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10 Rules Meghan And Harry’s Kids Don’t Have To Follow

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Archie and Lilibet get to grow up without a single one of the rulebooks that governed their royal cousins.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle welcomed their daughter, Lilibet “Lili” Diana Mountbatten-Windsor, at 11:40 a.m. on June 4 at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital, and the birth reopened a familiar conversation: just how much of the royal rulebook actually applies to a family that no longer works for the monarchy. Lilibet arrived healthy at 7 pounds, 11 ounces, joining older brother Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor as the second child Harry and Meghan are raising in Montecito, California, far outside the palace machinery. Since the couple stepped down as senior working royals in 2020, their kids have been quietly exempt from a long list of protocols that still bind their British relatives.

• Lilibet was born June 4 at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital at 7 pounds, 11 ounces, joining brother Archie as the Sussexes’ second child.
• Because Harry and Meghan stepped down as senior working royals in 2020 and relocated to Montecito, Archie and Lilibet are not bound by royal dress codes, dining etiquette, or curtsying protocol.
• The children also skip mandatory royal duties like Trooping the Colour, the historic christening gown tradition, hospital-steps photocalls, and the Royal Marriages Act’s consent requirement for marriage.

The Etiquette They Never Have To Learn

Senior royal children grow up under a strict style code — young royal boys, for instance, traditionally wear only shorts until around age eight, a rule that has nothing to do with fashion and everything to do with generations-old tradition. There’s also formal instruction on posture and how to sit properly in public, plus the expectation that children curtsy or bow to the monarch on sight. None of that applies to Archie or Lilibet, who are being raised as private citizens rather than working members of the institution.

Dining comes with its own quiet minefield inside the palace. Royals dining with the Queen are traditionally expected to avoid garlic and overly seasoned food, a habit built around decades of formal state dinners and public appearances. Archie and Lilibet won’t have to think twice about what’s on their plate for the sake of decorum.

The Travel And Succession Rules They Skip

One of the more logistical royal traditions involves the line of succession itself: royal heirs are historically discouraged from flying on the same aircraft, a precaution meant to protect the succession line in case of disaster. Because Archie and Lilibet aren’t working royals in that chain of duty in the same way, that restriction simply doesn’t apply to how the Sussex family travels together.

The same goes for the Royal Marriages Act, which has historically required descendants to seek the sovereign’s consent before marrying. It’s a rule built for royals whose marriages carry constitutional weight — not for two kids growing up in Southern California.

No shorts until age eight, no garlic at dinner, no flying on the same plane as your sibling — the list of rules Archie and Lilibet get to skip reads like a checklist for exactly the life Harry and Meghan said they wanted to avoid.

No Cameras On The Hospital Steps, No Mandatory Christening Gown

Royal births traditionally come with their own media choreography — a formal photocall on the hospital steps within hours of delivery, followed eventually by a christening in a UK chapel with the baby dressed in a replica of the historic royal christening gown. Lilibet’s birth skipped both. There was no staged appearance outside Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital, and there’s no requirement that she be baptized in that specific gown at a specific chapel back in England.

Official sovereign engagements are off the table too. Senior royals are expected to show up for events like Trooping the Colour as part of their public duties; Archie and Lilibet, growing up outside that working structure, have no such obligation. Even something as small as a public hug is technically against protocol for working royals, who are trained to avoid casual physical affection in front of cameras — another rule that simply doesn’t reach Montecito.

Benefits of Growing Without Titles

Strip all of it away — the dress codes, the dietary caution, the travel restrictions, the christening gown, the marriage-consent requirement — and what’s left is a fairly plain trade-off: Archie and Lilibet grow up without the scrutiny and the titles, but also without the built-in institutional support that comes with being a working royal. Harry and Meghan have been explicit that this is the point. Readers who’ve followed the family’s earlier turbulence, including the strained relationship Meghan has had with her own parents, know the couple has spent years talking about wanting a quieter, more private version of family life than the one either of them experienced growing up in the public eye.

Lilibet’s name honors two women — the Queen and Princess Diana — who lived almost entirely inside the rules her daughter now gets to skip. That’s the real headline buried in all ten of these exemptions: a baby born with a deeply royal name who, by design, won’t grow up with a deeply royal childhood.