Their daughter Lilibet Diana was born to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle in June 2021.
As a family of four, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are content.
The couple’s second child, daughter Lilibet “Lili” Diana Mountbatten-Windsor, was born on June 4, 2021, in Santa Barbara, California, following the birth of their son Archie Harrison, 4, in May 2019.
The pair made the announcement that they were expecting their second child on Valentine’s Day 2021. After stepping down from their roles as working members of the British royal family, they later revealed the baby’s sex in a tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey.
Harry remarked, “To have a boy then a girl—what more can you ask for?” Their daughter would complete their family, he added. It’s “two is it.”
After Markle revealed she had a miscarriage in between pregnancies in an essay for the New York Times, Lilibet was born.
“I experienced a severe cramp after changing [Archie’s] diaper. “I knew, as I clutched my firstborn child, that I was losing my second, as I dropped to the floor with him in my arms, humming a lullaby to keep us both calm, the cheerful tune a stark contrast to my sense that something was not right,” she wrote in the 2020 essay.
In the months that followed their loss, Meghan fell pregnant with Lili, and the couple has subsequently adjusted to life with two young children. On a November 2022 episode of her Archetypes podcast, Meghan revealed that she is “in the thick of it — toddling.”
While promoting the Invictus Games in 2022, Prince Harry said to host of Today Hoda Kotb that he is really loving fatherhood despite the challenges of motherhood.
I’ve always wanted to have my own kids, and now I have two small people who I’m responsible for, and I adore it. I love everything about it, he added.
The youngest of King Charles’ grandchildren is named Lili. Harry and Meghan want their kids to feel a strong connection to the royal family despite their tense relationship with them.
For this reason, of course, I would love nothing more than for our children to have ties with members of my family, and they do with some, which brings me great delight, Harry said in a 2023 PEOPLE cover story. “I’ve said before that I’ve wanted a family, not an institution — so of course, I would love nothing more than for our children to have relationships with members of my family, and they do with some, which brings me great joy,” Harry added.
Here is all there is to know about Lilibet Diana, the daughter of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
She was born in Santa Barbara on June 4, 2021.
At the Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara, California, the couple gave birth to Lili on June 4, 2021. Her birth occurred at 11:40 a.m. and was 7 pounds, 11 ounces.
“On June 4th, we received the wonderful news that our daughter Lili had arrived. We are still grateful for the love and prayers we have received from all over the world since she is more than we could have ever anticipated. Shortly after she was born, the second-time parents sent a message on their Archewell website thanking everyone for their continuous generosity and support during this very special time for their family.
The couple received congratulations from other members of the royal family, including Prince William and Kate Middleton, who posted a message on their official Instagram account.
“The good news of Lili’s birth has made us all very joyful. Congratulations to Harry, Meghan, and Archie,” they said beside a picture of Markle cradling Archie while pregnant, with Harry wrapping his arms around them.
She has the names of Princess Diana and Queen Elizabeth.
After Lili’s birth, which occurred during Queen Elizabeth’s reign, the parents explained the significance of her name in a statement that was made public.
Her middle name, Diana, was selected in memory of her cherished late grandmother, The Princess of Wales, and is named after her great-grandmother, Her Majesty The Queen, whose family nickname is Lilibet.
Other members of the family, most notably her late husband, Prince Philip, also used the name Lilibet fondly. King George VI once stated of his two daughters, “Lilibet is my pride. Margaret is my joy.”
In 2021, when Prince Philip passed away, his coffin was decked with a message written by Queen Elizabeth and inscribed “Lilibet.”
For their daughter’s name, Prince Harry and Meghan requested Queen Elizabeth’s permission before choosing her nickname.
According to a statement from a spokesperson for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, “The Duke spoke with his family in advance of the announcement, in fact, his grandmother was the first family member he called. During that conversation, he shared their hope of naming their daughter Lilibet in her honor. Had she not been supportive, they would not have used the name.”
The name “Lili” is also a tribute to Doria Ragland, who gave Meghan the nickname “Flower” as a little child.
When Queen Elizabeth passed away in September 2022, Harry’s father, King Charles, promptly ascended to the throne. Archie and Lili received the titles of prince and princess in accordance with a 20th-century rule because they were the monarch’s grandchildren.
The decree, which King George V established after issuing a Letters Patent in 1917, stated: “… the grandchildren of the sons of any such sovereign in the direct male line shall have and enjoy in all occasions the style and title enjoyed by the children of dukes of these our realms, save only the eldest living son of the eldest son of the Prince of Wales.”
Since their grandpa was not a monarch at the time of their birth, the siblings did not have these titles. PEOPLE is aware that the titles won’t be used frequently but rather in more formal contexts.
She was born in America, making history as the first great-grandchild of Queen Elizabeth and the first grandchild of King Charles.
Prince Harry and Meghan left the United Kingdom in 2020, when they stopped acting as working royals. and briefly resided in Canada before making Montecito, California, their permanent home.
Lili made history by becoming the first great-grandchild of Queen Elizabeth and the first grandchild of King Charles to be born in the United States, even though she wasn’t the first royal baby to be born in America — Lord Frederick Windsor and his wife Sophie Winkleman welcomed their daughter, Maud Windsor, in California in 2013.
She is heir apparent number seven.
The British throne is to be inherited by Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet. After Prince William, Prince George, Princess Charlotte, and Prince Louis, their father is currently fifth in line to the throne. Archie is sixth, and Lilibet is seventh.
The succession sequence will shift, with Prince Harry and his offspring moving down the list if any of Prince William and Kate Middleton’s children have children.
The male primogeniture system, which elevated male heirs over their female siblings in the line of succession, was abolished in 2013 thanks to an amendment to the law governing the line of succession. The reforms also repealed a long-standing prohibition on royals remaining on the list when they wed Roman Catholics. Only royal children born after October 28, 2011, however, are affected by the revisions, which took effect in March 2015.
Mr. Tyler Perry is her godfather.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex called Tyler Perry and asked him to be Lili’s godfather after Lili was born, according to the final episode of the Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan. Tyler Perry offered the couple his California home to move into after they temporarily stepped back from their royal duties.
When they contacted to ask, the filmmaker said, they “were pretty serious on the phone” even though their conversations are more fun.
Perry added, “I go, ‘Okay, what’s going on?’ They said, ‘Well, we’d like for you to be Lili’s godfather.’ I go, ‘Whoa,’ ” Perry recounted. I needed a moment to process that and then I thought, “I’d be honored. I’d be beyond honored.”
In March 2023, she was baptised.
The bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, Rev. John Taylor, baptized Lili on March 3, 2023, in a quiet and private ceremony at the family’s Montecito home.
Twenty to thirty guests, including Tyler Perry, Doria Ragland, and an unidentified godmother, were present, an insider told PEOPLE.
After the wedding, there was an afternoon of dancing and food for the guests, and Archie even got to dance with Lili.
The identical songs that were played during Harry and Meghan’s 2018 wedding were “Oh Happy Day” and “This Little Light of Mine,” and Perry came in from Atlanta with a 10-person gospel choir to perform them.
Lili was baptised, according to a spokesman for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who also used Lili’s formal title as a first name for the first time.
Like her father and brother, she has red hair.
Lili was first seen by the public on the front of the family’s 2021 holiday card when she was just a few months old, but it wasn’t until her parents released a portrait of their daughter on the occasion of her first birthday that it became clear Lili inherited her father’s hairstyle.
Harry made light of the fact that their son Archie also has a reddish tinge to his hair when promoting his novel Spare on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, saying that “the ginger gene is a strong one.”
Harry remarked that his mother’s side of the family, where all three of his mother’s siblings, Lady Jane Fellowes, Lady Sarah McCorquodale, and Charles, 9th Earl Spencer, have naturally red hair, “has a very, very strong Spencer gene.”
“I actually really, sincerely believed at the outset of my relationship [with Meghan] that should this last and we have children, there’s no way the ginger gene will hold up to my wife’s genes, but I was wrong!”
She appears in her mother’s first picture book.
The Bench, written by the Duchess of Sussex, was published in 2021 and examines the relationship between fathers and sons from the perspective of a mother.
According to a press release from Random House Children’s Books, Meghan explained that the inspiration for The Bench came from a poem she penned for her husband on Father’s Day, one month after Archie was born.
The picture book, whose drawings were created by Caldecott Award–winning artist Christian Robinson, includes watercolor depictions of Meghan, Archie, and Prince Harry wearing Lili in a body wrap on one of the pages.
Lili will get a family treasure from Meghan.
A family treasure is ready for Lili when she is old enough to wear a watch, according to her mother.
When she learned that the USA Network series Suits had been renewed for a third season in 2015, “which, at the time, felt like such a milestone,” Meghan, who was playing the lead character, admitted to Hello! magazine that she splurged on something she had always wanted: the two-tone Cartier French Tank watch.
That’s what makes objects great, the connection you have to them, she said. “I had it engraved on the back, ‘To M.M. From M.M.’ and I plan to give it to my daughter one day.”
She is “very chilled,” claims Harry.
At a private garden party for the WellChild Awards in 2021, Harry mentioned to a visitor that Lili was “very chilled.”
She’s extremely laid back and appears content to just sit there while Archie is running around like crazy, so we’ve been lucky so far, he continued.
She was present at a royal celebration for her first birthday.
Harry, Meghan, Archie, and Lili traveled to the U.K. to mark Queen Elizabeth’s historic reign at her Platinum Jubilee in 2022, but Lili’s parents also made sure to celebrate their daughter’s first birthday.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex welcomed close friends and family to a “casual, intimate backyard picnic” at their former residence, Frogmore Cottage, according to a representative for the pair.
Harry and Meghan shared a picture of Lili wearing a blue frock, a wide smile, and her trademark red hair. Lili’s unique cake was made by East London’s Violet Bakery’s Claire Ptak, the same pastry chef who made Harry and Meghan’s wedding cake in 2018.
Throughout the week-long festivities, Queen Elizabeth found time to wish her great-granddaughter a happy birthday.
“Happy first birthday to Lilibet!”was the subject of a post from the royal family’s official Twitter account.
Soon after turning one, she learned to walk.
Lili reportedly took her first steps at the age of 10 months, according to Prince Harry.
She recently took her first step, so keeping up with her brother is currently her top priority.In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE in April 2022, the Duke of Sussex said, “Proud papa, here.
A few months later, the Duchess of Sussex confirmed that Lili was actually walking on a November 2022 Archetypes podcast.
Meghan mentioned to her visitor, actress Pamela Adlon, during a discussion about being a wife and mother, “Lili has just started walking.” She is two years and a few months old.
She is becoming more vocal.
Harry provided an update on his kids’ progress while speaking with one of the 2022 WellChild Award winners.
He told Henry Waines, who won the Inspirational Child Award for children aged 4 to 6, “Archie is very, very busy, and Lili is learning to use her voice, which is great.”
Meghan mentioned on an episode of her Archetypes podcast with guest Pamela Adlon that since having her daughter, her perception of women has changed. Even though Lili is still a toddler, Meghan hopes that her daughter will one day understand the significance of having a voice.
Meghan stated, “I see the world differently through how she will perceive the world and how she will view particular women as role models. “And when I look at a lot of the women I’m speaking to on this show, you included, I want her to understand that it is not just a box you have to fit into, but you get to be a full-fledged, interesting, curious, kind, strong, all the things, human being. But you also get to be a woman with a voice.”
Prior to Queen Elizabeth’s passing in 2022, she had the opportunity to meet the monarch.
Lili’s first major family event was to meet her namesake and great-grandmother, Queen Elizabeth, soon after she was born.
The heartfelt introduction, which took place over a video conversation, emphasizes Harry’s relationship with his grandmother, which deepened in the wake of his mother’s devastating 1997 passing.
In a 2023 cover story interview, he said, “My grandma and I were quite close, and we very much did have a great relationship.
When the Sussexes visited the UK, it’s thought that Queen Elizabeth got to meet her great-granddaughter in person. for the Platinum Jubilee of the Queen in June 2022.
In his book, Spare, the Duke of Sussex remembered happy recollections of his late grandmother spending time with his kids.
“I couldn’t stop picturing them with Granny,” he wrote. “The final visit. Archie making deep, chivalrous bows, his baby sister Lilibet cuddling the monarch’s shins. Sweetest children, Granny said, sounding bemused. She’d expected them to be a bit more… American, I think? Meaning, in her mind, more rambunctious.”
