated in 1936 to marry Wallis Simpson, a divorced American woman, they were instant celebrities but receded into a long afterlife as wandering socialites. That’s a precedent Harry and Meghan will be eager to avoid.

The royal family is private and protected, but the rumor mill runs wild. How do we find and maintain trustworthy sources?

MARK: The trick, in my experience, is twofold: Cultivate serious people who know the royal family well, usually because they once worked for them, and stay away from prurient rumors, which are impossible to confirm because the people who know aren’t talking, and the people who talk don’t know.

SARAH: Mark has put his finger on what makes covering the royal family so different from anything else. Their press operation is trained to reveal just what the family wants revealed, neither more nor less. Many of the supposed behind-the-scenes events you read about — the dramatic, insidery details about who said what, who argued with whom, whose feelings got hurt — are pure speculation.

MICHAEL: I was rereading parts of Harry’s memoir the other day, and there are numerous places where he recounts stories in the British press about him or his family that he says were completely made up. Maybe they were, and maybe they weren’t. But it’s a good reminder that much of the “news” about the royals that is spread through Britain is little more than rumor or gossip often spread in big, bold headlines by the nation’s very aggressive tabloids.

Some people may wonder: Why does The Times care about all of this?

MARK: Harry remains a prince, the second son of King Charles, and fifth in line for the throne. His marriage to Meghan Markle, a biracial American actress, was a milestone in the history of the House of Windsor. Their continuing effort to chart their own path will be an engrossing story, whatever one’s view of them.

SARAH: To some people, they’re important because of the position they still hold in British society, their place in the social and even political fabric of the country. Other people look at them as members of a long-running soap opera whose every step — marriages, divorces, feuds — plays out in public view. Either way, they’re newsworthy.

ESTHER: As an editor, I am mindful that there is an opportunity cost. When we assign multiple reporters to any big story line, we have to consider, what are the stories we’re not telling as a result? But there are certainly important and fascinating aspects to the institution — we saw the “soft power” aspect of Charles’s role, for instance, at various points over the past two years, including hosting President Zelensky of Ukraine days after his stormy White House meeting, and when Charles visited Canada in a show of solidarity after President Trump called for it to become the 51st state.

What will you be watching next?

MARK: Harry and Meghan have said little about how they plan to live in England. How public will they be? Will Meghan try to return to her acting career, even if the early reports of a TV series seemed premature? Most of all, will Harry make a genuine effort to heal the rift with William?

SARAH: I’d love to see if they’re prepared to discuss what happened in America that made them want to come back. Another open question: How will they support themselves when they no longer receive money from the royal family, and when many of the ways they sought to make money in the United States — the Netflix and podcast deals, for instance — didn’t turn out the way they’d hoped? So many questions!

MICHAEL: The monarchy does seem like it’s approaching a key moment of change. With Charles ill with cancer, William is poised to take over at some point in the coming years. The question is what will the family drama be like when that happens. Will King William still be feuding with his brother? Will there still be bad blood between Queen Kate and Meghan? What happens in the next few weeks and years will shape the future of the British royal story.