[imagesource:netflix]

“What’s in a name?” Shakespeare famously asked.

It might be a cliché, but to some, it’s proven to be a years-long controversy.

Though Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s daughter Lilibet Diana Mountbatten-Windsor was born in 2021, arguments over her name continue, specifically if Queen Elizabeth II gave her blessing to the choice.

When Harry and Meghan announced the birth of Lilibet – nicknamed Lili – on June 4, 2021, they told the world that she was “named after her great-grandmother, Her Majesty The Queen, whose family nickname is Lilibet. Her middle name, Diana, was chosen to honour her beloved late grandmother, The Princess of Wales.”

It might not have helped family tensions that the announcement that Meghan was pregnant with a girl came during their bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey earlier that year. There was also certainly no love lost when the Duke and Duchess of Sussex broke with the royal family and moved across the pond shortly after that interview.

Despite that ever-widening rift, Harry reached out to his gran to request her permission to name the child after her.

Her royal highness agreed and gave her blessing, royal sources said at the time. A royal editor at The Sunday Times, Roya Nikkah, even suggested the sweet monicker might be considered a “diplomatic olive branch offered to the royal family after what’s been a very difficult, fractious year between Harry and Meghan and the rest of the family.”

Then again, perhaps not.

Vanity Fair reports that days after the birth, “palace sources” told the BBC that neither Harry nor Meghan asked the queen for permission to name their daughter as they did.

The Sussexes responded swiftly, saying via an attorney 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 honour. Had she not been supportive, they would not have used the name.”

The attorney’s letter went on with a bit of a legal threat, saying that any claims otherwise were “false and defamatory and should not be repeated”.

Now it has been revealed via author Robert Hardman’s new book, Charles III: New King. New Court. The Inside Story, that the Queen was actually fuming over the name choice:

Hardman writes (per Newsweek) that a staff member close to the late queen “recalled that Elizabeth II had been ‘as angry as I’d ever seen her’ in 2021 after the Sussexes announced that she had given them her blessing to call their baby daughter ‘Lilibet’, the Queen’s childhood nickname.”

If both parties acknowledge the occurrence of a phone call between Harry and the Queen, one might ponder whether, during that conversation, Harry sought permission or merely shared information, anticipating any objections. This could be the source of the confusion.

Hardman says that confusion was cleared up within the family when the controversy first raged, though.

“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.”

Either way, the name Lilibet will live on.

[source:vanityfair]