There's a lot happening right now on Planet Royal.
A spokesperson for the Sussexes officially confirmed that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's daughter Lilibet, 21 months, was christened in California last week.
"I can confirm that Princess Lilibet Diana was christened on Friday, March 3 by the Archbishop of Los Angeles, the Rev John Taylor," the rep told People.
I want to pause here for a moment for us all to notice that the spokesperson referred to the little girl as Princess Lilibet, which is very significant, and will be ruffling feathers throughout the land as I write this.
While Archie and Lili were automatically entitled to use the titles of "Prince" and "Princess" when Queen Elizabeth passed away and their grandfather became monarch, it was unclear whether King Charles would be actively encouraging them to use these titles, whether he might let them choose whether or not to use them at age 18, or whether he would ban them from using the titles altogether.
To this day, the official line of succession lists the kids as "Master Archie" and "Miss Lilibet," which might indicate that the Sussexes decided to refer to Lili as "Princess" without consulting Charles. (I don't know enough about how this works to confirm whether or not that's the case, FYI.)
Anyway, a source also told People that King Charles, Queen Camilla, Prince William and Princess Kate were invited to Lili's christening, but apparently chose to skip the event.
This feels like a fairly heartless choice to me, considering the little girl isn't even two years old and it would have been nice for her to know that she was surrounded by family for the milestone. With that said, we also don't know how much notice the royals were given ahead of the event, and if it was just a few weeks, there's no way they could have canceled all their engagements and jetted off to California. Nuance, people.
However, Prince Harry has previously said that he's tried everything to mend his relationship with his family. "It never needed to get to this point. I’ve had conversations, I’ve written letters, I’ve written emails, and everything," the prince told Tom Bradby in January.
He implied that the ball was in their court, but still invited them to his daughter's christening. On their end, the royals invited the Sussexes to the coronation. Let's see if they can use these silver linings to reconcile, but I'm seriously starting to lose hope.
