The issue was first highlighted by the Daily Beast ten days ago after Meghan published a letter she received, addressing her as, “Your Royal Highness.”
Now, it has emerged that Meghan sent Jamie Kern Lima a gift basket of “homemade strawberry sauce” with a slip saying: “With the Compliments of HRH The Duchess of Sussex.” The basket, and note, were seen on the latest edition of Kern Lima’s podcast.
Meghan’s side is arguing that she is entitled to use the title, provided it’s not for commercial use.
A Meghan source said: “Harry and Meghan retain their HRH titles; however, by agreement, they do not use them for commercial purposes. While they do not publicly use ‘HRH,’ this was a personal gift, and their titles remain.”
However, this interpretation was described by one former courtier as “complete rubbish.” This source said that the so-called Sandringham Summit, which settled the terms of Meghan and Harry’s exit from the ranks of working royalty, “made it clear they had agreed not to use the HRH titles at all, ever, in any capacity.”
The official statement, which can still be seen on the official royal website, clearly supports this interpretation. It reads: “The Sussexes will not use their HRH titles as they are no longer working members of the Royal Family.”
The former courtier added: “Charles might be happy to put up with this, but William won’t. He loathes and despises Harry and Meghan with every bone in his body, he believes they have betrayed everything the family stands for and the idea that they are using their royal status as a calling card will enrage him.”
Friends of William told the Daily Beast last week that they thought Meghan was testing the waters by posting a letter addressing her as HRH from the vice president of Ukraine, but had “deniability” because the note came from someone else.
Printing up compliments slips using her HRH is an entirely different scale of provocation.
A friend of William’s told the Daily Beast: “Charles has completely lost control. It’s apparent that Harry and Meghan have every intention of making his final years a misery, just as he feared they would. Meghan using her HRH exposes how weak and enfeebled he is. She knows he won’t do anything. There is no way King William will stand for this. The titles will simply be removed when he is king. A way will be found.”
While the only precedent for removing an HRH is divorce—both Princess Diana and Sarah Ferguson lost theirs—most observers believe the honorific could simply be removed by royal fiat.
Norman Baker, a former government minister who has written extensively on royal and constitutional matters, told the Daily Beast: “The law is not clear, but I have little doubt that as the bestowing of an HRH is in the gift of the monarch, the monarch could remove the HRH title. It would basically be the equivalent to an executive order in the U.S.”
Baker was an early voice calling for the Sussexes to be stripped of the titles when they first quit the working family. He said: “It was a mistake to not simply take it away at the time. People didn’t want to up the ante and cause problems, so it was smudged over—as so many things in the U.K. are—but as we can now see, it would have been useful to have had that clarity.”
After Meghan first reasserted her and Harry’s titles in an Instagram post earlier this month, an expert in heraldry who knows the family told the Daily Beast, “There were plenty of people at the time who said it was a mistake to make not using the title a mere gentleman’s agreement rather than just removing it. This post may not matter in and of itself, but it raises a bigger question: What are they going to do if she simply starts using her HRH again? She probably can’t be stopped as things stand right now. The bottom line is, she is, officially, an HRH. It was never removed.”
A friend of the king told the Daily Beast that while the king was likely to be aware of the controversy, he would not seek to have the issue raised with the couple.
