Prince Harry’s Title Scrubbed From Royal Family’s Website in Latest Setback for Embattled Duke and Duchess

Prince Harry’s most marketable quality, the title of “His Royal Highness,” has been removed from the royal family’s website. It’s the latest sign that he and his wife, Meghan Markle, are two shooting stars falling back to earth.The Express reported that the Duke of Sussex was referred to as “His Royal Highness” in two places on his official profile page as of August 4, but they were removed as of Tuesday. He is now referred to only as the Duke of Sussex, the title he was given after his wedding to Ms. Markle in 2018.The removal is significant to those who study British tea leaves. The so-called “HRH” title is used only for the most senior members of the British royal family, or those directly descended from the monarch and their spouses.When Harry and Meghan announced in 2020 that they’d be “stepping back” from the royal family and leaving Great Britain in the departure known colloquially as “Megxit,” they agreed during negotiations that they would no longer actively use their HRH titles since they were no longer “working royals” doing charity work at the direction of the Palace. Despite this, they continued to refer to themselves as “their royal highnesses” on their own website while they sniped at the royal family in interviews and in Prince Harry’s bestselling memoir, “Spare.” It was not until August that the Palace, after three years of tension, stripped Prince Harry of the coveted honorific on its official website. It’s the latest blow to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who have monetized royalty since their marriage. There are now many signs that they may have squeezed the last pound sterling from their lineage, and that their efforts to establish themselves in California as superwealthy A-list celebrities unfettered by the rules and obligations of the royal family they resent are falling short. Last month, their $20 million podcasting deal with Spotify was not renewed and Spotify canceled Meghan’s podcast “Archetypes” in which she interviewed other women celebrities. The Wall Street Journal reported that the couple “hadn’t met the productivity benchmarks required to receive the full payout from the deal.”This hole in Harry and Ms. Markle’s bank account came with an additional kick when a Spotify executive, Bill Simmons, called them “grifters” just as a royal biographer, Tom Bower, says the couple is “terrified” that they’re running out of money they need to maintain their mansion in ultra-exclusive Montecito, their security (a major priority of Meghan’s) and their other trappings of status such as servants and private jet travel.Hollywood insiders are predicting that Harry and Meghan’s lucrative Netflix deal, valued by some reports at $100 million, will be the next to go as the streaming business contracts. Netflix has already pulled the plug on an animated children’s show Ms. Markle was producing called “Pearl.”The couple may have already played their best card with their Netflix documentary “Harry and Meghan” in which they issued more criticism of the royal family. The docuseries failed to earn a coveted Emmy nomination after the streaming platform decided not to lobby on their behalf, and the U.K. Sun reported that $50 million is being withheld until the couple produces “content of real interest.”The couple have of late been facing a deluge of negative headlines from the British tabloids they detest, headlines suggesting with no absence of schadenfreude that the Duke and Duchess’s grasping efforts to live atop the Hollywood A-list are falling short.The Daily Mail (which Meghan successfully sued for publishing a letter she wrote her father) reported that she’s on the outs with David and Victoria Beckham, and the Mirror reported they were not invited to Oprah Winfrey’s 69th birthday party. A Newsweek poll of Americans earlier this month found Harry’s approval underwater at 46 percent in the first quarter of 2023, down four points from 2022, a downward trend that “showed Harry had dropped 45 points and Meghan 36 by January 16, six days after publication” of “Spare.”Harry has also faced legal morass, bringing his own invasion of privacy suits against the Daily Mail and the Mirror, and fighting a Freedom of Information request from the Heritage Foundation which raised questions about whether he enjoyed special treatment to obtain a visa despite illegal drug use that disqualifies less well-connected applicants.Americans overthrew the British monarchy in the Revolution, but a solid chunk of the population has remained drawn to the throne. During the War of 1812, New England states even met to discuss secession and negotiating a separate peace with the mother country in the infamous Hartford Convention.Although the Convention brought disgrace, princes, dukes, and duchesses have kept coming to their former colonies to bask in adulation from would-be subjects ever since and — as the sun set on the British Empire — those with royal titles courted the children of America’s new money families, seeking an infusion of dollars to fund their lavish lifestyles.The most famous of these unions was a New York heiress, Jennie Jerome, to Lord Randolph Churchill, producing Sir Winston Churchill. Like Prince Harry, Churchill’s popularity rose and fell. Americans cheered his heroics in the Boer War and then jeered his failure at Gallipoli in World War I which led to his wilderness years.Churchill was a blueblood but also possessed many talents which he employed when called to lead his nation against Nazi Germany. However, it’s hard to imagine destiny ringing up Harry or Ms. Markle, despite their titles.The White House added to the growing impression of a celebrity pair losing favor by, according to the Daily Mail, snubbing Harry and Ms. Markle’s request to hitch a ride home from Queen Elizabeth’s funeral aboard Air Force One with President Biden, and First Lady Jill Biden rejecting an invitation to Harry’s Invictus Games, which she’d previously attended, to avoid offending the Royal Family. On the personal front, the Express reported that Harry is “taking time apart” from Ms. Markle whose one-time friend, Lizzie Cundy, says she sees the “writing on the wall” for a split. “The air is going out of their balloon,” a British writer and PR agent, Mark Borkowski, told the Daily Mail, “and these little things begin to erode that juggernaut of hype that they delivered when they broke away from the Royal Family.”When Prince Henry of Austria visited America in 1902, the Sun quoted Vienna’s News Wiener Journal saying that “it tickles the vanity of Americans to be wooed as a nation” by royalty but predicted that Henry’s “pleasing flattery will soon wear off.” Negative headlines are now rubbing the shine off Harry and Ms. Markle, too, knelling the end of the royal treatment — and titles — which fueled their rocket to stardom.

Prince Harry’s Title Scrubbed From Royal Family’s Website in Latest Setback for Embattled Duke and Duchess

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