Harry & Meghan change their surname

[Gottseidank]

… from Mountbatten-Windsor to ‘Sussex’.
Apparently it’s to strengthen their brand.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/prince-harry-meghan-sussex-archie-lilibet-children-name-royal-title-cnvf7d9jf

From birth the Lord and Lady titles, yes. Lord Archie, the Earl of Dumbarton, Lady Lilibet Mountbatten Windsor. Not used.
Charles now king - they're prince and princess.
The parents have chosen that they are styled this way.

The fact that the Wales/Cambridge children have 'of Cambridge' on their birth certificates caused a bit of consternation among title experts at the times. It's not the correct/accepted way of doing things.

But then again neither is Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge or Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (prior to any changes/leaving of the RF) for a non-divorced woman. So the way titles are used and styled is changing.

Being clever-clever, in case anyone thinks of taking the Duke and Duchess of Sussex titles away. Oh, our family name is Sussex, now.

Yes, and personal preference. Meghan chooses the style Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex. It's not usual to have a capitalised The, and the first name before a title indicates a divorced woman. However, her choice of style.
It was only correct with Diana, Princess of Wales and Sarah, Duchess of York.
Kate is HRH The Princess of Wales.

Yes as I said Mountbatten wasn't his name, it wasn't his father's name or his mother's name. People can change names, Philip did and there was no fuss, don't see why there is any issue with Harry deciding their name is now Sussex.

@GingerIsBest given H & M stated they didn’t want them to have titles and don’t call them by Earl of Dumbarton & Lady ..

BP was damned what ever they did. If they change the titles H & M could have said no one asked us. So they waited for H & M to decide and weren’t quick enough.

So I guess technically Archie is currently Prince Archie of Sussex, Earl of Dumbarton as his full title?

The convention is you use your highest title, or the courtesy title you can use as an oldest son. And only one at a time, unless it’s an official proclamation or something which lists them “Queen Daenerys, Stormborn, Mother of Dragons, Queen of the Andals and the First Men, Protector of the Seven Kingdoms” style…

So, Prince Archie (a title held by Archie is his own right once Charles became King) is “higher” than Earl of Dumbarton, which actually belongs to his Dad, but which Archie could use if he had no other title. So Prince Archie is correct.

For Harry though, his Royal Dukedom ranks higher than his title as Prince. So normally he’d be HRH The Duke of Sussex. The same way HRH the Duke of Kent is almost never called Prince Edward the Duke of Kent (though he’s also Prince Edward).

Indeed, @Iwasafool - it's no problem at all, and no issue. It's not even controversial, because Harry and Meghan are correct in doing this, and are following royal tradition. Non story.

Nobody is going to do that.

Parliament isn’t going to get involved and strip Harry’s Prince title so if they took away Sussex they become HRH Prince and Princess Henry, similar to the Michael’s of Kent.

We all know that within minutes certain media elements would christen them as Prince Harry and Princess Meghan.

The RF know that. They also know that it would blow up in their faces because Meghan would either become know as Princess Meghan - which is more marketable than duchess despite duchess technically being a higher title - or the sexism storm of “now they want me to be known by a man’s name’ would have horrendous optics.

I don't know if the Palace were petty in this instance, @GingerIsBest - as the parents had chosen for their children not to have titles to that point, I think they were waiting for H&M to confirm that they wanted the titles for their children.

How does this nonsense work in the USA though? Surely they can’t put their names down as prince/princess on official documents as it doesn’t mean anything there

Tbh the updating of the royal family website has been awful.
at one point after the Queen’s death the Cambridge children were in the wrong order and Mr Michael Tindall was in the line of succession

Unless there is an epic tragedy Archie and Lilibet’s children will not be Prince or Princess.

I do wonder if KC or PW will in future only grant hereditary titles to their immediate heir and use lifetime titles for other children. It means the titles always return to the crown.

So George gets a hereditary dukedom but Charlotte & Louis lifetime titles.

Blimey, that's a shocker! May have pleased Mike, though!

I think Mike would have roared with laughter.

I bet he did!

Arguably, part of the problem is that the Palace didn't immediately update the website at the point at which QE2 died. Protocols for a shift in title were implemented instantly - clearly long agreed and a plan in place. But Archie and Lillibet were excluded, including within about a day when it was announced that W&C would be Prince and Princess of Wales immediately.

Harry and Meghan had expressly announced that they were forgoing a title for Archie when he was born - “All part of giving him as normal a life as possible” said Omid Scobie, who was most definitely acting their spokesperson at the time, as he revealed the baby’s name AND tweeted out a picture of QEII meeting Archie on behalf of the parents.

So I don’t think it’s fair to say that Archie and Lilibet were excluded - their parents had made a clear public statement about their intentions. They later changed their mind, that’s their prerogative. But it’s quite clear there was a change of sentiment once the titles on offer were Prince and Princess rather than Lord and Lady.

As someone who has worked in communications her whole life, including crisis planning such as would be done in the case of preparing for a monarch's death, I don't actually buy that. Harry and Meghan had indicated that they did not want titles pre QE2's death. But it would have been a simple ask to check, when updating the death-plan, what they wanted for the children's in respect of titles on her death.

Now, admittedly, we have no way of knowing if they WERE asked, but refused to answer. I'm inclined to suggest not, if only because Meghan did make it clear in that Oprah interview that she did want the Prince title for Archie. But obviously, we don't know.

Having said that, if I was the one doing the BCP planning in that case, I would have included a reference to them along the lines of, "The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are considering what title they prefer to their children and an announcement will be made in due course."

I do wonder if KC or PW will in future only grant hereditary titles to their immediate heir and use lifetime titles for other children. It means the titles always return to the crown.

I think this would be a mistake. While, of course, second/third etc children move further and further away from the crown over time, granting hereditary titles to this generation ensures that the major hereditary titles are held by families that are still relatively close to the crown. If William decides not to do this, then George's heir, on taking the throne, might find that the most senior "non royal" aristocrats are very far away from him/her by blood in the form of Edward's grandchildre/great grandchildren or Harry's grandchildren/grandchildren.

Theoretically, royal peerages should be there to support the monarch, even if not necessarily performing direct royal duties and/or to have the option to do so. Certainly, to all accounts, the Queen relied heavily on her royal cousins and the Kents and the other ones were very active on her behalf.

Who cares about all this medieval garbage.

As far as we Brits are concerned the dukes and earls of this era are not charged with running a bit of land and collecting taxes anymore. Some still spend from our tax collection money though, and I would like the number of those to be a small as possible. No work, no pay, no indirect pay, no public funding or no use of public resources either (like police)

In my opinion he is just a poor boy who was never given the chance to become a man, not ultra smart either and very entitled, and she is a very shrewd operator (and I will leave it there - we'll not that smart either). What a combo 😅

@GingerIsBest, Omid Scobie (who, let’s face it, would know…) wrote an article for Bazaar once the Place did update their website to include Archie and Lilibet’s titles. It sounds like there was some kind of stand off behind the scenes. So we don’t know if the Sussexes weren’t outright asked, or were asked and declined to respond, preferring to break the news themselves in their own time.

BAZAAR.com reported Wednesday that the palace would be making the update, as a royal source—who confirmed that the Royal.uk website would be updated in “due course”—said the palace had not updated the site previously because Harry and Meghan had not publicly used Lilibet’s new title.
The news follows the Duke and Duchess of Sussex formally addressing their 21-month-old daughter as Princess Lilibet for the first time in a statement confirming her christening in California last week

https://www.harpersbazaar.com/celebrity/latest/a43247084/buckingham-palace-update-prince-archie-princess-lilibet-titles/

You are spot on, @Serenster - that was their original intention. Then they obviously changed their minds.

You really think people are bored of them??
Going by the endless threads on here people are not bored by them they love to have a good old bitch about what ever they do and they are always in the wrong no matter what 🤷

Who cares about all this medieval garbage.

I do, for one. I don’t go around being rude about other people’s interests, though.

Fair enough. But I stand by my overall comment that I think, from a comms perspective, the Palace has made a LOT of mistakes. I don't have an opinion on whether H&M, W&C, or other parties are responsible for the actual issues but there is no doubt in my mind that for an organisation that should, theoretically, have the best business continuity planning in the world as they have literally been doing it for 100s of years, there is no excuse for the management of things. And when M&H have jumped the gun or whatever, much of that could have been avoided.