Harry and Meghan waited nearly two years to christen their daughter Lilibet – and they chose an especially poignant date for the royal family to make the announcement

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry had a difficult decision to make when it came to announcing the news of their daughter Lilibet’s christening.

The couple welcomed their second child, Lilibet Diana Mountbatten-Windsor in California, on 4 June 2021. Almost two years later, in March 2023, she was christened at the couple’s home in Montecito. Harry and Meghan chose to confirm the christening International Women’s Day. But royal fans were quick to note it also fell on a poignant day for the royal family.

The news came on 8 March – exactly six months since the death of Lilibet’s namesake, Her Majesty The Queen. The late monarch passed away peacefully at her home in Balmoral on 8 September at the age of 96. It was not the first time that Harry and Meghan chose a meaningful date for a major announcement. They announced Meghan’s pregnancy with Lilibet on Valentine’s Day in 2021 – coincidentally the same date that Princess Diana announced her pregnancy with Prince Harry.

Speaking in the final episode of his Netflix docuseries, Harry said that he only discovered the coincidence after the announcement, revealing he had received messages showing clippings from the front page of a newspaper where Diana had revealed she was pregnant with Harry on 14 February 1984. “I was shocked. We had no idea. It was just a coincidence, or maybe not a coincidence,” Harry said.

Elsewhere, in his book Spare, he drew a link between his late mother and the start of his romance with Meghan. Having stated that the pair began messaging on a social media app before swapping numbers and texting late into the night, the Duke of Sussex added: “It occurred to me how uncanny, how surreal, how bizarre, that this marathon conversation should have begun on July 1, 2016. My mother’s fifty-fifth birthday.”

Harry has compared wife Meghan to Princess Diana on a number of occasions. And he was left ‘disappointed’ when his own family failed to see any similarities between the pair, according to a royal author. Harry and Meghan started dating in 2016 – and the following year, she famously appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair, along with the headline ‘Wild About Harry’. It raised eyebrows amongst Harry’s inner circle, including Prince William and Princess Kate .

Writing in his book, ‘Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the War Between the Windsors’, Tom Bower explained: “Since the Vanity Fair article had increased the Cambridges’ suspicion of Meghan, the actress discovered that her neighbours in Kensington Palace had even less time for her. By then, Harry had introduced Meghan to Diana’s two sisters, Jane and Sarah, and her best friend Julia Samuel. Harry assumed that Diana’s family and friends would see a similarity between Diana and his fiancee. Both, he said, shared the same problems. He was disappointed. No one agreed that his vulnerable mother had anything in common with his girlfriend. More discomforting for him, they thought Meghan would not fit in with the Royal Family .”

The author continued: “Their unease was voiced by Charles Spencer , Diana’s brother. At William’s request, Spencer weighed in. Three times married, Spencer cautioned his nephew to reconsider his haste towards marriage. His advice provoked a bitter reaction. “‘This was going to be really hard,’ Harry would later reflect on establishing Meghan’s place in the family.”