The yet to be named daughter of HRH Prince Edward, and his wife, the Countess of Wessex will not have the HRH before her name, but she will be addressed as " Lady Whatever"
Is this something THEY as parents decided or a Royal Decree?
Just wondering.
As I understand it, they as parents decided, just as Princess Anne did with her children. It’s an attempt to keep them out of the spotlight and give them as normal a life as possible.
Julie
The Queen decided it, at their request at the time of their marriage.
There is however one doubt about the validity of the arrangement, as the right of the children of the son of the Sovereign to use the title prince or princess was granted by letter patent in 1917 and it takes more than a press release from Buckingham Palace to reverse the authority of a letter patent. The daughter might have a strong claim in law if she wanted to argue that she was a princess after all. Not that there would be much point in her doing so, as it would be a simple step for the Queen to make sure that that particular provision in the 1917 patent was formally revoked. The one problem in tampering with the 1917 patent would be that Prince Andrew’s daughters are already princesses, which may well be why the Palace was reluctant to formalise the arrangements for Prince Edward as a matter of general principle.
The argument about Princess Anne’s children was different. The children of the daughter of the Sovereign are not covered by the 1917 patent and so they have no automatic right to be prince/princess or HRH. They only get those titles if they are specifically granted them. In fact, neither Charles nor Anne would have got those titles at birth, as their mother was then still only a Sovereign’s daughter (albeit the heiress presumptive), had not a letter patent granting those titles to any children of Princess Elizabeth been issued by George VI several days before Charles was born.