Staying awake while watching Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex’s latest show on Netflix was quite challenging for me. However, there was a particular moment that caught my attention.
In the second episode, Meghan was guiding Mindy Kaling, a comedian and star of the US version of The Office, on how to organize a children’s party.
During a light-hearted conversation about what their favourite fast food had been while growing up, Mindy referred to her hostess as ‘Meghan Markle’.
This appeared to annoy Meghan, who had met Mindy in person only once before.
Looking distinctly unamused, she replied: ‘It’s so funny you keep saying Meghan Markle. You know I’m “Sussex” now.’
Mindy seemed puzzled when the duchess expressed, ‘I didn’t anticipate how significant it would be for me, but it holds great value to say, “This is OUR family name. Our little family name”.’
Mindy replied, a little stiffly: ‘Well, now I know, and I love it.’
Why did Meghan keep this peculiar exchange in the final cut of her series, With Love, Meghan? It wasn’t amusing, it was awkward and stuck out like a sore thumb amid the bland small talk and repeated use of words such as ‘amazing’.
Meghan corrects comedienne Mindy Kaling in the second episode of her Netflix show
It seems beyond doubt that Meghan is anxious to hang on to the baubles of royal life
Deepening the intrigue, the duchess addressed the same petty subject in People magazine in America, a favoured outlet for the Sussexes.
In the only print interview published so far to promote her series, Meghan again chose to highlight the importance of the Sussex dukedom, which was given to Harry by his late grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, on their wedding day in 2018.
Meghan told the magazine that the name now held a deeper significance than she could have imagined before motherhood.
‘It’s our shared name as a family, and I guess I hadn’t recognised how meaningful that would be to me until we had children.’
Referring to her two children and husband Prince Harry, she said, ‘I love that that is something that Archie, Lili, H and I all have together. It means a lot to me.’
The Sussex name, she concluded, ‘is part of our love story’.
They have, of course, visited Sussex only once, hosting a number of engagements in the county in their wedding year.
It is striking, too, that, they chose to use the Royal Family’s traditional surname, Mountbatten-Windsor, on the birth certificates of children Prince Archie, five, and Princess Lilibet, three.
Why, then, this sudden enthusiasm for the Sussex name – and the desire to make it known around the world?
Royal sources I have spoken to this week believe they know the answer.
‘It’s clearly a warning shot,’ one palace insider told me, confirming that Meghan seemed to be making a very public point of emphasising how much the title meant to her and, by implication, to Harry.
Which is to say that the Royal Family should not so much as contemplate stripping them of their titles!
This is a course of action that has been mooted many times since Meghan and Harry abandoned royal duties five years ago, eventually moving to California to seek their fortune.
The Sussex name, she told Ms Kaling, ‘is part of our love story’
When Archie was born in 2019, sources close to the couple were briefed that they had no intention of giving him a title
There have been calls to strip Meghan and Harry of their titles whenever they have betrayed and insulted the Firm.
And royal sources have suggested that it could be very much a sanction should the couple publish any more tell-all books about the Windsors or agree to further explosive Oprah Winfrey-style interviews.
We already know that the Sussexes are sensitive about names.
When Archie was born in 2019, sources close to the couple were briefed that they had no intention of giving him a title.
He would be plain Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor. And that is how he was described on his birth certificate.
However, Meghan suggested to chat show host Oprah in 2021 that Archie was denied his birthright of the title of prince by the Palace and that the decision went against protocol.
Provocatively, she spoke of her shock at being told her son would not get police protection because he did not have a title, and suggested that the decision was taken because of Archie’s mixed heritage.
The truth of the situation was a little more complicated, to say the least.
Under protocols established by George V in 1917 in letters patent, the children and grandchildren of a sovereign have the automatic right to be known as His or Her Royal Highnesses with the title prince or princess.
Yet at the time Archie was born, he was only the great-grandchild of a sovereign, Queen Elizabeth II, and therefore not a prince.
Only when Charles succeeded to the throne in 2022, did Archie become the grandson of a king.
Meghan and Harry had famously shunned royal life and made their home in the supposedly egalitarian US, they began using their children’s royal titles as early as 2023 when they announced the christening of baby daughter Lilibet.
It seems beyond doubt that Meghan is anxious to hang on to the baubles of royal life – even if that involves the embarrassment of publicly correcting showbusiness-star ‘friends’ who fail to address her in the style to which she has become accustomed.
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