PRINCE HARRY AND MEGHAN'S NEW TITLE REQUEST AS THEY REJECT 'PRIVATE CITIZENS'

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are building a new life in the Cotswolds, but were taken aback by the King's letter

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have reportedly revealed the titles they would prefer to use as they return to the UK after the King referred to them as "private citizens".

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex made a spectacular return to Britain in late August, and are said to be settling down in Oxfordshire with Archie, seven, and Lilibet, five, enrolled in local schools. Their arrival in the UK has prompted King Charles III to clarify the Sussexes’ position and titles.
In the letter, sent to senior government and military officials, Charles said Harry and Meghan would continue to refrain from using the formal royal titles, such as His Royal Highness and Her Royal Highness, as they have since stepping back from official royal duties in 2020.

It added that any charity work carried out by the couple will be carried out in a “private capacity”.

The letter, released to media on Monday (September 7) took the Duke and Duchess aback. Reports from multiple UK news outlets have emerged claiming Harry and Meghan want to be known as “public figures” instead.
The Sussexes would prefer “public figures” as they feel it would “acknowledge that, on a personal level, they remained members of the Royal Family, despite no longer receiving public funding”, a briefing note from the couple said, according to the Daily Mail.

They also "were a little surprised not to have been told about” the King’s letter “in advance", a spokesperson for the pair said.

Insiders said the Sussexes’ team was only given an hour’s notice to digest its contents before it was made public. They also said Harry only had two minutes to read the letter before it was published, as he was in a meeting in London and could not be reached sooner.

Meghan has still not been seen in public yet, but has reportedly had coffee at Soho Farmhouse, an ultra-luxurious private members club frequented by the Beckhams and Paul McCartney in Oxfordshire, where the duo are said to be staying.

The Express has contacted Buckingham Palace and represenatives for Harry and Meghan for comment.

Princess Astrid of Norway Dies at 94 Just Two Days After Brother King Harald’s Funeral

Princess Astrid of Norway has died at 94.

The princess, whose official title was Princess Astrid, Mrs. Ferner, died just two days after the funeral of her younger brother, the late King Harald V.

The Norwegian Royal House announced the news on Friday, Sept. 11, sharing that the princess “passed away peacefully” earlier that day.

“His Majesty the King has received with great sorrow the news that Princess Astrid has passed away,” the palace said. Her nephew, the new King Haakon VIII, also ordered that the flag over the Royal Palace balcony be flown at half-mast.

“Throughout a long life, Princess Astrid represented the Royal House in a warm and dutiful manner,” the King said. “Aunt Astrid was an important support to King Harald and the rest of our family. We learned a great deal from her, and she was not afraid to speak her mind.”

Princess Astrid was married to the late Johan Martin Ferner from 1961 until his death in 2015, and they had five children: Cathrine, Benedikte, Alexander, Elisabeth and Carl-Christian Ferner.

Her children, who do not hold royal roles, released a statement upon the news of their mother’s death, saying, “In our grief, we stand together with gratitude. Thank you for all the wonderful memories. You will forever hold a great place in our hearts.” 

The Storting, the supreme legislature of Norway, also paid tribute to the late princess, saying, “A highly beloved member of the royal family has left us. Norway has lost a memorable and highly esteemed princess. Our condolences go to the royal house and the closest family.”
She was born prior to Norway introducing absolute primogeniture and thus was never in line to the throne; however, Astrid supported the crown throughout her life. 

Following the death of her mother, Crown Princess Märtha, she helped her father, King Olav, by serving as the First Lady of Norway, a position comparable to the role of a Queen Consort, until her brother married the future Queen Sonja in 1968.

King Haakon announced that his late aunt will receive a state funeral, the details of which will be announced at a later date.

While she was able to attend her brother’s funeral at Oslo Cathedral on Wednesday, Sept. 9, Princess Astrid has suffered health issues over the last year. She was hospitalized in March after contracting pneumonia and was forced to forgo royal duties as she recovered.
While she was never in line to the Norwegian throne, Princess Astrid was distantly part of the U.K.’s line of succession due to being a great-grandchild of King Edward VII of the United Kingdom. At the time of her death, she was the oldest living descendant of Queen Victoria.

Many of today’s European royal families share connected bloodlines thanks to the strategic matchmaking of 19th-century monarchs like Queen Victoria and King Christian IX of Denmark. Queen Victoria, in particular, is sometimes referred to as “the grandmother of Europe” for how many family trees have grown from her line of descendants.

Through their shared royal lineage, Astrid and the late Queen Elizabeth were second cousins. Following her death, and that of King Harald, the only remaining great-grandchildren of King Edward VII are the Duke of Kent, Prince Michael of Kent, Princess Alexandra of Kent and the Duke of Gloucester.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle deal 'heartbreaking blow' to Prince George

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have "overshadowed" a huge moment for Prince George with their return to the UK, a royal expert has claimed. According to Phil Dampier, King Charles's letter to the Sussexes was a "warning shot" against overshadowing the Royal Family.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex and their two children, Prince Archie, seven, and Princess Lilibet, five, made a bombshell surprise return to the UK a fortnight ago, but they will remain non-working royals, the King's statement said. However, according to Mr Dampier, the announcement was more addressed to the public than to his youngest son and daughter-in-law. “It’s really sending out a message - a warning shot across their bows, you could say," he said. "What they’re [the palace] emphasising is that nothing has changed as far as they’re concerned."

“No one was expecting them to come back, so they didn’t feel it was necessary to point this out before," he told The Sun.

“But now that they’ve come back and might start turning up to various charity events or doing commercial activities, it’s got to be absolutely clear to everyone that they are doing it as private individuals and not as royals.”

He added that the message may well be ignored by Harry, 41, and Meghan, 45, who “like the drama".
The drama comes on an important day for the Royal Family, for several reasons. September 8 marks the fourth anniversary of the late Queen's death, as well as the first day of Prince George's time at Eton College.

However, the important day for the prince, who is second in line to the throne, was overshadowed by the back and forth from Harry and Meghan regarding their security, the King’s message and their return to the UK.

Mr Dampier explained: “Well, this is one of the problems. When we start to get a controversy over Harry and Meghan, it tends to make the front pages.

“We’ve got Prince George going to Eton today - his first day at Eton - and we’ve got the anniversary of the Queen‘s death, and it’s overshadowing it all. I think this is what the Royal Family is worried about.

“It seemingly is a case where you give them an inch and they take advantage, and they don’t learn at any stage that they need to rein it back and be more humble and cooperative.”

Meghan Markle & Prince Harry’s Calculated UK Comeback EXPOSED – They’ve Blinded King Charles With Pure Scheming!

In a move dripping with calculation, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are packing up their Montecito life and relocating their family back to Britain later this month — six years after they dramatically quit  royal duties, fled the UK, and spent years publicly trashing the monarchy, the British press, and their own relatives.

Their children, Archie (7) and Lilibet (5), are already enrolled in British schools starting September. The couple will live in a private, non-royal home somewhere outside London while keeping their California mansion and Portuguese holiday property. They remain non-working royals with no official duties.

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King Charles only learned of the bombshell plan last Sunday — after the Sussexes’ carefully staged summer reunion at Highgrove, where the King finally met his grandchildren for the first time since 2022. The move was never mentioned during that visit. Charles has welcomed the chance to see more of them “in a private and personal capacity,” but palace sources confirm there will be zero return to working royal roles.

This is classic Harry and Meghan. They don’t do coincidences. They do scheming, conniving, and calculated positioning.
After years of claiming Britain was too toxic, the press too vicious, and the royal family too neglectful (complete with Oprah interviews, Netflix series, and the explosive memoir Spare), the pair who insisted they needed distance for their mental health and financial independence are suddenly racing back across the Atlantic. Why? Because proximity to the Crown is the only real commodity they have left.

Their Hollywood ventures and lifestyle brand have not delivered the lasting relevance or fortune they banked on.  Royal proximity delivers headlines, status, and something to sell. Charles, ever the hopeful father, is handing them that relevance on a silver platter — while remaining firmly non-working. Critics note the pattern: meet the King once, then spin the narrative so it looks as if everything was discussed and planned behind Prince William’s back. That is exactly the chaos these two thrive on.

Prince William and Catherine are said to be deeply concerned. Trust remains shattered after years of public airing of private grievances. Sources close to the Waleses describe wariness that the Sussexes will push for some form of the “half-in, half-out” arrangement the late Queen Elizabeth firmly rejected in 2020. William, who has had virtually no contact with his brother, is reportedly unimpressed by the sudden return and the way it was announced.

Harry’s recent claim that he won’t brief the press offers little comfort. History shows that when outcomes don’t go their way, the briefings and victim narratives return. Nothing involving this couple ever seems free of ulterior motives, positioning, and an eye on the next media cycle.

Charles needs to stop confusing access with genuine reconciliation. The Sussexes walked away from royal life and spent years criticising the institution that gave them their platform. They wanted out. Let them stay out — forever — rather than allowing them to hover on the edges for relevance while the working Royal Family carries the actual burden of duty.

This is not a heartwarming homecoming. It is a textbook power play by two people who have repeatedly shown that their primary loyalty is to their own brand. The British public has seen this movie before. It never ends well for the institution.

What George W. Bush Just Said About Islam on the 9/11 Anniversary Is Mind-Boggling

George W. Bush surfaced this week at his presidential center, Condoleezza Rice beside him, to mark twenty-five years since September 11 by congratulating himself on the phrase that defined his presidency. He made clear that Islam was a religion of peace, he said, that the attackers had subverted their own faith.

The country has heard it so many times it barely registers anymore. It should. That sentence is the single most consequential thing Bush ever said, and it cost this country more than anything else he did in office.

“I also made it clear that Islam was a religion of peace, not a religion of war, and that these people subverted their religion,” Bush claimed.

Understand what the phrase was actually doing. It was not theology and it was never meant to be. It was a load-bearing assumption — the premise on which the entire post-9/11 project was built. If the problem was nineteen lunatics who misunderstood their own religion, then the enemy was tiny, aberrant, and fixable. You could topple two governments, hold some elections, hand out purple ink, and come home to parades. Everybody wants what Americans want. They just need the chance.

Twenty years, trillions of dollars, and thousands of American lives later, we found out. Kabul fell in eleven days. The army we spent two decades building evaporated before the last plane left. The assumption was wrong, and men clinging to the landing gear at Hamid Karzai International paid the invoice.

That’s the first cost. Here’s the second, and it’s the one still doing damage.

The phrase became a domestic speech code. Once a Republican president declared the question settled from the White House podium, anyone who tried to describe jihadist ideology accurately — its texts, its funders, its recruiters, its ambitions — could be waved off as a bigot. Not rebutted. Waved off. Two decades of American officials trained themselves to talk about “violent extremism,” a phrase so hollow it could mean anything and therefore explained nothing.

Meanwhile the body count kept its own records. The Global Terrorism Index for 2026 logged 5,582 deaths across 2,944 attacks worldwide last year. The four deadliest organizations on earth were the Islamic State and its affiliates, JNIM, Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan, and al-Shabaab — together responsible for 3,869 deaths, roughly 70 percent of the global total. Their attacks are more lethal, per attack, than those of left-wing or right-wing terror groups.

That is not a rounding error or a coincidence, and noticing it is not bigotry. Note who those four organizations spend most of their time killing: Muslims, in Mali and Nigeria and Pakistan and Somalia, by an enormous margin. The Nigerian Christian farmer and the Malian villager are being murdered by the same ideology, and the people most desperate for the West to name it honestly are usually its nearest victims.

Bush’s error was not cruelty. It was the comfortable man’s conviction that everyone else sees the world the way he does — that people who act differently must simply be confused, and that a sufficiently sincere speech can talk them out of it. It’s the same reflex that assures us a totalitarian regime will moderate if we trade with it, or that a hostile power just needs to be understood. It is the governing instinct of an establishment that has been wrong about nearly everything for thirty years and has never once been made to pay for it.

Never forget was supposed to mean something. It meant remembering what killed 3,000 Americans, and calling it by its name.