Meghan Markle’s name was removed from her son’s birth certificate, but not at her request
By Lauren Heskin
01st Feb 2021
01st Feb 2021
Read time: 2 minutes
You can bow out of the family business and move across the world, but it seems that you can never really escape the inlaws.
Something Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle, are only too aware of.
In June 2019 Meghan Markle’s first and middle names were removed from her son Archie’s birth certificate and replaced simply with her title, Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Sussex. Prince Harry’s name remains on Archie’s birth cert, but “Prince” was added in, which had previously not been included, now reading “His Royal Highness Prince Henry Charles Albert David Duke of Sussex.”
The Sun on Sunday reported that the couple likely removed Meghan’s name as a way of snubbing Prince William’s wife Kate, whose given name, Catherine, appears on the birth certificates of all three of her children. But if removing your own name from your child’s birth cert seems like a weird direction to take a family feud, Meghan and Harry would agree.
The Duchess released a statement following the news.
“To deceptively whip this into a calculated family 'snub' and suggest that she would oddly want to be nameless on her child's birth certificate, or any other legal document, would be laughable were it not offensive.”
They also confirmed that they made no such request and, in fact, the changes were “dictated by the Palace”. It’s bizarre that extended family could make these changes to legal documents, but then again, not everyone’s nan is Queen Elizabeth II. The Palace has yet to make an official comment on the news.
It’s not clear why the Palace would want to remove Meghan’s name from the birth cert, especially considering Kate’s name is listed on her children’s birth certificates. However, the timing is interesting, with the change made just a few months before The Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced their decision withdraw from royal duties and make a home in North America.
Was it one of a myriad of reasons that they wanted to get out of the royal business? Was it the straw that broke the new parents’ back? And now, after being forced to give up their royal titles, will they try to change Archie’s birth cert again?
This appears to be just one of a number of battles Harry and Meghan are taking on from their new home in Santa Barbara, as their court case against The Mail of Sunday for publishing a private handwritten letter Meghan sent her father begins this month.
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