{"id":149139,"date":"2025-06-01T09:48:07","date_gmt":"2025-06-01T09:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/149139\/"},"modified":"2025-06-01T09:48:07","modified_gmt":"2025-06-01T09:48:07","slug":"prince-harry-sought-advice-from-princess-dianas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/149139\/","title":{"rendered":"Prince Harry ‘sought advice from Princess Diana’s\u2026"},"content":{"rendered":"

Prince Harry<\/a> considered changing his surname to Spencer in a bid to distance himself from the Royal Family after stepping back from royal duties, according to reports.<\/p>\n

The Duke of Sussex<\/a> is said to have discussed the idea with his uncle Charles, Earl Spencer \u2014 Princess Diana\u2019s younger brother \u2014 during one of his trips to the UK, according to The Mail on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Sources claim Harry was seriously contemplating adopting his mother\u2019s maiden name, a move which would have meant rejecting the Mountbatten-Windsor surname used by his children, Archie and Lilibet.<\/p>\n

The conversation with Earl Spencer, 59, is said to have been “amicable”, but the princess\u2019s brother reportedly warned that the legal implications of such a change would be immense.<\/p>\n

Royal commentators have interpreted the proposal as another sign of Harry\u2019s growing estrangement from the rest of the Royal Family.<\/p>\n

All descendants of the late Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip are entitled to use the surname Mountbatten-Windsor, a combination of the Royal Family\u2019s official name and the Duke of Edinburgh\u2019s adopted surname.<\/p>\n

Both of Harry\u2019s children are registered under the Mountbatten-Windsor name on their birth certificates, and King Charles is believed to be particularly attached to the Mountbatten lineage due to his close bond with his great-uncle, Lord Mountbatten of Burma.<\/p>\n

Royal author Tom Bower alleges \u201cMeghan had decided her real object in life was to be Diana\u201d, and claims that if the name change had gone ahead, the couple\u2019s daughter would have been named Lilibet Diana Spencer \u2013 a more direct nod to her famous grandmother. <\/p>\n

The Queen and Prince Philip settled on Mountbatten-Windsor as the family surname in 1960, following debate within royal circles over what name the Royal Family\u2019s descendants should carry. <\/p>\n

‘Windsor’ was adopted by the royals during the First World War as an alternative to their existing family name of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Prince Philip took the Mountbatten name in 1947 when he renounced his own Greek and Danish royal titles.<\/p>\n

Prince William and Prince Harry both used the surname ‘Wales’ when at school, and Harry’s wife Meghan revealed she and her children used ‘Sussex’ as a surname during a chat on her Netflix cooking show.<\/p>\n

In episode two of With Love, Meghan, the 43-year-old former actress told comedienne Mindy Kaling: “It’s so funny you keep saying ‘Meghan Markle<\/a>‘ \u2013 you know I’m Sussex now… You have kids and you go, ‘No, I share my name with my children’. <\/p>\n

“I didn’t know how meaningful it would be to me but it just means so much to go ‘This is OUR family name. Our little family name.'”<\/p>\n

Last week, Earl Spencer<\/a> appeared on Loose Men, and spoke of grieving his sister<\/a>, the late Princess Diana<\/a> – saying losing her was \u201can amputation\u201d.<\/p>\n

Diana, the mother of Prince William<\/a> and Prince Harry<\/a>, was 36 when she was killed in a car crash in Paris on August 31, 1997.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s such an amputation,\u201d he said. \u201cYou grow up with these people, they are your flesh and blood, they\u2019re with you forever, and then they\u2019re gone.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou expect obviously first grandparents and then parents to go, and there\u2019s the awful tragedy you mentioned of children going, but siblings, it\u2019s a really extraordinary thing.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor years after Diana died, I would think, \u2018Oh I must ring her and tell her something\u2019 because we shared the same sense of humour and you just realise of course, that\u2019s not going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prince Harry considered changing his surname to Spencer in a bid to distance himself from the Royal Family…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":149140,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7708],"tags":[1500,7709,4044,7721,7719,5686,7718,5681,7720,1281,12,5683,5682,5684,447,7710,519,5685,7711,263],"class_list":{"0":"post-149139","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-royals","8":"tag-breaking-news","9":"tag-british-royal-family","10":"tag-daily-news","11":"tag-duchess-of-sussex","12":"tag-duke-of-sussex","13":"tag-global-news","14":"tag-harry","15":"tag-inkl","16":"tag-meghan","17":"tag-meghan-markle","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-news-app","20":"tag-news-headlines","21":"tag-news-today","22":"tag-prince-harry","23":"tag-royal-families","24":"tag-royal-family","25":"tag-today-news","26":"tag-uk-royal-family","27":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114607482677674219","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149139","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149139"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149139\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}