Although it is unlikely that Meghan and quite possibly Harry will have known that there was a precedent for royals being prevented from using their royal titles, in 1917 Her Highness Princess Maud, Countess of Southesk was ordered by her uncle, King George V, to cease using the style and title of princess, with which her grandfather King Edward VII had endowed her in 1905. Thereafter, she was known by her married name, Lady Southesk. Although she remained a highness and princess, and enjoyed precedence immediately after those members of her family who were royal highnesses, and although her coronation robes were those of a royal princess and not a countess, she was referred to even in the Court Circular by her aristocratic dignities alone. Had she persisted in using her royal titles, King George V would have stripped her of them.
Because Harry and Meghan are now in a similarly anomalous position, and no one yet knew whether Meghan would turn out to be as much of a maverick commercially and politically as some feared she could be, both doors were being kept open. If she and Harry respected the boundaries behind which royals must function commercially and politically, they would be allowed to keep their royal status. If they deviated from the high standards required, they could be deprived of it.
This was not an empty threat, and constitutionalists who argue that Parliament would have to vote to strip Harry of his royal status are wrong. Although peerages cannot be withdrawn except by an Act of Parliament, King George V with one stroke of the pen in Letters Patent dated 20th November 1917 deprived a whole host of his royal relations of their royal status. These included King Edward VII’s grandson Prince Alistair of Connaught who became Lord Macduff; Queen Mary’s brothers Princes Adolphus and Alexander of Teck who became the Marquis of Cambridge and Earl of Athlone respectively, while their heirs Princes George and Rupert were demoted to Earl of Eltham and Viscount Trematon with all the other children mere courtesy lords and ladies; and the Battenberg princes Henry and Louis, whose marriages to Queen Victoria’s daughter Beatrice and granddaughter Victoria did not prevent them from becoming the Marquises of Carisbrooke and Milford Haven, while all their little princes and princesses became mere lords and ladies. The Queen might not be able to strip Harry of his dukedom without proceeding through Parliament, but she could certainly strip him of his royal status with the ease that her grandfather had shorn those just mentioned.
A friend of Harry and Meghan’s told me that neither of them understood the weakness of their position at the time they made these moves. Once they became alert to the dangers, Meghan showed her mettle by trying to brazen things out. She declared that people would consider them royal whether or not they remained highnesses. To an extent, she was right. In America, people have a different concept of what it means to be a member of the Royal Family. As long as you are related to them, you’re regarded as being royal. Even in Britain people do not appreciate how narrowly defined the Royal Family is. Princess Margaret’s son and daughter are often called royal, as are Princess Anne’s children. In reality, none of them is royal. The Royal Family is in essence limited to the monarch, his or her children, and all grandchildren in the male line. Latitude is extended to the children of the children of the heirs into the third generation, hence why the Cambridge children are royal, but no legitimate child of Harry’s is a member of the Royal Family until such time as his father ascends to the throne. But Meghan and Harry are members of the Royal Family, and even though they have been demoted by having usage of their Royal Highness titles denied to them, they will continue to be royal, albeit semi-detached, unless their royal status is removed from them.
Remote as that possibility seems, it is not beyond comprehension. If they should become caught up in a scandal like the Infanta Cristina and her husband, they might well find themselves stripped of their royal status the way Cristina and Iñaki Urdangarin were stripped of their ducal titles. The British monarchy has proven itself to be amazingly resourceful and inventive when it is in its interest to lay down new precedents. So it is not beyond the realms of possibility that Harry could find himself ceasing to be a royal highness. It’s doubtful that people would then still consider them royal, but even if they did, the level of kudos would be infinitely inferior to that of a royal dukedom.
All this, of course, may seem far-fetched, but then so was the extra-legal ruling which prevented the Duchess of Windsor from being styled Her Royal Highness, or the invention by which Prince Edward’s children, who by right are lawfully His Royal Highness Prince James of Wessex and Her Royal Highness Princess Louise of Wessex, became known as Viscount Severn and Lady Louise Windsor.
The royal world is subtle. It issues shots across the bow before it sends in the fire ships. The most contentious of all the Sussexes’ plans as they sought to paddle their canoe beyond the safe harbour of British royal life into the rough seas of Americana was their registration of trademarks for their Sussex Royal brand. The incredibly wide net they cast when they registered over a hundred items ranging from the purely commercial to
