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Prince Harry’s ‘His Royal Highness’ Title Has Been Removed From the Royal Family Website
Prince Harry’s title of ‘His Royal Highness’ has been removed from the official website of the British royal family — more than three years after he and wife Meghan Markle stepped away from their duties.
The website was amended after United Kingdom-based publication The Mirror pointed out on August 4 that Prince Harry, among other royals, were inaccurately being called by their former titles.
The website “aims to provide an authoritative resource of information about the Monarchy and Royal Family, past and present,” according to its official description. Following the blunder, Harry and Meghan’s names were moved to the bottom of the family’s main page — beneath working members of the family but above the name of Prince Andrew.
Prior to the correction, Harry had reportedly been referred to as “HRH” twice and also named the youngest son of the Prince of Wales, which was his father King Charles III’s title before it went to his brother, Prince William. King Charles — who has been the monarch since September 2022 — was also misidentified online and hadn’t been updated from his previous title as the Prince of Wales. His wife Queen Camilla was referred to as the Duchess of Cornwall.
Commenting on the telling move and its timing, royal author Gareth Russell told Us Weekly that the adjustments were partially due to a lack of website oversight.
“Part of it — without throwing too much shade in the general direction of the royal website — is that it is chaotically curated,” Gareth explained, noting that the members of the family aren’t the ones running the landing page. “The royals no more update the website than the president of the U.S. would update the presidential website.”
“There are still some areas where Queen Elizabeth II is referred to in the present tense. So, they really need to get that dealt with,” Russell further explained. “I think it’s simply the fact that they’re catching up bit by bit and trying to update this as they go. I don’t think it’s necessarily a slight to Prince Harry. I don’t think at the moment either the Sussexes or Buckingham Palace seem to be interested in slinging arrows or trading insults.”
Harry and Meghan — who tied the knot in May 2018 — announced they were “stepping back” from their royal duties to focus on becoming “financially independent” in January 2020. They spoke further spoke of the decision during a CBS tell-all interview in March 2021. The couple — who share children Archie and Lilibet together — got candid about the struggles they faced as members of the British royal family.
“My biggest concern was history repeating itself,” Harry said at one point of the conversation, alluding to his late mother, Princess Diana, who tragically died in a car crash on August 31, 1997, after being chased by paparazzi. Since their making their move permanent in 2021, the couple has since resided in Montecito, California, where they’re raising their family.
Harry and Meghan’s fortunes have taken a turn for the worse since their move to the U.S. The pair signed massive deals with Netflix and Spotify, as well book publisher Penguin Random House, which published Harry’s January 2023 memoir, Spare.
While the couple’s December 2022 Harry & Meghan docuseries was a success for the streaming giant, no other original projects had the same effect in the nearly three years since signing their deal. Spotify canceled their $20 million deal in June 2023 after only one podcast was delivered, Meghan’s 12 episode “Archetypes” in August 2022, with the pair reportedly failing to reach “productivity benchmarks.”
Things got even worse for Harry and Meghan when Spotify’s head of podcast innovation and monetization and popular podcaster Bill Simmons called the two “f–king grifters.”
“I have got to get drunk one night and tell the story of the Zoom I had with Harry to try and help him with a podcast idea,” Bill said during his June 16 podcast. “It’s one of my best stories … F–k them. The grifters.”
The A-list couple had been seemingly exploring a return back to royal life, an insider told In Touch exclusively on July 26. “Harry and Meghan have secretly reached out to Harry’s brother, Prince William, to discuss the possibility of returning to the royal family,” said the source, adding, “This is something they both want very much.”
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