Welcome to the world, Lilibet Diana Mountbatten-Windsor – pity about the name, though – Fleet Street Fox
And even *that* will be compared to Diana’s. They might as well have signed the official announcment ‘Warmest Regards, The Bad Fairy’ and have done.
It’s all very sweet to name a baby after your mum and grandma, but there’ll be plenty of eyebrows raised inside and outside palaces about why a couple, who very firmly want their children to have media-free lives, have given one of them a chance of that, and consigned the second to a lifetime of notoriety.
Archie can start a business, become a billionaire, be a playboy layabout, or busk for a living. He can slip up or down the social scale, just like the children of any other rich and famous Californians.
But Lilibet isn’t going to be another Hollywood brat – she might hang out, when she’s older, with Kardashians, Timberlakes, Jolie-Pitts or Baldwins, but she will carry with her a name more remarkable and famous than any of them. She’ll always be a bit Royal, and like Diana, an outsider.
Whether she’s reclining on a yacht, stacking shelves, or training to be an astronaut, she’ll always be compared to Di and the Queen. And that’s just not the media, who’ll lap it up, but people, too. Your internet search history admits the truth, even if you don’t.
A cynic would say it cannot be a coincidence that a baby was named after Harry’s biggest money-spinner, but that’s missing the point. A child born into Royalty was given the anonymity and opportunity to leave it, while a child born out of Royalty was given a label that throws her right back in.
The first is understandable, but the second isn’t. Why would any parent – especially two who know full well how fame, the media, and Royal fandom operate – do that?
Someone, somewhere, will claim it’s a marketing opportunity guaranteed to make baby bankable for years to come. And that’s definitely something her name will do, for good or ill.
But more than anything else, perhaps, it shows that Harry and Meghan are not as firm about leaving The Firm as they were, and want a route back. They hanker for the family that was. An optimist would say that all is not lost, and there are hopes for reconciliation.
But a realist would point out that these two have named their daughter after the matriarch whose stilted, unemotional parenting created the family dysfunction they have so railed against. As fairytales go, that’s a very bad start. And a psychiatrist, I’m afraid, will be rubbing their hands with glee at all the bankable hours for therapy that this will entail for all concerned.
More than anything else, Lili’s name appears, as those of so many children are, to be the result of parents who are just a little bit too stupid to do the job well. What, one might wonder, was wrong with Daisy?
Welcome to the world, kid. Just don’t expect your parents to help you understand it.
