Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, welcomed their firstborn Prince Archie in May 2019. Ahead of his birth, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex announced they wanted to celebrate the expansion of their family more “privately”, ultimately going against the traditions of a royal birth at The Lindo Wing at St Mary’s Hospital in London and the highly-anticipated press photo call. However, this divergence from custom led to confusion — both inside and outside of the Royal Household.
In his memoir Spare, which was published in January, the Duke of Sussex recalled the birth of his son.
“I don’t remember phoning anyone, texting them,” he wrote. “I remember watching the nurses run tests on my hour-old son, and then we were out of there. Into the lift, into the underground car park, into the people-carrier, and gone. Within two hours of our son being born, we were back at Frogmore.”
Archie was born at The Portland in London on May 6, 2019. While in the past, an announcement would confirm a royal mother is in labour, this was not the case for the Duchess of Sussex.
Instead, Meghan welcomed her firstborn with Harry by her side, the pair left London and returned to Frogmore Cottage — the new royal residence they had only recently moved into — without the public or press’s knowledge.
He wrote: “But it’s not true, I said. Ah, truth didn’t matter. Keeping people tuned to the show, that was the thing.”
A few hours later, Harry publicly confirmed their son had been born. Standing outside the stables at Windsor, he said both mother and baby were healthy.
Days later, he and Meghan announced the name to the world and appeared at Windsor Castle for a photo call.
At the time, it was reported that the Sussexes had shunned the typical royal birth tradition of posing on the steps outside The Lindo Wing, where both Princess Diana and Princess Kate had welcomed their children.
Although Archie’s birth came months before the Sussexes’ exit from royal life, the momentous occasion has — in hindsight — been pointed out as an event that signalled things to come.
Tom Quinn, whose recent book Gilded Youth hit shelves in February, said: “It was very much Harry and Meghan not just wanting to do their own thing, but wanting to say: ‘We’re signalling a change, things are not going to be the same anymore, we’re an independent unit and we’re not going to be told what to do by the rest of the Royal Family.”
As it is known now, the Duke and Duchess proved themselves to be an entirely “independent unit”, climactically stepping down from their royal roles and moving overseas.
And as a result of their exit, Sara Latham lost her job within the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s household.
However, she subsequently scored the top job working for the late Queen Elizabeth II, working in Her Majesty’s private office to help on special projects, and reporting to the monarch’s most trusted adviser, her Private Secretary, Edward Young.
Later, reports emerged that Meghan had bullied members of staff and Sara was one of the figures at the centre of the allegations. Buckingham Palace announced a day later it would launch an investigation into claims; the review officially concluded in June 2022, but the Palace said that its results would not be made public.
According to Valentine Low, the royal journalist who broke the story in The Times in March 2021, Sara and Meghan were initially a “golden combination”.
However, “it did not take long for the shine to wear off,” he wrote in his book, Courtiers: The Hidden Power Behind the Crown, which was published last year.
“Relations between the couple and Latham became increasingly tense,” he continued. “Close colleagues began to wonder how long Latham would want to stick around. At the back of their minds was the feeling that anyone leaving the Sussex team would be best advised to think of a good excuse.”
