Turns out you need to do more than just marry a prince to become a princess, though Meghan Markle does at least have a spiffy new title after becoming Prince Harry’s bride.
Since we Americans don’t have royalty, it’s a little difficult at times for us to understand the intricacies of titles. Still, it’s a safe assumption that with the Royal Wedding in the books, most of us believed that Meghan Markle had become Princess Meghan.
Narrator: She did not.
Despite the fact that she is very much married to Prince Harry now, Markle is still not a princess. Her exact title is Her Royal Highness Meghan, Duchess of Sussex , much more of a mouthful but pretty cool, though arguably not as cool as being a princess.
Well, technically, Markle is now a princess, lowercase ‘p,’ but not Princess Meghan.
Confused? As this USA Today article explains, the uppercase Princess title really only applies when you are born into a royal family. That is, if Harry had been a female, he would have been Princess Harriet, or whatever his parents decided to name him.
if you marry into the royalty, as Markle just did, you receive whatever title the queen (or king, when applicable) decides to give you.
"The bottom line is the monarch decides royal titles, based on tradition, personal preference and whether or not a particular title is currently vacant, as it were. It’s a tradition that the monarch grants a new title to male members of the royal family on their wedding day. This “gift” is within the monarch’s power to grant; the government of the day has nothing to do with it."
In this case, Queen Elizabeth II gave Prince Harry the new title of His Royal Highness Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, and Markle became HRH Meghan, Duchess of Sussex — the first woman ever to hold that particular title.
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In any case, while people the world over are undoubtedly going to call her Princess Meghan (just as they call Kate Middleton Princess Kate, which, as you might guess by this point isn’t her official title either), she’s really not. Technically speaking. We think she’ll be just fine with her fairy tale wedding and potential happily ever after story no matter what title she has now.