‘It’s magic, it’s pretty amazing,’ declared Meghan. ‘I have the two best guys in the world, so I’m really happy.’
‘He has the sweetest temperament,’ disclosed Harry. ‘He’s really calm. I don’t know who he gets that from!’
The name ‘Archie’ was said by Sandhurst mates to have been inspired by a mentor of Harry’s in the army – Major Tom Archer-Burton – while the baby’s mother offered a posher clarification. ‘Arche’, the Duchess of Sussex explained, was a term from classical Greek meaning ‘origin’ or ‘source of action’ – Meghan had picked up more classical learning at school in Los Angeles than ever Harry had at Eton – and the couple would later bestow the same name on their charitable foundation. As for Harrison, well, that was sort of a joke – ‘Harry’s son’ – leading some commentators to wonder if the name had anything to do with the mystic and meditational aura of George Harrison, Meghan’s particular idol in the Beatles.
Swaddled in a white blanket and wearing a delicate white knitted hat, little Archie appeared to sleep peacefully throughout his first official photo call – which was, of course, exactly as his father and mother had planned it.
‘Thank you, everybody,’ said Meghan, ‘for all the well wishes and kindness. It just means so much.’
The entire private-public occasion was just pitch-perfect – with the splendid lofted windows of St George’s providing the ideal backdrop – a touch of history along with modernity: it was Harry the father who, fifty-fifty parenting style, was cradling the baby, not the mother, unlike every previous photograph on those wretched Paddington steps.
And then came an even warmer family occasion when the proud parents were shown presenting Archie to the Queen, Prince Philip and Doria. The picture made the front page of every British newspaper – and a good many others around the world – with the two grandmothers, black and white, smiling down on the British monarchy’s first mixed-race baby.
‘How any woman does what they do is beyond comprehension,’ remarked Harry in one of his post-birth interviews. ‘It’s been the most amazing experience I could ever have possibly imagined.’
But here came the real crunch: the godparents. An essential component of any Church of England christening process, these adult mentors who will guide the new baby spiritually, morally and often materially through life are considered even more important for members of the royal family. Technically, they carry the title of ‘sponsor’.
Numbers six and seven in the order of succession may not seem particularly close to inheriting the crown, but who knows what can happen in an age of mass terrorist attack and global pandemics. Six and seven could well get promoted to three and four – or even higher. And, more profoundly, anyone in the single figures – Harry stands at six at the time of writing, Archie at seven – is certainly ‘royal’ whether they like it or not, since they have been sanctified by the public’s emotional commitment to them, as well as by taxpayers’ largesse.
It is well understood at Buckingham Palace that not all godparents can make it to a hastily arranged christening service. So in July 2019, Elizabeth II’s Holyrood Week duties in Scotland meant that she and Prince Philip could not attend the ceremony for Archie on 6 July. And this date had already been the result of some shuffling of schedules to accommodate the busy summer diaries of Charles, Camilla, William and Kate – not to mention the Archbishop of Canterbury who was to preside over the rite.
Yet it is still expected by monarch, palace and just about anyone with a stake in the game that the world should be told who the new royal baby’s ‘sponsors’ are. How can you judge the suitability of a sponsor who remains unknown? ‘Secret sponsor’ has a dodgy sound to it. And it is an ingredient of Britain’s representative monarchy that Brits should have the right to know who is giving moral guidance to their possible future king or queen. Here again, however, precedent, protocol and practice all collided headlong with Harry and Meghan’s firm insistence on their privacy – and that of their new baby.
‘Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor will be christened in a small private ceremony by the Archbishop of Canterbury in the Private Chapel at Windsor Castle on Saturday 6th July,’ announced Buckingham Palace in a statement on 3 July. ‘The Duke and Duchess of Sussex look forward to sharing some images taken on the day by photographer Chris Allerton. The [names of the] godparents, in keeping with their wishes, will remain private.’
Confirming the palace announcement, the Sussex Royal office made clear that the whole ‘sponsor’ issue was non-negotiable. The godparents’ names would not be revealed.
‘I’ve covered five or six christenings in my royal career,’ commented Majesty magazine’s editor-in-chief Ingrid Seward on the Today programme. ‘And I’ve never come across such secrecy.’
Was brother William outraged? Just angry? Or merely perplexed?
‘Friends’ tried to keep the temperature down by suggesting the last – that the future king, only five places clear of Archie in the order of succession, could not comprehend how such a basic matter of constitutional principle had been misunderstood. How could any new Windsor royal be christened in a meaningful sense without the newcomer’s sponsors being known, if not present?
William was smiling after a fashion on the morning of Saturday, 6 July, when he turned up for his nephew Archie’s christening in the Queen’s Private Chapel at Windsor, and the family photograph that would follow in the formality of the Green Drawing Room. But it was a wry and curious smile, and commentators had a field day interpreting what the prince’s face and posture – and those of his wife – might portend. Kate was
