By royal biographer Emily Andrews
The ROYAL INSIDER
It’s funny how things turn out, isn’t it? When they’ve been so critical of the institution to which the titles belong, why would Harry and Meghan want to accept them for their children?
The Sussexes have let it be known that from now on, it will be Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet.
It appears unlikely that at the age of three and one respectively, Archie and Lili will have taken the decision for themselves. So it must have been Harry and Meghan who chose for their children to use the titles Meghan said were their ‘birthright’, in that incendiary Oprah Winfrey interview back in March 2021.
Yet in that bombshell interview, Meghan didn’t seem entirely sold on the benefits those titles bring. ‘I have a lot of clarity on what comes with the titles, good and bad. And from my experience, a lot of pain,’ the mother-of-two said.
Despite that, she went on to describe her dismay at what she claimed were attempts by Buckingham Palace to change the George V ‘convention’ while she was pregnant with Archie ‘because they didn’t want him to be a prince’.
Baulking at ‘the idea of the first member of colour in this family not being titled in the same way that other grandchildren would be’, Meghan suggested it would be for her children to decide whether or not they would take their titles.
Once Charles became King, the oft-cited Letters Patent of George V in 1917 meant that Archie and Lili automatically became prince and princess as the grandchildren of the sovereign.
But what was so fascinating was that Archie and Lili remained Master and Miss for six months on the Buckingham Palace website.
It seems that, as part of a slimmed-down monarchy, Charles possibly did want to limit those with royal titles. And I really feel the King should have stuck to his guns.
It’d need another Letters Patent to officially remove the titles and Charles clearly did not want to upset the Sussexes by taking such an inflammatory step.
But darling, these children are not royal. They’re growing up as American kids, thousands of miles away from their British family and heritage.
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