You know what they say about tempting fate.
Last week Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex posted an Instagram video of her whirligig talkfest trip to Washington where she swapped pushing her jammy, cashmere-cottage-core persona to tout her entrepreneurial “learns”, and included a fleeting shot that showed she has what appears to be a monogrammed ‘DS’ tote bag.
She should use it every day, all day, while she still can.
According to a new report, that tote could end up woefully redundant with the 44-year-old reduced to being plain old Mrs Meghan Mountbatten-Windsor.
“Within weeks” of King William’s reign he will strike the match on a “bonfire of royal titles”, according to the incredibly well-sourced and well-connected Tom Sykes, the Daily Beast’s European editor-at-large and author of The Royalist substack.
In what would be the biggest palace shakeup in more than a century, William will reportedly strip the titles of Meghan, Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex, their kids Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, and the most odious berk to ever cross the threshold of Annabel’s, Prince Andrew.
The custom stationers of London are going to be in clover with all the new orders.
The last 48-hours have been dominated by one story and one only in royal land, in the shape of morally repugnant plonker Andrew.
At 7pm on Friday night, London time, the man who has been described as ‘disgraced’ more than any other Brit since Lord Haw Haw, announced he would be giving up some of his titles.
Don’t, for a second, buy the spin that this is anything but a bit of jazz-hands royal window dressing.
He legally remains The Duke of York, is still a Prince of the realm, and all that has actually changed is he should theoretically order some new letterhead.
This did not have to be the case and King Charles, should he have had the pluck and energy to do so, could have taken far more decisive action. All he needed was a pen.
See, who gets to be a prince or princess is set down in the 1917 Letters Patent (i.e. official decree) issued by George V. Back then, as World War One rolled bloodily on, there were an unfortunate number of Krautish royal cousins who were fighting for the Kaiser.
George decided they needed to lose their British titles and while he was at it changed the royal family’s surname from Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to the far more patriotic-sounding Windsor.
Under those Letters Patent, which were updated by Queen Elizabeth in 2012 before the birth of Princess Charlotte, the children of the monarch are automatically prince/princess and can style themselves as His/Her Royal Highness.
This extends down a generation to apply to any children of the monarch’s sons (but not daughters) and the children of the Prince of Wales’s eldest son.
That’s why when the Sussexes’ children were born during Queen Elizabeth’s reign they were simply Archie and Lili but – when the grandpa they have rarely if ever seen except on the back of a stray pound coin found rolling around behind a couch cushion became King in 2022 they, overnight, became prince and princess.
Well at least they are for now.
The question of who gets what title roared back to the fore last week as the Andrew dumpster fire grew and grew, a conflagration that is doing more damage to the royal family than Catholicism, the Luftwaffe, gout, and gin have ever done.
Should Charles have wanted, he could have had his undersecretary’s aide-de-camp’s assistant retrieve one of his famous leaky fountain pens and issued new Letters Patent that removed Andrew’s princely title.
Similarly, only parliament can actually legally remove his Duke of York title, however, His Majesty could have back-channeled his desire for Westminster to act and they would surely have rubber stamp this and signed in triplicate faster than you can spell ‘quango’ such is vehemence of cross-party, nation-wide antipathy and disgust towards Andrew.
Disappointingly, and to the serious detriment of his legacy, Charles has not done this.
However his son won’t be making the same mistake and when he becomes King William V, things will reportedly change as fast as a modern sovereign with his own Macbook Air can bang out new Letters Patent.
The Beast and The Royalist’s Sykes has now reported that anyone who, as of today, has a bright, shiny princely title but doesn’t officially represent the Crown – the Sussexes, their kids and Beatrice and Eugenie – will lose them “in the early weeks” of William’s reign, based on information the royal’s friends and allies.
As part of these “sweeping reforms”, Sykes writes in the Beast, the Sussexes will also have “their dukedoms and HRHs formally revoked”. This will leave them legally as Mr and Mrs Harry Mountbatten-Windsor. Nothing more.
A friend of William’s has told Sykes of this across-the-board title action: “It should have been done by Charles this week, but William knows he doesn’t have the strength because of his illness. William is understanding of his father’s situation. William won’t be afraid to take the next step.”
Before anyone accuses the current Prince of Wales of carrying out some sort of vinegar-tipped revenge campaign, pruning the titles of lesser branches is what Euro royal houses have been doing for years now.
In 2019, Sweden’s King Carl Gustaf removed five of his grandchildren, the children of his younger children Princess Madeleine and son Prince Carl Philip, from the royal house.
In 2022, Denmark’s Queen Margrethe stripped her younger son, Prince Joachim’s, children of their princely titles, reducing them to only being counts and countesses. Joachim, the spare to now King Frederik, had a right conniption over the downgrade.
A friend of William’s told Sykes: “William thinks about Queen Margrethe of Denmark a lot.”
(So should Harry from the sounds of it.)
This image of William as an iron-backed, new broom monarch is also being reported by the Sunday Times’ royal editor Roya Nikkhah who has said the new King will be “ruthless”.
While the 43-year-old was “consulted” about the Andrew situation last week, “it is understood that he is not satisfied with the outcome and knows the ‘Andrew problem’ will be in his in-tray at some point.
“There will need to be big institutional changes to future-proof the monarchy.”
Appearing on Times Radio, she also said “There may be some further levers that William can pull in the future, and will.”
(Nikkhah has also reported that William will ban Andrew from State occasions including coronation.)
This all has a long way to run yet and an experienced royal courtier told her, “We’re definitely in uncharted territory for royal scandals”.
It also must be flagged here that in a world where the Sussexes lose their titles, his hardline approach will extend to his own three kids.
Sykes reports that the Wales children “may have their titles informally ‘parked’ until they become adults and can decide for themselves if they want to be full-time working royals or lead lives as private citizens.”
The three “are never addressed as ‘prince’ or ‘princess’ by their parents, teachers, staff, or family.”
Of them, only Prince George as heir is predestined to have to take up full-time royal duties, with the possibility of younger siblings Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis being allowed to go off and do their own, normie, civilian thing and to never have to wield a tree-planting shovel or ribbon-cutting scissors should they not want to.
Back in 2020, weeks after Megxit, the Duke of Sussex appeared at one of his final official royal engagements where the host told the crowd, “he’s made it clear that we are all just to call him ‘Harry’”.
Well, he could be about to get his wish – and Meghan could need a new monogrammed tote bag.
Daniela Elser is a writer, editor and commentator with more than 15 years’ experience working with a number of Australia’s leading media titles.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.news.com.au ’
