Prince Harry Baby Name Drama Will ‘Fuel’ Royal Rift

Prince Harry’s rift with the royal family may be inflamed by “mean” comments by a palace staffer, a royal commentator told Newsweek.

Harry and Meghan Markle named their daughter Lilibet in tribute to Queen Elizabeth II’s childhood nickname, but the announcement in June 2021 sparked a transatlantic briefing war over whether they got the monarch’s permission.

A new account in author Robert Hardman’s book Charles III: New King. New Court. The Inside Story, published by Macmillan and due out on January 18, quotes a former palace staffer saying Queen Elizabeth II was “as angry as I’d ever seen her.”

Prince Harry has gone on record previously to say his own public broadsides against the monarchy in part were a response to the “endless” leaks from the palace, raising the prospect the latest disclosures could put a fresh dent in any hope of reconciliation.

Afua Hagan, a U.K.-based royal commentator, told Newsweek: “This is definitely going to stoke up tensions.

“We’ve had the discussion about Lilibet’s name when she was born and to rake over those coals is a bit mean and it’s definitely, definitely going to stoke up those tensions.

“It just reignites all the people who say Harry and Meghan were wrong about everything, that everything they say is untrue. It’s just going to stoke up all those tensions, it’s going to fuel that fire, most definitely.

“It’s a bit mean really because she’s only little and it’s the baby’s name. At the time, and I feel it now, it’s quite sweet to name someone after their grandmother.”

“I’m 100 percent sure Harry and Meghan didn’t want to cause offense with it, they probably thought it was a sweet gesture. Whether or not the queen actually felt that way, we don’t know because she’s not here with us anymore and so will never go on record saying one thing or the other.

“This all about stoking those tensions, reigniting those discussions, fueling those fires and putting more divisions between Prince Harry and the rest of his family unfortunately.”

Prince Harry was asked by Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes in January 2023 why he was being so public with his criticisms and he replied: “Every single time I’ve tried to do it privately there have been briefings and leakings and planting of stories against me and my wife. You know, the family motto is never complain, never explain. But it’s just a motto. And it doesn’t really hold.”

Newsweek has contacted Buckingham Palace, Macmillan and the Sussexes for comment.

Whether or not Harry was right or wrong to make the disclosures contained in his book Spare and the couple’s Netflix documentary Harry & Meghan, his past comments suggest the new revelations will not go down well in Camp Sussex.

And it comes less than two months after Omid Scobie’s new royal book Endgame, in its Dutch edition, accidentally named King Charles III as the royal who speculated about Prince Archie’s skin tone.

Harry and Meghan’s criticisms in December 2022 and January 2023 were widely felt to have caused significant offense among the royals, though no public statement was issued.

However, they also sparked a backlash against the couple, who have since kept a far lower profile.

While the open warfare may have stopped, the two books together appear to have re-energized the cold war fought through off the record statements from anonymous sources.

Charles III: New King. New Court described how Harry took a swipe at some of the queen’s staff in his memoir: “They did not respond, though they were interested by what had been omitted from his book.

“One privately recalled that Elizabeth II had been ‘as angry as I’d ever seen her’ in 2021 after the Sussexes announced that she had given them her blessing to call their baby daughter ‘Lilibet’, the Queen’s childhood nickname.”

Other extracts, serialized in the Daily Mail, noted the understated way the palace viewed Harry and Meghan’s impending intercontinental broadsides before they emerged: “Asked about the King’s feelings on all this imminent incoming fire from the Sussexes and their associates, one Palace staffer referred to them as ‘headwinds that we face from across the Atlantic.’

“That was one way of describing an extraordinary 12-week run of non-stop disobliging headlines and combative allegations, all of them entirely beyond the control of the King and his staff. Storm-force gales might have been a better metaphor.

“That this should all be unfolding in the first phase of a new reign might once have been considered disastrous. However, there were two unexpected aspects to these ‘headwinds’ which would work in Charles III’s favour.”

The book argues that Spare and the Netflix docuseries had little impact on the polls or on the king himself though it does attribute anti-monarchy sentiment in the Caribbean to the wider account by the Sussexes that race was a big factor in their decision to leave Britain.

“Much of the Caribbean gets its news through U.S. outlets, and the U.S. media was generally more sympathetic to Harry and Meghan. So Megxit plays directly into this debate,” a palace aide told Hardman.

Meanwhile, a staff member suggested Prince William was unhappy at the way Kate Middleton was represented: “On top of all the other breaches of trust, here was Harry making a blatant attack on Catherine. For William, this was the lowest of the low.”

Jack Royston is Newsweek‘s chief royal correspondent based in London. You can find him on X, formerly Twitter, at @jack_royston and read his stories on Newsweek‘s The Royals Facebook page.

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