Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Announce She’s Pregnant

Image

Meghan Markle and Prince Harry on their wedding day at Windsor Castle, England, in May.CreditCreditSteve Parsons/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

By Daniel Victor

Oct. 15, 2018

Another royal baby is on the way.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, are expecting a child in the spring, Kensington Palace announced on Monday.

Their Royal Highnesses The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are very pleased to announce that The Duchess of Sussex is expecting a baby in the Spring of 2019. pic.twitter.com/Ut9C0RagLk
— Kensington Palace (@KensingtonRoyal) October 15, 2018

The announcement comes five months after the royal couple married at Windsor Castle in England. Prince Harry, 34, is a grandson of Queen Elizabeth II; Ms. Markle, 37, is an American former actress.

The couple landed in Sydney on Monday morning to start a 16-day tour through Australia, Fiji, Tonga and New Zealand. Ms. Markle was photographed carrying purple binders, leading some to speculate hours before the announcement that she might have been trying to disguise physical signs of a pregnancy.

Prince Harry said last year that the couple intended to have a child soon. “Hopefully we’ll start a family in the near future,” he told BBC News in November 2017, after they announced their engagement.

The child will be seventh in line to the British throne.

And he or she will most likely produce a media spectacle, as royal babies tend to command worldwide attention.

The most recent British royal baby arrived this year, when Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, gave birth to Prince Louis, her third child with Prince William. Prince George, the couple’s eldest child, was born in 2013, and their daughter, Princess Charlotte, was born in 2015.

Prince Harry and Ms. Markle are mainly in the region for the Invictus Games, a sporting event Harry founded in 2014 that starts on Saturday and that gives sick and injured military personnel and veterans the chance to compete in various sports, including wheelchair basketball and sitting volleyball.

The duke and duchess will also take part in dozens of other public events — 76 in all. They will visit a rural Australian town struggling with drought, go to the Sydney Opera House for a celebration of its 75th anniversary, pet a koala in a Sydney zoo and meet Indigenous Australian leaders on Fraser Island, off eastern Australia.

Given the excitement about the baby, they will most likely draw even larger crowds than had been expected.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia was among many to congratulate the couple on Twitter. “What fantastic news!” he wrote. “Australia is thrilled for you both.”

A royal spokeswoman said that Doria Ragland, Ms. Markle’s mother, was “very happy about this lovely news, and she looks forward to welcoming her first grandchild.”

Damien Cave contributed reporting.