Americans love the pageantry of British royalty, one of the longest monarchies left in the world, although its role today is titular and symbolic rather than politically substantive. But there’s much confusion over what the titles actually mean, and how they apply to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, better known as Prince Harry and his wife American second-tier actress Meghan Markle.
The couple has had a tumultuous relationship with the British royal family and the media, loudly complaining of alleged mistreatment, such as Markle’s apparently baseless claims of “racist” treatment from the family she married into.
When the couple moved to America, they “retired” from their royal duties in Britain, yet they retained their titles as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. There was an agreement with Buckingham Palace—long the seat of the monarchy—that the duo would no longer style themselves His/Her Royal Highness. But they may still use duke and duchess, and prince and princess.
But critics in the UK are irked at their continued use of the Sussex titles, even though the couple is entitled to use them. The irritation comes from the fact that the couple are clearly at odds with the rest of the family and spend very little time in the United Kingdom. Last year, a conservative member of parliament offered a bill that would have stripped the couple of the titles, but it went nowhere and has not been reintroduced since the change of government in the recent elections on July 4.
Harry and Meghan got a lot of the attention they seem to crave from a four part Netflix series in 2022 called Harry & Meghan. The tell-all focused on the couple’s split with the other royals. During one episode, Prince Harry said he and his wife took a long Canadian vacation in 2019 when they were weighing moving to that country and severing most ties with the royal family. Netflix recently announced there are no plans to renew the show.
Harry said he had offered to relinquish his title of Duke to his father, then-Prince Charles (now King Charles), but accuses his father’s press office of leaking the tentative plans to the media.
He repeated the claim in his 2023 memoir Spare. The title refers to the English saying “one heir, one spare,” applied to the male children of the sovereign. The eldest male child, if existing, gets the Prince of Wales title, and the second son is considered the backup, the “spare.”
