Prince Charles has allegedly made a drastic decision to slim down the Royal Family and is planning on denying Prince Harry and Meghan Markle‘s children from having the titles of prince and princess when he becomes king. The Daily Mail reports that Charles is determined to cut costs as a way to appease his subjects and that this isn’t a personal decision, but is simply business. “Charles has never made any secret of the fact that he wants a slimmed-down Monarchy when he becomes King,” a source told The Sun. “He realizes that the public don’t want to pay for a huge Monarchy and, as he said, the balcony at Buckingham Palace would probably collapse.”
According to The Mail, if Charles becomes king, he plans on changing the current precedent so “only heirs to the throne and their immediate families would receive full titles and financial and police support funded by taxpayers.” Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s son Archie is currently 7th in line for the throne, and Charles allegedly told Harry that he plans to change key documents — likely the 1917 Letters Patent –in order to prevent Archie and Lilibet from inheriting the titles that would have previously been their birthrights.
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Markle addressed this issue in her interview with Oprah Winfrey, explaining that if Archie and Lilibet are not given the titles of prince and princess, they won’t be given the security support that those titles usually afford. “They were saying they didn’t want him to be a prince or princess, which would be different from protocol, and that he wasn’t going to receive security,” Meghan said about the stress she faced while pregnant with Archie. “This went on for the last few months of our pregnancy where I was going, hold on for a second.”
“They said [he’s not going to get security], because he’s not going to be a prince,” Markle continued. Okay, well, he needs to be safe so we’re not saying don’t make him a prince or princess, but if you’re saying the title is what’s going to affect that protection, we haven’t created this monster machine around us in terms of clickbait and tabloid fodder you’ve allowed that to happen which means our son needs to be safe.” According to Markle, a thorough explanation wasn’t given, saying that she “heard a lot of it through Harry and a lot of it through conversations with family members.” Despite the issues that she faced while being a working Royal, she wanted the titles for her children for safety and for their birthright. “If it meant he was going to be safe, of course,” Markle explained. “All the grandeur around this stuff is an attachment I don’t have…the most important title I will ever have is mom.”