With the coronation of King Charles III two months away, tensions are only worsening between Buckingham Palace and the monarch’s wayward son, Prince Harry. At issue for the royal issue: whether Harry will attend his father’s coronation after all the senior royals failed to attend the California christening of Harry’s daughter, Lilibet. 

Harry is also said to be demanding a sit-down and apology from his father and elder brother prior to the coronation, something the king and the prince of Wales are not expected to grant.

Yet in what is seen as an olive branch, the palace on Thursday morning changed the titles of Harry’s children, Archie and Lilibet, to prince and princess on the royal family’s office line of succession on its website.

This comes as Harry and his wife, Meghan, gave a post-christening statement doubling down on their children’s “birthright” to the prince and princess titles.

So, it appears as if the parts everyone is to play in the upcoming coronation drama are still being sorted out.

In the diminutive persons of the prince and princess — they are 3 years old and 1, respectively — converge arcane succession rules and the course charted by a new sovereign, son of the longest reigning monarch in English history, who is navigating a sea of familial turbulence. Now, even the littlest ones appear set for post-christening baptisms into royal controversy. 

Word came from Montecito that at Lilibet’s christening last Friday, she became a princess, with a Sussex spokesman confirming that “Princess Lilibet Diana was christened on Friday, March 3, by the bishop in the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, the Rev. John Taylor.” People magazine reports that the senior royals — Prince Harry’s family — were invited, but did not attend. 

The Episcopal Church into which Lilibet was christened broke from the Church of England after the American Revolution rather than swear fealty to the latter’s supreme governor, George III, whose distant heir is now Lilibet’s grandfather. The Sussexes have sought their own measure of independence from the crown, “stepping back” as “working royals” and pursuing “financial independence.” 

Succession rules promulgated by Letters Patent issued by King George V in 1917 ordained that the grandchildren of the sovereign, but not the great-grandchildren, save the children of the heir — Archie and Lilibet’s cousins, in this case — have the right to claim “HRH” titles. Lilibet and Archie swapped their “Master” and “Misses” titles for their more august appellations when their grandfather became king. 

This being the Windsors, though, even that switch, inscribed in protocol, has hardly been smooth. Notwithstanding the pomp and circumstance of a coronation, Prince Charles became king, and his grandchildren princes and princesses, the moment his “Mummy” breathed her last at Balmoral.

A Sussex spokesman insisted that ​​the “children’s titles have been a birthright since their grandfather became monarch” and that “this matter has been settled for some time in alignment with Buckingham Palace,” notwithstanding the rifts that have opened in the monarchy’s innermost circle. 

During the Sussexes’ notorious sit down with Oprah Winfrey, the duchess — Meghan Markle — claimed of her son that Buckingham Palace “didn’t want him to be a prince or princess,” which would mean that “he wasn’t going to receive security.” She called that stance “really hard” and cited “concerns and conversations” about Archie’s skin color, which many speculate emanated from the king. 

In response to these explosive allegations, the Palace remarked in a statement that “recollections may differ.”

Given the discord between the California- and London-based branches of the royal family, attention has turned to whether one or both of the Sussexes will be in attendance for King Charles’s big day at Westminster Abbey. When asked in  January, Prince Harry said only, “There’s a lot that can happen between now and then. But the door is always open. The ball is in their court.”

Regardless of what court the ball inhabits, an emailed invitation to the coronation has landed in the Sussexes’ inbox. That receipt was confirmed by a spokesman, who — on March 5 — noted that the “duke has recently received email correspondence from His Majesty’s office regarding the coronation.” 

The date for the occasion — which will perhaps ironically be on Prince Archie’s birthday — was first announced in October, suggesting that when it comes to the Sussexes, children and parents alike, festina lente, or “make haste slowly,” appears to be the Crown’s approach.