Fresh from the tense finale of blockbuster reality show The Traitors, series contestant Lord Ivar Mountbatten appears ready to trade the show’s famou
Fresh from the tense finale of blockbuster reality show The Traitors, series contestant Lord Ivar Mountbatten appears ready to trade the show’s famously stressful roundtable room for another, even more contentious debate: Why did the woman we until recently knew as Meghan Markle cringingly correct Mindy Kaling when she used the Suits star’s birth name on the set of With Love, Meghan? And was she right to do so?
For those who have yet to watch the Duchess of Sussex’s Netflix series about the joys of domesticity, here’s a quick recap. In the vein of similar lifestyle shows (think Martha Stewart—the show’s producers certainly were!), the royal’s celebrated friends “stop by” her blindingly white farmhouse-style kitchen set, ostensibly as a way station on a visit to the Montecito home she shares with husband Prince Harry and children Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet.
One such friend, writer, director, and actor Mindy Kaling was one such visitor—and during her time on the show, she received a lesson in royal nomenclature when Meghan told her, “It’s so funny that you keep saying ‘Meghan Markle.’ You know I’m Sussex now.”
The matter also came up in an interview with People published this week, in which Meghan said that Sussex is “our shared name as a family, and I guess I hadn’t recognized how meaningful that would be to me until we had children.”
“I love that that is something that Archie, Lili, H and I all have together. It means a lot to me.”
The problem, Ivar Mountbatten says, is that’s not actually true. Now known in the US for his role in The Traitors, Mountbatten is also a member of the royal family: Harry’s estranged father, King Charles III, is Mountbatten’s second cousin by way of both of their fathers; the 61-year-old is also a godparent to Prince Edward and Princess Sophie’s daughter, Louise Windsor.
Speaking with Town and Country, Mountbatten says of Meghan, “It’s interesting because she’s completely incorrect. Her family name is not Sussex, her family name is Mountbatten-Windsor,” he said.
“Her children are called Archie and Lilibet Mountbatten-Windsor; they’re not called Archie and Lilibet Sussex because Sussex is a title. So, they are the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, but actually he’s Harry Mountbatten-Windsor and she would be Meghan Mountbatten-Windsor.”
Mountbatten called on his immediate family to further explain royal naming protocol to those of us in the colonies. “My brother is the Marquess of Milford Haven, but his surname is Mountbatten, so he’s called George Mountbatten, the Marquess of Milford Haven.”
Rebecca English, the Daily Mail’s Royal Editor, agrees with Mountbatten—but only to a point. “Officially, the family’s name is Mountbatten-Windsor – and is recorded as such on both Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet’s birth certificates,” she writes. It’s a tradition that began in 1960, when Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip decided they’d like “their own direct descents to be distinguished from the rest of the Royal Family, without changing the name of the Royal House.” From that point on, “Mountbatten-Windsor.” was the last name rule of the land.
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