First of all, she was under a fire after the change of birth certificate of Harry and Meghan’s son Archie.
Onlooker before 18 months after the event – showing two alterations to the document in June 2019, a month after the royal tot was born.
A resulting Sunday newspaper article posed the question if Meghan had herself insisted on the change, perhaps as some form of nod to her late mother-in-law, Princess Diana.
The blunder of ‘Prince’ alongside Harry’s name was simple enough to correct, a challenge us mere mortals will thankfully not have to contend with, although particularly important for historical record one could argue.
New document ‘Rachel Meghan, Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Sussex’.
According to the Mirror “The amendment which garnered the attention of the royal sleuths, saw Meghan’s names dropped in favour of stylising the former actress simply as ‘Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Sussex’.
Another said” A range of royal experts queued up to deliver their verdicts – ‘Unprecedented’ cried one, ‘extraordinary’, as one more declared (quite sinisterly) that perhaps ‘this was an early part of their plan’.
Royal sources have revealed this has been met with a sense of “bewilderment” in the Palace.
One royal source revealed to me that Meghan ordered her staff to make the change to Archie’s birth certificate in order to “to fall in line with amendments she’d already made to her passport”.
The amendment was made by Meghan and Harry’s personal team when they had their own staff based at Kensington Palace, who in turn reported to Buckingham Palace, so the sharp rebuke of “the Palace” makes even less sense.
The birth certificate is publicly document so there are options on how it is filled out. “The language used to suggest it was ‘the Palace’ who ‘dictated’ it is somewhat unfortunate, as it certainly wasn’t addressed like that.
“The statement and its wording pose more questions than it answers unfortunately.”
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex were later banned by The Queen from using the titles of His and Her Royal Highness, after they delivered their bombshell decision to quit the royal family and go it alone, seeking their “financial freedom”.
Furthermore, they were stripped of the right to market themselves as ‘Sussex Royal’ after launching a record-breaking Instagram page, with more than 11million loyal followers.
Perhaps of course Meghan would have preferred (as her statement again suggests) to be named on her child’s birth certificate.
Fans of their new multimillion dollar podcast deal will have recently heard them present themselves as simply ‘Hi I’m Harry and I’m Meghan’.
Michael Rhodes, the editor of Peerage News blog and an authority on royal naming convention, suggests that royal birth certificates do indeed vary with regards to the “title and style of the mother’s name”.
He said: “It is not set in stone. However, I fail to see why Archie’s certificate required any alterations – No status is changed because of it.”
That settles that then.