Paternity Leave? Who's Met Archie? Here Are the Latest Royal Baby Updates!
Plus, royal expert William Hanson weighs in on baby Archie.
Prince Harry remains very close to one of his aunts, a sister to his mother, the late Princess Diana.
The U.K.’s The Telegraph reports that Prince Harry and Prince William’s aunt, Lady Jane Fellowes, one of Princess Diana's two sisters, was one of the first people to visit Prince Harry and Meghan Markle following the birth of their son, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, on May 6. She even met Archie before Prince William and Kate Middleton did.
“The Spencer side did, after all, promise to look after William and Harry in their mother's stead, to do their best to balance out the inevitable demands of royal life with the normalcy that Diana wished for them — and the brothers never forgot it,” says the report.
While many in the U.S. may not have been aware of the close relationship that remained between the royal brothers and Princess Diana’s family, it’s been well-known in England that the families have remained extremely close.
Royal expert William Hanson told Personal Space it’s great there’s a warm relationship between Princess Diana’s sister and Prince Harry, especially. “It is perfectly normal and understandable that HRH The Duke of Sussex wishes to remain close to his mother’s side of the family,” Hanson said. “Asking Lady Jane Fellowes to speak at his wedding was a key signal to the rest of the world that he is still in touch and places great significance on his relationship with his mother’s relations. In England this is fairly common knowledge but nothing that troubles anyone — and indeed, why should it?”
Indeed, it’s beautiful.
In other royal baby news, PEOPLE is reporting Prince Harry will not take paternity leave following Archie’s birth “and has kept up his normal schedule (about one public job a week) after the birth of his son.” Markle will be taking three to five months of maternity leave (Middleton took six months for each of her three children). After the birth of each of his three children, Prince William also didn’t taken time off from his royal duties.
In the U.K., new dads can take up to two weeks of paternity leave. “However, since royal dads don’t have traditional jobs and working hours, they don’t tend to take a full two weeks off from royal duty,” says the report.
