Harry and Meghan expecting second child
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
The baby announcement by Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle on Sunday coincided with the date his late mother Princess Diana officially announced she was expecting him, on Valentine’s Day 1984.
PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
Follow topic:
LONDON • Prince Harry and his wife Meghan Markle are expecting their second child, their spokesman said on Sunday, a joyful bit of news after a turbulent year in which they broke away from the British royal family, started new lives in California and suffered a miscarriage that Markle said brought "almost unbearable grief".
"We can confirm that Archie is going to be a big brother," the spokesman said in a statement, referring to the couple's nearly two-year-old son, Archie Mountbatten-Windsor.
The couple, who are also known as the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, are "overjoyed to be expecting their second child", it said.
Their baby announcement coincided with the date his late mother Princess Diana officially announced she was expecting her second child on Valentine's Day 1984. That child was Harry.
It is not known when the duchess is due to give birth or whether the couple know the baby's gender. They released an artful, black-and-white photo of them relaxing affectionately under a tree, a baby bump clearly visible on her.
For the 39-year-old American actress-turned-duchess, the news is particularly welcome, given the anguish of her miscarriage last July, which she recalled in starkly personal terms in a column in The New York Times last November that drew an extraordinary worldwide reaction.
"After changing his diaper, I felt a sharp cramp," Markle wrote of Archie, describing the morning of the miscarriage. "I dropped to the floor with him in my arms, humming a lullaby to keep us both calm, the cheerful tune a stark contrast to my sense that something was not right.
"I knew, as I clutched my firstborn child," she wrote, "that I was losing my second."
The news of the pregnancy came days after a major legal victory in the battle the couple have waged against Britain's tabloid press.
Last Thursday, a High Court judge ruled that the publisher of The Mail on Sunday had violated Markle's privacy by printing a letter she wrote to her estranged father, Mr Thomas Markle.
Judge Mark Warby ruled that she had "a reasonable expectation that the letter would remain private". The disclosures from the letter, in articles published by The Mail, were "manifestly excessive and hence unlawful", he wrote.
NYTIMES
