Reignited Princess Lilibet Name Drama Only Hurts the Late Queen Elizabeth, Not Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, Author Says
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are, once again, coming under fire for naming their daughter, Princess Lilibet, after Queen Elizabeth II. Why? Because of a claim made in a forthcoming royal biography that the situation — Did they ask permission or didn’t they? — left the queen “angry.”
Queen Elizabeth was ‘angry’ after Harry and Meghan’s Lilibet name announcement in 2021, according to a biography
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex welcomed their now-2-year-old daughter on June 4, 2021. They named her Lilibet Diana, paying tribute to the queen’s childhood nickname and Lili’s late grandmother, Princess Diana.
A source in author Robert Hardman’s latest book, Charles III: New King. New Court. The Inside Story, as excerpted in The Daily Mail, claimed the queen was “as angry as I’d ever seen her” after Harry and Meghan said the monarch gave them her blessing to name their daughter Lilibet.
After the BBC reported at the time that they were told by a palace source that Harry and Meghan didn’t ask the queen’s permission, the couple responded with a statement.
“The duke spoke with his family in advance of the announcement,” a spokesperson said. “In fact his grandmother was the first family member he called.”
“During that conversation,” they noted, “he shared their hope of naming their daughter Lilibet in her honour [sic]. Had she not been supportive, they would not have used the name.”
“The couple subsequently fired off warnings of legal action against anyone who dared to suggest otherwise, as the BBC had done,” Hardman wrote. “However, when the Sussexes tried to co-opt the Palace into propping up their version of events, they were rebuffed.”
“Once again, it was a case of ‘recollections may vary’ — the late Queen’s reaction to the Oprah Winfrey interview — as far as Her Majesty was concerned.”
Lilibet name claims ‘do nothing but blight’ the queen’s ‘character and judgment’
The claim Queen Elizabeth was upset doesn’t actually hurt Harry and Meghan, according to Dr. Shola Mos-Shogbaminu.
The author of This Is Why I Resist took to X, formerly Twitter, to share her thoughts on the Lilibet name drama, saying it reflects poorly not on the couple but the late queen.
“What grandmother in her right mind would be ‘angry’ at a great-grandchild being named in her honour [sic]?” she asked. “I have a very strong views about Queen Elizabeth, but even I’m flabbergasted at those spurious claims that do nothing but blight her character and judgment.”
“If these unnamed ‘sources and aides’ thought this would damage Harry and Meghan, they’re wrong,” she continued. Rather, the outlet, she posited, has “given her [the queen] name a beating in order to profit off defaming Harry and Meghan again,” describing it as “shameful.”
Elsewhere in the post, Mos-Shogbaminu revisited the claims Harry and Meghan didn’t ask the queen’s “permission” to name their daughter after her.
“Harry and Meghan do not need anyone’s permission, least of all Queen Elizabeth, to name their child Lilibet,” she wrote. “The fact that they got her blessing was out of respect [and] not ‘necessity.’”
“The name Lilibet predates Queen Elizabeth, for goodness sake – she didn’t own it or create it!” the author added.
Harry and Meghan nor the royal family have commented publicly on the biography, which debuts on Jan. 18, 2024.
Harry and Meghan keep Lilibet and her older brother, Archie, largely out of the public eye
Unlike her cousins across the Atlantic, Lili, as well as her brother, don’t make official public appearances every year. Instead, glimpses of the Sussex kids happen only rarely, with the occasional mention by their parents.
Take, for instance, the home videos and photos of Harry and Meghan’s children featured in the couple’s 2022 Netflix docuseries.
Other appearances have come from the paparazzi, with the most recent being a December 2023 family vacation following a Trick-or-Treating sighting two months earlier.
Most notably, Harry and Meghan offered the world a first glimpse of baby Lili in their 2021 Christmas card. Then, in June 2022, came a first birthday portrait of Lili.
