What’s in a name? An awful lot, as any sensible person knows. And it turns out that recollections have varied once again when it came to the delicate matter of the Sussexes calling their daughter by the late Queen’s pet name, Lilibet.
The revelation is in Robert Hardman’s new biography of the King – Charles III, New King, New Court – where he quotes one royal adviser saying that the Queen was said to be angrier than anyone had ever seen her when the couple maintained that they had her permission to call their daughter by the name by which she was privately known by her parents, her sister and occasionally, the Duke of Edinburgh. What seems to have been the case is that they did call her to tell her that they’d chosen to call the baby after her, but not in the obvious way by calling her Elizabeth – which Meghan probably feels is terrifically old fashioned – but by this private pet name. And crucially, the way the couple – no doubt, Harry – put it wasn’t to ask her permission formally; which meant she felt she couldn’t say no.
As distinguished commentators pointed out at the time, christening the baby Elizabeth would have been a graceful tribute to the child’s great grandmother in a fashion the royal family have always employed; “Lilibet” was taking liberties. It was nominally muscling in on a private piece of the Queen’s past and memories; the name came about because she couldn’t pronounce Elizabeth as a small girl. But what is sweet in a pet name is wince-making when it’s appropriated by someone else, a crass American. What’s more the name is inevitably abbreviated to Lili, so, it ends up not so much a tribute to the Queen as an invocation of that old wartime favourite, Lily Marlene.
But besides muscling in on the late Queen’s private memories, what’s interesting about the affair is the way the Sussexes responded to suggestions that they’d overstepped the mark. When newspapers maintained that the Queen wasn’t keen, they issued a statement that “Had she not been supportive they would not have used the name” and fired off threats of legal action from their assertive lawyers. But Buckingham Palace refused to support their version of events; that particular effort to control the narrative failed.
What this episode suggests is the old problem of two nations divided by a single language – what would seem fine in the US, making up names, goes down less well in traditional royal circles, in which children are named after saints, or, in the case of Arthur, after monarchs. And the person really to blame for this episode which, so far from reconciling the Sussexes with the royals, had the opposite effect, is Harry. He’s presumably bilingual in English and American; he should have known better.
Meanwhile, the little girl has been in England just once. Might it not be nice to introduce her to the family?
