Why Princess Lilibet Is the Biggest Casualty of Latest Royal Fallout

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's 2-year-old daughter, Princess Lilibet, is the real casualty of the latest royal drama that has erupted this month over whether or not Queen Elizabeth II gave her blessing for the use of her family nickname, a new episode of Newsweek's The Royal Report podcast has discussed.

This month, a new biography written by royal author Robert Hardman was serialized by Britain's Daily Mail, an extract of which revealed that an unnamed aide claimed the queen had been "as angry as I'd ever seen her" in 2021, after Harry and Meghan's spokesperson told new outlets that she had given the couple her blessing to call their newborn daughter "Lilibet," her self-coined childhood nickname.

Only the monarch's intimate friends and family members used the nickname, which earned Harry and Meghan backlash from critics and commentators at the time their daughter's name was announced.

The princess was born on June 4, 2021, over a year after Harry and Meghan sensationally split from the monarchy and gave a bombshell interview to Oprah Winfrey which was highly critical of members of the royal family and institution.

In a statement released two days after the birth, the couple announced that "the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, welcome their daughter, Lilibet 'Lili' Diana Mountbatten-Windsor, to the world."

Explaining the choice of name, the statement said: "Lili is named after her great-grandmother, Her Majesty The Queen, whose family nickname is Lilibet. Her middle name, Diana, was chosen to honor her beloved late grandmother, The Princess of Wales."

A report published by the BBC at the time cited a palace source who claimed that the queen was "never asked" for her approval for the use of the name, something the duke and duchess denied.

They issued a further statement claiming that: "The Duke spoke with his family in advance of the announcement, in fact his grandmother was the first family member he called. During that conversation, he shared their hope of naming their daughter Lilibet in her honor. Had she not been supportive, they would not have used the name."

Buckingham Palace did not comment at the time.

The debate about the name has reopened ahead of the publication of Hardman's book The Making of a King: King Charles III and the Modern Monarchy in Britain.

The Daily Mail reports that upon hearing that Harry and Meghan had decided to use her nickname for their daughter, the queen allegedly said: "I don't own the palaces, I don't own the paintings, the only thing I own is my name. And now they've taken that."

The revival of the controversy is likely to rancor with Prince Harry, who reflected on his relationship with the late queen in his memoir Spare, but according to chief royal correspondent Jack Royston, the real victim is the princess who will now grow up with doubt cast over the appropriateness of her name.

"On the other side of all this you've then got Princess Lilibet," Royston told Royal Report listeners. "This isn't just about Harry and Meghan, this is about their daughter too, and she was a newborn baby at the time, and she's only two years old now. She is going to have this name for the whole of the rest of her life."

"Because this whole saga leaked in the media, she will always have a little shadow of doubt, or when she's old enough to hear about it, she will always have that little shadow of doubt over whether the queen actually did want her to have that name, or whether she was furious about the whole thing," he said.

"I can see where the upset might have come from," he concluded. "But of all the things Harry and Meghan have said and done, like this does seem a little bit like it's just picking on a newborn baby."

So far, neither Buckingham Palace nor representatives for Harry and Meghan have commented on Hardman's book or the renewed controversy surrounding Lilibet's naming.

James Crawford-Smith is Newsweek's royal reporter, based in London. You can find him on X (formerly Twitter) at @jrcrawfordsmith and read his stories on Newsweek's The Royals Facebook page.

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