The palace pauses for some time before making a decision on Archie and Lilibet’s royal titles

What do Harry and Meghan really want? It’s hard to know. The Sussex press team declined to go on the record when I asked them to, and the couple have made conflicting statements in the past.

When Archie was born, the couple’s spokesman said that the new parents had decided that their son would not take the courtesy title owed him as a duke’s child (he would have been Archie, Earl of Dumbarton) in order to give him as normal a life as possible.

but Meghan repeatedly told Oprah that she and Harry had no choice over the title of their first child – although she specifically said Archie was denied a princely title. “You know, we had heard – the world, those of us out here who read things or hear things – that you and Harry didn’t want Archie to have a prince title. So you’re telling me that’s not true?” Oprah asked. “No, and it’s not our choice, is it?” Meghan replied.

Meghan also told Oprah that having her son titled is only important to her “if it means he’s safe,” but said the choice to have a title shouldn’t be taken away from her children . “I have a lot of clarity about what’s coming with the titles, good and bad — and a lot of pain in my experience,” she said. “Again, I wouldn’t wish my child pain, but it’s their birthright to make a decision about it then.”

One thing’s for sure — with Harry and Meghan now independent of the royal family, at least this time we’ll likely know exactly how they feel about each decision made.

Possible Titlegate 2022 outcomes have been the subject of media speculation as the Palace declined to update the Sussex children’s titles on the Royal Family’s official website. The Sun reported that King Charles III planned to bestow the titles of Prince and Princess on Archie and Lilibet, but denied them the honorific style of ‘Royal Highness’. The tabloid and several news outlets have reported behind-the-scenes disputes between the King and the Sussexes, with Harry and Meghan being described as “implacable since the Queen’s death” and “angry” at their children being denied HRH status.

And then, on Tuesday, Vanity Fair royal reporter Katie Nicholl wrote that the king has not has made a decision and will be making the call about Archie and Lilibet’s titles based on their parents’ behavior. Nicholl quoted a “source close to the king” as saying: “It very much depends on what happens in the coming months,” particularly with Harry’s announced memoir expected to be released before the end of the year and the Netflix TV series Show Meghan hinted at this in her recent profile on The Cut.

We shall soon see who was right – if anyone was right at all. With the Sussexes, anything is possible and anything is controversial. And that is part of the dilemma facing King Charles III. now faces. His desire to create a “slimmed down” monarchy is well known; In fact, capping the number of royals has been a priority for the House of Windsor since the Way Ahead Group in the 1990s. A prince and princess who will never be working members of the royal family and live in the United States does not exactly fit this vision. (Yet it is also true that even with the “slimming down” of the monarchy, it seems unlikely that the new king would give his nieces – who are not working members of the royal family – their titles as HRH’s Princess Beatrice and Eugenie of York. )

How much would it damage the King’s public image and brand-new reign to deny these titles to the children of the son of the much-loved Princess Diana and a mixed-race woman, especially in those countries poised to leave the Commonwealth now as Queen Elizabeth II is gone? How will his subjects react to the fact that one pair of grandchildren are princes and one princess and the others are treated so differently? Not to mention the toll his decision will have on his personal relationship with Harry and his family.

This is probably the first major decision of the reign of King Charles III. You can’t really blame him for waiting until the last possible moment to make it happen.