It has been revealed that a year before they stood down as senior royals, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were negotiating potential collaborations for a major billion-dollar-backed US streaming service.

From early 2019 until after they dropped the “Megxit” bombshell in January last year, Harry and Meghan met with Quibi, a now-defunct YouTube competitor.

The Duke of Sussex raced back to London from the so-called Sandringham summit with Queen Elizabeth to visit executives from the quick video network when preparations for him to supply material seemed to be approaching completion.

In a shocking interview with Oprah Winfrey last month, the Duchess of Sussex said that the pair “didn’t have a plan” when they relocated to Canada last year.

However, it has now been revealed that Harry and Meghan met with the now-defunct video website just before the birth of their son Archie.

Quibi was a subscription-based streaming service with videos ranging from seven to ten minutes in length.

It was supposed to become a YouTube competitor, but it shut down only six months after release.

Since the pair was mainly consulting Meghan’s US-based advisors, the talks are said to have created tensions within Buckingham Palace employees, who were afraid the Sussexes wanted to “cash in” on their status.

“There were well-developed proposals in place with Quibi from early 2019 onwards,” a source familiar with the situation said.

“A lot of it was coordinated by Meghan’s people in America,” a source told the Telegraph.

The couple were said to have interacted with the video app’s founder, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and its CEO, Meg Whitman, who was formerly the president of eBay.

The plans were put on hold after the Sussexes moved because of the pandemic.