Prince Charles won’t let Archie be made a prince
PRINCE Charles is to ensure that his twoyear-old grandson Archie will never be a prince, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
The heir to the British throne has made it clear that Harry and Meghan’s son will have no place among frontline royals after he becomes king.
The move has incensed Harry and Meghan and is thought to have prompted the bitter accusations the couple have levelled at Charles and the royal family from across the Atlantic.
A grandchild of the British monarch has long had the right to be a prince, but Charles is determined to limit the number of key royals, believing the UK public does not wish to pay for an ever-expanding monarchy.
Charles has told Harry and Meghan that he will change key legal documents to ensure that Archie cannot get the title he would once have inherited by right, according to a source close to the couple.
The decision, which follows months of fraught discussion behind the scenes, has plunged relations between Harry and his relatives to a dangerous new low.
‘Harry and Meghan were told Archie would never be a prince, even when Charles became king,’ confirmed the source.
The full details of Charles’s plan for a slimmed-down monarchy have never been revealed, but it has been speculated that only heirs to the throne and their immediate families will receive full titles and financial support from the British public purse.
Charles and his younger brother, Prince Andrew, have already been at loggerheads about what security Andrew’s daughters, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie, should
receive in future. Now Harry and Meghan have found themselves caught up, too.
Insiders suggest they hadn’t seen the move coming, and were shocked to find that Charles will take the active step of changing legal instruments known as the Letters Patent in order to exclude Archie and others.
The loss will be all the more galling as Harry and Meghan have made a point of refusing to use another, lesser title for their son, who is technically the Earl of Dumbarton. They took that decision safe in the knowledge that Archie would become a prince in due course. Or so they thought.
Earlier this year, a source close to the couple confirmed they did indeed expect Archie to be named a prince when Charles, Archie’s grandfather, acceded to the throne. Their spokesman at the time was even instructed to remind journalists of that ‘fact’.
Harry and Meghan finally learned that would not be the case just before sitting down with Oprah Winfrey for their first bombshell interview in March.
A source said: ‘This is what nobody realised from the interview. The real thing was that Charles was going to take active steps to strip Archie of his ultimate birthright.’
The existing rules for royal titles were established in Letters Patent dated November 20, 1917. In these, King George V, the Queen’s grandfather, allowed the title of prince and princess to be given to the children of the sovereign, the children of the sovereign’s sons and the eldest living son of the eldest son of the Prince of Wales – in this case, Prince George.
Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, William’s daughter and younger son, received their titles not by right but as gifts of Queen Elizabeth, who issued new Letters Patent to that effect in 2013. Similarly, when king, Charles will have the power to change George V’s Letters Patent how he sees fit.
An insider said: ‘Charles has never made any secret of the fact that he wants a slimmed-down monarchy as king.
‘He realises that the public don’t want to pay for a huge monarchy and, as he said, the balcony at Buckingham Palace would probably collapse.’
A royal source said last night: ‘We are not going to speculate about the succession or comment on rumours coming out of the US.’