Prince Harry and Meghan Markle explored changing their family name to Spencer during delays in securing UK passports for their children Archie and Lilibet, it has emerged.
In a move likely to have deepened the couple’s rift with the royal family, it is understood that the Duke of Sussex held a meeting with his uncle Earl Spencer to discuss changing their family’s surname.
After stepping back from their duties as senior royals, the Sussexes moved to California in June 2020, with their daughter Lilibet born the following year.
While their children’s surnames are noted as Mountbatten-Windsor on their birth certificates – inherited from the late Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip – Harry and Meghan were given their Sussex titles by the late monarch on their wedding day in 2018.
The family have since publicly begun to use Sussex as their surname, and it has now been reported that they applied for UK passports for Archie and Lilibet – aged six and four – using the Sussex name, along with the titles HRH (His/Her Royal Highness).
But with their application having waited months without approval, a source told The Guardian that Harry and Meghan feared the delays were due to a reluctance to grant their children the HRH titles, prompting the duke to seek out his uncle for advice.
The source was quoted as saying: “Harry was at a point where British passports for his children with their updated Sussex surnames (since the death of Queen Elizabeth II) were being blocked with a string of excuses over the course of five months.
“Out of sheer exasperation he went to his uncle to effectively say: ‘My family are supposed to have the same name and they’re stopping that from happening because the kids are legally HRH, so if push comes to shove, if this blows up and they won’t let the kids be called Sussex, then can we use Spencer as a surname?’”
While the Mail on Sunday reported last week that Earl Spencer – the brother of Harry’s late mother, Princess Diana – had advised him against taking such a step, warning of “insurmountable” legal hurdles, a source close to the couple strongly denied this version of events, and The Guardian reported that Earl Spencer had been enthusiastic and supportive of the name change.
However, the discussion over a possible move to adopt Diana’s birth name was shelved once the passport applications were approved just days after the Sussexes’ lawyers threatened to pursue a data subject access request, according to The Guardian.
Archie and Lilibet are named on the royal family website’s succession page as sixth and seventh in line to the throne, and are listed as the Prince and Princess of Sussex respectively, titles they gained the right to when their grandfather Charles assumed the throne.
A spokesperson for Harry and Meghan said that, as a rule, they do not comment on private issues pertaining to the duke and duchess’s children.
Buckingham Palace was also approached for comment.
The revelations come just weeks after Harry lost his legal challenge against the Home Office over his UK security arrangements.
