An insider recently revealed why Prince Harry and Meghan Markle decided to break with royal tradition — and it apparently traces back to an incident during Prince George’s birth in 2013.
In 2019, Buckingham Palace issued an official statement from the couple explaining why they chose to keep their child’s birth private.
The statement made it clear that neither Harry nor Meghan would pose for photos outside the hospital — a tradition that other royal family members have followed for years.
Still, despite some people oddly criticizing their decision, being surrounded by a swarm of paparazzi right after having a baby isn’t actually a required part of royal protocol.
However, Dickie Arbiter, who was the late Queen Elizabeth II’s press secretary, suggested that the Duke and Duchess might have chosen to break with tradition because of “bitter lessons” learned when Prince William and Kate Middleton’s first child, Prince George, was born in 2013.
In a 2019 interview on Yahoo UK’s ‘The Royal Box,’ Arbiter said that no media were informed about Meghan going into labour until she was “actually in hospital.”
He explained, “There is a royal household medical team who are called in, but ultimately, they decide when Meghan needs to go to the hospital based on the baby’s due date.”
This approach made the birth of Meghan and Harry’s first child, Prince Archie, in 2019 much more private since the press only found out at the last moment.
