Meghan, Harry toss aside royal traditions
Monday’s birth of Baby Sussex differed from the recent past
Almost everything about the birth of Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan’s royal baby boy on Monday was a departure from recent royal-birth traditions – from the palace pre-birth planning to the location of the birth to the “over the moon” exultation of the Duke of Sussex, who was so happy he even answered questions from the media.
Baby Sussex himself is unlike any previous royal baby: For one thing, he’s half-American, as the child of the former Meghan Markle, 37, the divorced, biracial ex-actress born and raised in Los Angeles.
Seventh in line to the throne, he also is the first royal baby from the Sussex line born in hundreds of years and the first baby born into the royal family ever to be acknowledged to have partAfrican descent.
Here are some other ways the birth of Baby Sussex differs from the recent past:
He wasn’t born in London
Baby Sussex wasn’t born in St. Mary’s Hospital in London, where his father was born.
St Mary’s Lindo Wing also is where his uncle Prince William was born, and Will’s children with Kate, Duchess of Cambridge, cousins Prince George, 5, Princess Charlotte, 4, and Prince Louis, 1, were born there, too.
He may have been born at home
We don’t know yet precisely where the baby was born, and the palace declined to answer a direct question about that from USA TODAY. But he could have come into the world at Frogmore Cottage, Harry and Meghan’s newly renovated home on the Windsor Castle estate about 25 miles west of London.
Significantly, the palace birth announcement said Meghan and Harry and Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, visiting from Los Angeles for the birth, all were at Frogmore Cottage.
If Frogmore was the birthplace, this would be the first royal at-home birth since the baby’s great-grandmother Queen Elizabeth II delivered her four children at Buckingham Palace or Clarence House between 1948 and 1964.
But before 1977, all senior royal births took place at home ( a palace or royal estate). The Buckingham Palace pre-birth media planning went awry
In recent years, palace media planning for royal births, specifically the Cambridge children, was meticulous and followed to the letter. That didn’t happen this time.
Weeks before the birth, the palace said it would alert the media when Meghan was in labor. But the first announcement that labor had begun in the “early hours” of Monday came at around 2 p.m. local time in Britain.
About an hour later came the announcement that the baby, a boy weighing 7 pounds, 3 ounces, had been safely delivered at 5.26 a.m. local time – meaning the baby already had been born when the palace said she had gone into labor.
No explanation yet from the palace. However, some of the confusion and delay may have resulted from the fact that the birth was overdue by at least a few days.
Harry and Meghan’s plan to keep the birth ‘private’ changed
Weeks before the birth, Harry and Meghan announced that they intended to keep the birth “private” at least initially, and would pose for photos with the baby a few days after the birth on the Windsor Castle grounds.
So it was a dramatic surprise when Harry appeared at Windsor Castle before
TV cameras and reporters, with a horse stable in the background, to excitedly announce the birth and answer questions.
He was gushing about his newborn son. “It’s been the most amazing experience I could ever have possibly imagined,” said the beaming prince, 34.
“How any woman does what they do is beyond comprehension, but we’re both absolutely thrilled and so grateful for all the love and support from everybody out there.
“It’s been amazing, so I just wanted to share this with everybody.”
He added that being present for the birth was “amazing” and that he was “incredibly proud” of Meghan.
“As every father and parent would ever say, your baby is absolutely amazing,” he said. “This little thing is absolutely to die for. So I’m just over
the moon.”
Harry is not a fan of the media, and he’s known to resent media intrusions since he and Meghan announced their engagement in 2017 and their marriage in May 2018.
So it was a break with traditional royal discretion for him to speak so emotionally on camera about his happiness at being a new father.
For all three of their children’s births, Will and Kate emerged from St. Mary’s within hours to face a crowd of wellwishers and media (some of whom had been there for days), and to pose briefly with the baby.
But neither said anything, let alone gushed like Harry.
Was this spontaneous on Harry’s part or organized in advance by his press team? The palace has not said.
Harry promised that the first public appearance of Baby Sussex will be Wednesday
Royal babies’ names typically are not announced for at least a few days, in part because the queen has to be informed first.
Harry said he and Meghan had not decided on a name yet, but he promised he and Meghan and baby would be back before cameras soon.
“The baby’s a little bit overdue so we’ve had a little bit of time to think about (the name), that’s the next bit,” he told reporters. “For us, we’ll be seeing you guys in probably two days’ time as planned.”
This is not the way the Cambridge children were introduced to the world: First as infants bundled in blankets, and then not seen again for months until their christenings.
Harry and Meghan kept one antique tradition
The British royals have embraced modern communications and social media. In fact, the video of Harry’s media gaggle appeared on the Sussexroyal Instagram account, which now has more than 6 million followers.
But about 11 hours after the birth, a couple of liveried footmen came out of Buckingham Palace carrying a goldpainted easel and set it up just inside the palace front gates facing The Mall.
On it, they placed a wood-framed paper announcement of the news the world had been waiting for, for days: The Duchess of Sussex had safely delivered her son at 5.26 a.m.
Once upon a time, this was how Londoners first learned of a royal birth. Now it’s an afterthought – but beloved nonetheless.