FROM the moment he was born, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have done everything in their power to try and protect their son, Archie.
But few people know that one of the things Prince Harry and Meghan Markle did in a bid to prevent the young royal from being teased was to reportedly reject a rather specific royal title.
Archie’s cousins Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis will hold senior titles later down the line, such as the Prince of Wales, the Princess Royal and possibly the Duke of York or Duke of Cambridge.
However, this is not true for several other of the late Queen’s other great-grandchildren, including Archie and his sister Lilibet.
Despite initially being styled as Master Archie Harrison Mountbatten Windsor, in March 2023, Harry and Meghan revealed they didn’t want to deny their children their “birth right.”
Archie soon became known as Prince Archie of Sussex, but he could’ve ended up with a rather different title entirely.
Harry and Meghan were given the titles “Duke and Duchess of Sussex,” “Earl and Countess of Dumbarton,” and “Baron and Baroness Kilkeel” by the late Queen when they tied the knot at St George’s Chapel in Windsor on 19 May 2018.
And, as Archie is in the royal line of succession, he was given the option of being named “Earl of Dumbarton” – a subsidiary of his dad’s official title.
However, the royals reportedly turned it down through worry that it could result in bullying because it contained the word “dumb.”
“They didn’t like the idea of Archie being called the Earl of Dumbarton because it began with the word ‘dumb’ [and] they were worried about how that might look,” a source told The Telegraph.
A second source added that it wasn’t just Meghan that was concerned, and that it “also bothered Harry.”
Due to rules set out in the 1917 Letters Patent by King George V, Archie and Lilibet are both allowed to use princely titles as they’re the grandchildren of The King.
Prince Archie Mountbatten-Windsor was welcomed into the world at the Portland hospital on May 6, 2019, in London.
His birth was shortly followed by his younger sister, Princess Lilibet, on June 4, 2021.
Archie, who has lived stateside since 2020 following Harry and Meghan’s decision to step back from royal duties, recently celebrated his fifth birthday.
According to royal expert Tom Quinn, King Charles could well have sent his grandson a card and small present to mark the occasion.
“There has even been talk that he will send one of his own watercolour paintings to Archie as a present as Meghan loves homemade gifts and dislikes extravagant expensive presents,” he said, speaking to The Mirror.
“But King Charles and his team are desperately worried that whatever the King sends to his grandson may be misinterpreted by Harry and Meghan.”
