Meghan Markle receives backlash for using title she is not allowed since leaving royal family

Meghan Markle has sparked backlash for referring to herself using a royal title that is forbidden since she stepped away from royal life and duties.

Meghan Markle has sparked outrage after posting a message which refers to her as “Your Royal Highness”, a term she is banned from using since leaving the royal family and decamping to America.

Meghan shared a message on Instagram that addressed her with the title “Your Royal Highness”, despite the term being banned after she quit as a senior working royal in 2020.

The Duchess of Sussex reposted a letter from Ukraine’s vice president that began, “Your Royal Highness, I would like to express my sincere thanks for everything your family is doing for Ukraine.”

Meghan Markle posted a message addressed to her as "Your Royal Highness" to her social media, which is a term she is banned from using since quitting the royal family.

Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex in 2018 when they were part of the royal family. Picture: Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images

The post has fuelled calls in the UK for the couple to be stripped of their titles, according to The Daily Beast.

A friend of Prince William’s told The Daily Beast: “It’s actually quite a clever way of testing the water, because there is deniability there, she can say, ‘Well, I just wanted to publish this nice letter to raise awareness for Ukraine, and oops! they got my name wrong—but oh, actually, now I think of it, I never gave the title up anyway, and maybe I will start using it again.’

“It’s a step in the wrong direction, basically, away from the agreement. You’d have to be an idiot to believe that she didn’t know exactly what she was doing when she posted that message, unedited, to her stories.”

MEGHAN’S NEW FEMALE FOUNDERS PODCAST IS A FLOP

Meghan Markle’s new podcast, Confessions of a Female Founder, is already struggling to reach the numbers her previous podcast Archetypes had generated.

The Duchess of Sussex, 43, last week dropped the first episode of the podcast, which featured her longtime friend, Bumble dating app founder Whitney Wolfe Herd.

But the podcast had failed to secure the top spot since its hotly awaited release.

As of Monday, Markle’s podcast was ranked number 10 on Spotify’s general Top Podcasts chart in the US — a striking contrast to “Archetypes,” which was ranked number 1 following its release in 2022.

Indeed, the critic reviews of Markle’s new venture were equally as disappointing — as one reviewer called the podcast “stomach-turning.”

Meghan Markle’s latest podcast about female founders has received a lukewarm ratings reception compared to her previous effort, Archetypes. Picture: Angela Weiss / AFP

Others insisted that Markle failed to ask the hard-hitting questions listeners wanted to hear and instead redirected conversations “towards her own experiences.”

In its scathing, one-star review, titled “Meghan’s vapid lessons in self-love,” the Times of London’s columnist James Marriott was “seized by an urge to beat my head against the wall” after listening to the episode.

Elsewhere, the Telegraph’s TV critic Chris Bennion gave Markle’s podcast two stars, describing it as having an “inane stream of mindless aphorisms” with “no confessions or secrets.”

In its two-star review, The Guardian said the “sycophantic interview podcast is stomach-turning.”

The Archetypes podcast by Meghan Markle previously reached the top spot on the Spotify chart. Picture: Supplied

Previously, Markle’s now-defunct 12-episode podcast Archetypes enjoyed a brief reign at the top spot — before she ultimately parted ways with Spotify in 2023 following a lucrative US$20 million deal.

In the wake of the break-up, Bill Simmons, Spotify’s head of global sports strategy, called the ex-royals “f**king grifters” and “lazy.”

“I wish I had been involved in the ‘Meghan and Harry leave Spotify’ negotiation,” Simmons, the founder of The Ringer and the head of Spotify’s global sports strategy, said in 2023.

“That’s a podcast we should’ve launched with them. I gotta get drunk one night and tell the story of this Zoom I had with [Prince] Harry to try to help him with a podcast idea. It’s one of my best stories.”

The frosty reception to Markle’s Confessions of a Female Founder podcast debut comes just weeks after her Netflix series, With Love, Meghan, was also mercilessly dragged by critics following its release in early March.

- with the New York Post.

Originally published as Meghan Markle receives backlash for using title she is not allowed since leaving royal family