Prince William is reportedly planning to strip his royal relatives of their prince/princess titles.William isn’t holding back, and will allegedly remove titles from close family members including his own kids (sorta…more on that below).Also on the list? His brother, cousins, niece, and nephew.
Prince William is prepping to level up and become king, and apparently he’s planning some major changes. Including but not limited to stripping the majority of his immediate family of their royal titles.
According to The Daily Beast William will “remove princely titles from all non-working royals,” and they’ll also be stripped of their “HRH” (aka His/Her Royal Highness) honorifics. These prince/princess titles are technically protected by law, but Prince William is planning to issue an executive royal order via a “letters patent” which will allow him to switch things up. So…which members of the royal family are getting stripped of their titles once Prince William becomes King William V? How long do you have?!
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle
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Prince Harry and Meghan Markle were asked to stop using their HRH titles when they chose to step down as Senior Working Royals. However, there was some drama back in April, when Meghan signed a gift basket note “with the Compliments of HRH The Duchess of Sussex.”
Prince William was allegedly upset at the time, with a source telling the Daily Beast “There is no way King William will stand for this. The titles will simply be removed when he is king. A way will be found.”
Meanwhile, Harry and Meghan currently use the titles Duke and Duchess of Sussex, which were given to them by the Queen when they got married. Meghan even said on her Netflix show, With Love, Meghan, that she’s using Sussex as a last name. She later explained, “My legal name is Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, but Sussex for us works as our family name and it’s the name that we share with our children.”
Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet
Meghan and Harry’s kids, Princess Archie and Princess Lilibet, will also reportedly lose their prince/princess titles when William is king due to the fact that they aren’t in line to be working royals (and again, William only wants working members of the royal family to use titles).
Princess Eugenie and Princess Beatrice
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Princess Eugenie and Princess Beatrice aren’t working members of the royal family, so their titles could definitely change when William is king. They are, however, still known as the “York Sisters” despite their dad, Prince Andrew, being stripped of his “Duke of York” title—which a source tells The Times is a “happy outcome of [their] father’s titles being extant but inactive.”
Prince George, Prince Charlotte, and Prince Louis
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When it comes to William’s own kids, The Daily Beast reports that they’ll have their royal titles “parked” until they’re old enough to decide if they want to be working royals or not. A source noted that this won’t be a huge change for the royal children, since they aren’t addressed as “prince” or “princess” by anyone in their lives—including at school and at home.
FYI, this is similar to the approach William’s aunt, Princess Anne, took with her kids, Peter Phillips and Zara Tindall. Unlike their cousins, Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie, neither Zara nor Peter have Prince/Princess titles.
Anne explained that she made the decision to give them more options. “I think it was probably easier for them, and I think most people would argue that there are downsides to having titles,” she said to Vanity Fair back in 2020. “So I think that was probably the right thing to do.”
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