Lady Louise Windsor isn’t a princess despite having the right to take the title under royal rules dating back decades. Under the Letters Patent of 1917 the children of a monarch take the title of either prince or princess and are always HRH.
The rule, drawn up when King George V was on the throne, also applies to a monarch’s grandchildren along the male line. A monarch’s son’s children can be HRH, but the offspring of a sovereign’s daughter can’t.
This would imply Lady Louise, 20, has the right to be both HRH and a princess, as the daughter of Elizabeth II’s youngest son, Prince Edward. After all, Prince Andrew’s daughters Beatrice and Eugenie are titled Princess Beatrice and Princess Eugenie.
As Elizabeth II’s daughter, Princess Anne’s offspring are not princess or prince, simply going by their names, Zara Tindall and Peter Phillips.
King Charles and Prince Andrew’s children use HRH as per the rules, although Prince Harry relinquished that title when he and Meghan Markle, Duchess of Sussex, stepped back as working royals.
When Prince Edward married then Sophie Rhys-Jones in 1999, Buckingham Palace issued a statement saying it had been decided the couple’s children wouldn’t be HRHs.
Edward and Sophie’s marriage came relatively soon after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, who was killed in a car crash in Paris in 1997.
Her death sparked a widespread outpouring of grief and saw the Palace criticised for appearing too distant and for removing Diana’s HRH title following her divorce from King Charles, then Prince of Wales.
With royal titles a controversial issue at that time, the Firm decided Edward and Sophie’s children would assume titles pertaining to an earl, rather than their future offspring taking the titles of prince and princess.
Edward wasn’t made a duke on his marriage to Sophie, but became the Earl of Wessex, while his wife assumed the title Countess of Wessex. Sophie and Edward took on their current titles, Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, under the reign of King Charles.
Ahead of Lady Louise’s 18th birthday, Sophie said the title of princess and HRH could be used by her daughter, but they weren’t due to the historic decision taken by Louise’s parents.
Dr Craig Prescott, an expert in UK constitutional law and politics at Bangor University said King Charles could have given Lady Louise a title of some sort, but this does not seem to be the direction Edward and Sophie wanted to pursue.
When Edward was made Duke of Edinburgh in March 2023, his son, James, assumed his former title, Earl of Wessex. Sophie and Edward’s daughter’s title remained the same because a duke’s daughter is known as “lady” too.
