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Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Announce She’s Pregnant

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

LONDON — 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.

The announcement comes five months after the royal couple, riding a wave of popularity both in Britain and abroad, married at Windsor Castle near London, a union watched by millions of people on screens around the world.

Prince Harry, 34, a grandson of Queen Elizabeth II, and Ms. Markle, 37, are widely seen as likable and approachable, and she brought elements to the royal family that would have been unthinkable not so long ago: She is American, a former actress, biracial, divorced and a self-described feminist. Their union has been hailed as giving the royals a more accessible, modern and inclusive image.

[Read about the chances that the baby would be an American citizen.]

The couple landed in Sydney on Monday morning to start a 16-day tour through Australia, Fiji, Tonga and New Zealand.

Speculation about Ms. Markle’s pregnancy was first fueled by the buttoned-up outfit she wore on Friday to the wedding of Princess Eugenie, a first cousin of Prince Harry’s. She was then photographed carrying purple binders hours before the announcement, leading some to suggest 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, after they had announced their engagement.

The child would be seventh in line to the British throne, after, in order, Charles, Prince of Wales, father of Prince Harry; Harry’s older brother, Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge; the three young children of William and his wife, Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge; and Harry, himself. But under current rules, the new royal baby would not be titled prince or princess.

According to a 1917 decree by King George V, the great-grandchildren of the sovereign would not be called princes or princesses, with one exception, the eldest male descendant in the direct male line — in other words, Prince William’s first child, Prince George. Queen Elizabeth revised that rule in 2012, to give that title to all of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s children, so George’s siblings are Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis.

Unless the queen makes a similar change on their behalf, any children of Prince Harry and Ms. Markle’s would be titled earl or lady.

Even so, the new royal baby will be the subject of a media frenzy, judging by reactions to the wedding, and to Monday’s news. Shortly after the announcement of Ms. Markle’s pregnancy, Twitter was ablaze with excitement, much of it with a #RoyalBaby hashtag.

“Meghan is pregnant this is not a drill we are going to have POC’s (Princes and Princesses of Colour) what a time to be ALIVE,” a Twitter user wrote.

“So incredibly happy for Harry and Meghan! That baby will be both beautiful on the outside and inside,” added another.

After the announcement of a vernal royal birth, the question “when is spring?” spiked in Google searches. The announcement also meant that Ms. Markle’s due date might coincide with Britain’s labors to leave the European Union: Brexit is scheduled for March 29.

“Please let it be March 29th,” Simon McCoy, a BBC journalist wrote on Twitter.

Prince Harry and Ms. Markle are in Australia in part for the Invictus Games, a sporting event for sick and injured military veterans that includes wheelchair basketball and sitting volleyball.

Harry founded the games in 2014, and the latest iteration starts on Saturday.

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 45th anniversary, pet a koala in a Sydney zoo and meet Indigenous Australian leaders on Fraser Island, off eastern Australia.

The baby buzz could translate into even larger crowds than they had been expected to draw.

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.”

The most recent British royal baby arrived this year, when the Duchess of Cambridge gave birth to Prince Louis.

A correction was made on 
Oct. 15, 2018

An earlier version of this article misstated the occasion of the celebration at the Sydney Opera House. It is the opera house’s 45th anniversary, not its 75th.

How we handle corrections

Damien Cave contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle Announce She Is Pregnant. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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