Prince Harry and Meghan Won’t Have Legal Custody of Their Children

Being a member of the British Royal Family certainly has its perks, but it also has plenty of drawbacks and some certainly do not sit well with Meghan Markle‘s American sensibilities. Apparently, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle won’t be the full legal guardians of their new baby boy or any of their subsequent children, according to royal expert Marlene Koenig, who explained a strange British law still on the books today.

So, who will have legal custody of the couple’s children? Queen Elizabeth.

Under British law, all the grandchildren of the monarch are the legal custodians of the king or queen.

The law goes all the way back to 1717.

As Koenig explains, the law goes all the way back to when King George I ruled the expanding British empire.

“The sovereign has legal custody of the minor grandchildren,” Koenig explains. “This goes back to King George I [who ruled in the early 1700s], and the law’s never been changed. He did it because he had a very poor relationship with his son, the future King George II, so they had this law passed that meant the King was the guardian of his grandchildren.”

In fact, when Prince Charles and Princess Diana divorced, the fact that they did not, in fact, have legal custody of their children was noted in the court proceedings. This was surely a cause for concern to Diana as she left the royal fold.

Of course, whether Queen Elizabeth chooses to exercise that legality seems unlikely 302 years later, but one can certainly imagine the very idea that Meghan’s child is not legally her own must be galling on some level.

The Queen has certainly taken an active interest in her progeny and has guided the Windsor royals into modernity with seemingly a lot of care, if not with much skill at times.

Now that Meghan and Prince Harry‘s baby boy has arrived, we’ll soon learn the name his parents picked out, which the Queen has likely had some input in, as well as final approval over as she enters the boy’s name into the royal record.