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With the apparent consent of King Charles III, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have settled one issue in their ongoing feud with the British royal family by announcing that they christened their daughter “Princess Lilibet Diana” in a small, intimate ceremony held at their Montecito mansion last Friday.
For the Anglican ceremony, conducted by the Rev John Taylor, the Archbishop of Los Angeles, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex extended an invitation to Charles, as well as to Queen Camilla, Prince William and Kate Middleton, People reported. But it’s well known that Harry and Meghan are estranged from his relatives and are undecided about whether they will attend Charles’s coronation in May. That’s no doubt one reason why Charles, Camilla, William and Kate didn’t fly over from the U.K. to attend the christening, the 20 to 30 guests for which included Lilibet’s grandmother, Doria Ragland, and the 1-year-old’s godfather, producer and actor Tyler Perry.
As for the issue of titles, it’s been an open question, since Charles’s accession to the throne, following the death of Queen Elizabeth II in September, as to whether Harry and Meghan’s children, Archie, 3, and Lilibet would be called prince and princess.
Rules set out by King George V in 1917 say that the children and grandchildren of a monarch can automatically be styled prince and princess, but the Buckingham Palace website has continued to refer to Harry and Meghan’s children as “Master Archie Mountbatten-Windsor” and “Miss Lilibet Mountbatten-Windsor.” Charles didn’t say anything about elevating Archie and Lilibet’s status in his accession speech the day after his mother’s death.
The Daily Mail reported Wednesday that Charles won’t stand in the way of Harry and Meghan calling their children prince and princess. Richard Palmer, the royal correspondent for the Daily Express, also suggested that it’s been up to Harry and Meghan all along as to whether they wanted to invoke their right to use the royal titles.
He tweeted: “I understand the royal website will now be updated to call Harry and Meghan’s children prince and princess now that the Sussexes have taken time to consider this and decided they want to exercise the right given to male line grandchildren of the sovereign under the 1917 letters patent.”
The palace will respect the wishes of the Sussexes and call Archie and Lilibet Prince and Princess now that the Sussexes have expressed a preference. https://t.co/imi380xpak
— Richard Palmer (@RoyalReporter) March 8, 2023
The issue of royal titles for her children became a major sticking point for Meghan and a source of the American duchess’ concerns about racism in the royal family. In her interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2021, Meghan said the palace decided to deny what she said was Archie’s birthright to be a prince because he is mixed race. She expressed dismay to learn when she was pregnant that Archie would not get police protection because he did not have a title.
When Archie was born in 2019, he was given the less regal name of “master.” According to reports at the time, it was presumed that Harry and Meghan didn’t care about him being a prince because they wanted him to have a more normal childhood without the burden of being a prince. (The surname reflects Prince Philip’s family name and the Windsor name adopted by George V during World War I.)
The British public also assumed Harry and Meghan were following a precedent set by Princess Anne, who rejected the queen’s offer to give royal titles to her children, Peter Phillips and Zara Tindall, because she felt there were “downsides to having titles,” as she told Vanity Fair.
But Meghan insisted to Winfrey “it was not our decision” for Archie not to receive a title. She was clearly upset at the “idea of the first member of color in this family not being titled in the same way that other grandchildren would be.”
Meghan said: “In those months when I was pregnant, all around this same time, so we (had) the conversation (that) he won’t be given security, he’s not going to be given a title.”
It was in this context that Meghan made the explosive allegations that an unidentified member of the royal family expressed “concerns … about how dark his skin might be when he’s born.” More recently, while promoting his memoir “Spare,” Harry insisted in a TV interview that Meghan never called his family racist and said the British media had misconstrued her words to Winfrey.
But that’s not how things played out after the Winfrey interview. Overnight, Meghan’s racism allegations launched headlines around the world — and not just in U.K. outlets — and overwhelmed media conversations about the royal family.
But even if there were family concerns about Archie’s race, reports by The Guardian and other royal experts fact-checked Meghan and said she was mistaken about how titles work. At the time, Archie wouldn’t have been considered for a prince title.
That’s because Elizabeth was still queen and the right to prince and princess titles didn’t extend to her great-grandchildren, under the 1917 Letters of Patent. However, Elizabeth issued new orders in 2012 when Archie’s cousin, George, was born to William and Kate Middleton. Her letters stipulated that all children of the William and Kate would have royal status. That’s because George, Charlotte and Louis are the children of a future monarch, whereas Archie is not. Harry is fifth in line to the throne and will move down the line of succession if William and Kate have more children, or as George, Charlotte and Louis have children of their own.
