Archie Harrison's title: Meghan Markle and Prince Harry's baby WILL become a Prince - once Charles is King

EXCLUSIVE: The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have agreed that their son will also be given the title "His Royal Highness" Follow all the latest developments LIVE
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Robert Jobson9 May 2019

New Royal baby, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, will become a Prince with his parents’ blessing once his grandfather Prince Charles is King, the Evening Standard has learned.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have agreed that their son will also be given the title “His Royal Highness” which is his right as the grandson of a reigning monarch through the male line.

“The Sussexes have chosen not to give their children courtesy titles at this time, however, on the change of reign the George V convention would apply,” a senior source told the Evening Standard.

This relates to a royal decree issued by the Queen’s grandfather in 1917 that limits the number of grand royal titles.

Instagram debut: The first post garnered more than one million likes within an hour
Chris Allerton/@SussexRoyal

For Master Archie to have been made a prince at birth like the children of The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, his cousins Prince George, Princess Charlotte, it would have required the Queen’s to have issued ‘letters patent’ immediately.

The Evening Standard understands that Harry and Meghan are happy for their son - who is 7th in line to the throne - to take his rightful title in due course but decided to keep things simple for now. When Prince Charles becomes King, all children and grandchildren on the direct male line of the Sovereign automatically gain HRH status.

The George V ruling does not apply to grandchildren of a reigning monarch’s daughters - which is why Princess Anne, The Princess Royal’s children Zara Tindall and Peter Phillips are not styled HRH.

Baby Archie’s parents the Duke and Duchess of Sussex decided not to give him a courtesy title “at this time” and cleared it with the Queen, who met her eighth great grandchild for the first time at Windsor Castle yesterday.

An image posted on Instagram showed the monarch happily smiling at the newborn alongside Prince Philip and Meghan’s mother Doria Ragland. The choice of “Archie” confounded bookies who had it at 100/1.

Queen Elizabeth II issued new Letters Patent on December 31, 2012 declaring that all of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s children will have the title of Royal Highness and be styled Princes and Princesses.

The document states, “The Queen has been pleased by Letters Patent under the Great Seal of the Realm dated 31 December 2012 to declare that all the children of the eldest son of The Prince of Wales should have and enjoy the style, title and attribute of Royal Highness with the titular dignity of Prince or Princess prefixed to their Christian names or with such other titles of honour.”

The Queen’s Letters Patent revised King George V’s 1917 decree that only the eldest son of the Prince of Wales’s eldest son was entitled to be styled His Royal Highness and a Prince.

According to this document, the daughters and younger sons of the Prince of Wales’s eldest son were to be styled as children of a Duke. These ducal titles would change to royal titles once the Prince of Wales became King.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex Baby Announcement - In pictures

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The Queen’s decree ensured that if the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s eldest child had been a daughter, she would be styled a Princess rather than a Lady, as in Princess Charlotte’s case.

Buckingham Palace has said on the matter of titles, “While there are courtesy titles that Their Royal Highnesses The Duke and Duchess of Sussex could apply to their son, they have chosen not to give him a “courtesy title” at this time. So he will be known as Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor.”

After all the excitement of the birth on Monday new father Harry went back to work today on an overseas visit to the Hague to promote his Invictus Games.

The event marks the one-year anniversary until the 2020 Invictus Games.

Harry was due to be in Amsterdam yesterday as part of a two-day royal tour but cancelled part of this trip to the Netherlands due to logistical reasons.

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