The very status and monikers bestowed upon the Duke and Duchess's two children, Master Archie and Miss Lilibet Mountbatten-Windsor. According to Buckingham Palace's cranky patriarchs, those kids are about as legitimately royal as a mascot passing out BurgerTown crowns. That's right, despite Harry and Meghan's relentless rebranding campaign working overtime to cement Archie and Lilibet's bonafides as princely heirs and spares to the throne, the old guard is doubling down with both middle fingers blazing. Word from the Firm? Those kids get no royal titles. Her Royal Highnesses be damned!
Now, if this was just another tedious round of threadbare ideological squabbling, I'd say, "Who really cares what string of improbable surnames the mono-Mavericks saddle their offspring with? Let them make Chief Financier and Prime Minister if it'll stop them whinging for five seconds." But no, according to those forever connected with the ancient magic pixel trails of court, this one cuts much deeper than mere appeasing Megan's need to always play the Duchess. The palace's stance is a full-on conscious repudiation of Harry and his wife's entire demented claim over still being part of the royal family.
In the grimly autocratic words of King Charles himself, with this latest ruling, he's drawing a clear line as to what remaining minor roles Harry and Meghan can play. Those last four letters, of course, stand for "Quit Every Duty," as here, His Mag's code for Ginge and the former cable actress whose only remaining FYI is to Sunshine State self-promotion.
Despite Meghan and Harry's efforts to have it both ways with their alternative Disney reboot of the royals, the OG version has rules, precedents, and traditions dating back to at least the Norman Conquest of 1066. You can't just buy a Malibu compound and a neighborhood podcast, then waltz around calling your kids Duke Willoughby and Princess Laquea of Lower East Cock without meeting a few ceremonial obligations.
And in this case, the ancient litmus for title privileges is pretty black and white: if you choose to divorce yourself fully from royal duties and live a 100% private life, you don't get to enjoy any of the stylings and honors thrown the working stiffs' way as actual public servants. It's a brutal burn, I know, but the precedent was already cast back in the 1960s when the uncles and aunts of Queen Elizabeth II were stripped of their prince and princess tags for merely marrying commoners and seeking normal lives away from the family firm.
Now, at the risk of disappointing the diehard republican sickos out there, I'm afraid I must actually agree with His Majesty on this one. Even though my potent disdain for the Montecito sitters themselves burns with the vigor of a thousand suns, look, everyone loves to poke fun at the delightful absurdities of ancient European royal rights and the legions of dusty, bewigged heraldic advisers it takes to enforce them. Believe me, I get it. Subdividing every aristocratic dynasty into a head-spinning array of grand dukes, lord barons, and serene highnesses is a top-shelf eccentric tradition from a bygone era of inbred androgen insecurity, for sure. But it's their system, man! An elaborate set of rules and customs built over literally a millennium of hereditary power struggles, courtly intrigue, and continental warfare for continental supremacy.
Bust all the revolutionary banter you want, but if you accept the fundamental premise of aristocratic birthright, then you've got to respect the demands and responsibilities those privileges require. The only ones who ever seem hazy on this ridiculously self-evident truth are Harry, Meghan, and their squadrons of perpetually aggrieved Californian stans.
They bamboozled themselves into believing that you can unilaterally resign as a working royal, then just cherry-pick whatever title boosts your Oprah bait cred moving forward. I mean, seriously, what kind of clusterfolk navel-gazing does it take to straight-facedly claim your kids deserve controlling constitutional status as princes and princesses within an age-old European monarchy while explicitly centering your entire personal lifestyle around fleeing those very same constrictive royal duties and traditions?
That's not stunning and brave; that's just astronomically diluted entitlement. Whether it was by design or mere petulant negligence, the moment Meghan and Harry relocated to the new world permanently, Lily and Archie's legitimate claims to anything beyond glorified Lord Fauntleroy getups at local ren fairs became about as valid as Meghan's alleged bullying victims.
And where was this psychotic entitlement born? We all know it stems from one massively bloated ego's unwillingness to ever be overshadowed on the world stage, even when it's at the expense of her own children's pedestal development in the public consciousness.
Because for the last three years, without fail, every single oppression narrative regurgitated by the UR-while royals-turned-liberty survivors has centered around hawking Lilibet and Archie as perpetual victims of discrimination, in desperate need of their voice constantly being heard.
First, it was orchestrating that comically misguided name reveal fiasco. Then came the weeks-long raging about siring the first prince and princess of color for the monarchy, followed quickly by baseless allegations of Archie's security risk being willfully ignored by the evil Palace masons, this despite the credible rumors that he and Lily have been quietly provided state-of-the-art encrypted communications gear and MI5 shadow details their entire toddlerhood. Kind of makes their parents' incessant keening about racist threats ring a bit less earnest when they're clearly receiving world-class protective service.
Then, most notoriously, there was the sinew truth bomb. Meghan's still uncorroborated fable about a royal of indeterminate bigwig status idly debating which shade of beige Archie might pop out pre-birth. As if procreating a healthy bambino wasn't triumph enough for our Duchess, she had to slather it in harmful identity anguish to squeeze out every drama drop.
To her credit, I suppose, she got what must be unprecedented mileage out of that soapy opera offcut. Pretty much every major interview and public address provided an encore chance to wring more self-pity from Archie's racial ambiguity, even though the only residents verifiably denied him have been Frogmore Cottage and its attending blankie of British security entourages.
But for all their diluted delusions of grandeur, Harry and Meghan seem to have finally overstepped themselves into a realm the Firm is mercifully unwilling to indulge. This latest decree is the palace signaling, in no uncertain terms, that their entire monarchical show of perpetual oppression, all premised around torturing two innocent ghost kids in the public imagination, has at long last been dispelled once and for all.
