Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s children are full-blown royals – for now
The King’s downsizing plans raises the question of Archie and Lilibet’s place.
An early test of King Charles III’s plans to streamline the British monarchy could come with whether he will allow his son Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s children to be known as prince and princess.
The issue, which could further widen the rift between the king and his youngest son, goes back to 1917, when King George V issued a series of protocols laying out who can use the title His or Her Royal Highness, or prince or princess. Under the current rules, only the children and grandchildren of the monarch can be given the designation, unless they are in the direct line of succession, like Prince William’s eldest son, George.
But palace officials have said King Charles intends to rebuild the monarch around his immediate direct heirs and their spouses to reduce the cost of maintaining the royal family and keep the public at large behind the institution. And that means he may choose to issue new protocols, known as Letters Patent, limiting the number of people in the core royal family.
His downsizing effort was made easier last year after Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, stepped back from their frontline roles to focus on building media careers in the US.
The Queen’s second-eldest son, Prince Andrew, has also stepped back from royal duties after being caught in a scandal involving convicted sex-trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. He settled out of a court with a women who alleged that Epstein had instructed her to have sex with the prince when she was 17.
In a sign of the future shape of the monarchy, only central figures in “The Firm,” as the family is known, stood with Queen Elizabeth II on the balcony of Buckingham Palace during her Jubilee celebrations earlier this year.
But with the queen’s death this week, all members of the royal family are bumped up another level in the hierarchy, meaning that Prince Harry and Meghan’s children, Archie and Lilibet, are technically entitled to the HRH designation.
It will likely be a difficult decision for King Charles. Last year, Meghan said in an interview with Oprah Winfrey that she was surprised at being told that Archie wouldn’t be entitled to police protection because he didn’t have a royal title. She suggested it might have been because of his mixed race, though he wasn’t automatically entitled to the designation of prince at the time.
During the interview, Meghan, who is bi-racial, spoke of feeling suicidal while working in the palace and said that a member of the royal family voiced concerns about how dark her unborn child’s skin would be.
The Queen at the time said the matter would be investigated privately.
Tensions between the US-based branch of the family and those in the direct line of succession have continued. During the Jubilee celebrations in June, Prince Harry and his immediate family weren’t invited for the key balcony photo opportunity at Buckingham Palace with the queen and didn’t perform any major ceremonial duties during the four-day jubilee event, though they did attend the major church service at St. Paul’s Cathedral.
On Thursday, Prince Harry travelled separately to Balmoral, the Queen’s residence in the Scottish Highlands, where she died, though that may have been a matter of logistics. His elder brother and other senior royals, including Prince Andrew and the Queen’s youngest son, Prince Edward, flew together.
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