The news was indirectly and subtly introduced.
“I can confirm that Princess Lilibet Diana was baptized on Friday March 3 by the Archbishop of Los Angeles, the Reverend John Taylor,” announced the spokesperson for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle on March 8.
In the press release was indeed slipped, neither seen nor known, the title "princess" in front of the first name of the daughter of the couple exiled in the United States.
The change on the official British Crown website was made the following day: the titles "Master" and "Miss" became "Prince" and Princess".
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New title, new name
At the same time, the particle and the surname "Sussex" were attached to their first names.
Until then they were Lilibet and Archie Mountbatten-Windsor;
the children are now referred to as Prince Archie of Sussex and Princess Lilibet of Sussex, aged 3 and 1 respectively.
For now, according to the
BBC
, parents would expect their son and daughter to use their royal titles exclusively for formal occasions (i.e. not at school, for example).
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Change of opinion
It would seem that granting these royal titles to the children of the Sussexes was not always obvious.
During the couple's shock interview by presenter Oprah Winfrey in March 2021, Meghan Markle, then pregnant with Lilibet, said of her son Archie: "They said (the royal family, editor's note) that they
did
n't didn't want him to be a prince (...), which was different from the protocol.
It was therefore not going to be subject to any particular security measures.
It was very hard”.
Would the monarchy therefore have reviewed its positions?
What the law says
A written rule dating back more than a hundred years did indeed provide for the granting of said titles to the king's grandchildren.
King George V, Queen Elizabeth II's great-grandfather, had sealed in a 1917 legislative act that the sitting monarch's grandchildren could use the honorary predicates prince and princess.
King Charles III could, however, by means of letters patent (in other words, a royal decree), not grant them this privilege, especially since the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, when leaving for the United States in particular, formally withdrew from any activity within the Crown.
However, the sixth (Archie) and seventh (Lilibet) heirs to the throne will not be able to call themselves “His Royal Highness”, a right they could have inherited from their father.
But the latter, when retiring from his royal duties in 2020, himself stopped using it.
King Charles III and his son nevertheless agreed at the end of last year that Archie and Lilibet could use the titles of prince and princess.
And this, before the publication of Harry's memoir,
The Substitute
, further soured their relationship.
Meghan Markle shares a video in which she reads to her son Archie
