After the divorce row that dominated a major part of 2024, Meghan Markle now begins the new year with a surrogacy row with doubts being cast over the birth of Archie, Meghan and Harry’s firstborn. And the doubts are coming not from the Royal Family but Meghan’s estranged sister and father.

This is not a new controversy as social media hate campaigns like ‘Meghan Markle was never pregnant’ surface from time to time calling her baby bump ‘moonbump’, but Radar Online reported that Buckingham Palace is “being presurred to remove Prince Archie, 5, and Princess Lilibet, 3, from the UK’s royal line of succession” until Meghan Markle provides absolute proof that she physically gave their birth.

“This scandal comes as no surprise. Speculation about the children has been simmering for years. The kids are sixth and seventh in line to the throne but have been under cloak-and-dagger secrecy since they were born. There are so many questions swirling around them. This crisis won’t die down until the irrefutable truth comes out,” Radar Online quoted a highly placed palace courtier.

Did Meghan Markle fake her pregnancies?

Meghan Markle half-sister Samantha Markle recently said that if the Sussexes used a surrogate, they should have admitted it. She revealed: “My father said nine months before Archie was allegedly born that [Meghan] picked up her frozen eggs. I thought: ‘That makes sense there would be a surrogate involved.’ But why the secrecy? Instead of lying to the world, just say: ‘We’re using a surrogate.’

“But that would mean the child would be removed from the line of succession because an heir has to be born from a titled royal mother.”

What fuelled the speculations

Archie was born at Portland Hospital in London which was 20 miles from the couple’s then-residence Frogmore Cottage. But Meghan Markle was expecting a home birth. The palace announced that Meghan Markle was in labor seven hours after Archie’s delivery while Prince Harry in his memoir recalled that they were back home two hours after the delivery. Many critics pointed out that coming back home in two hours is only possible when the mother does not physically give birth to the child.

Meghan also amended Archie’s birth certificate after 11 days to show her name as Her Royal Highness replacing ‘Rachel Meghan’.
Lilibet was born in 2021 at Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital after they quit royal duties and moved to California.