Meghan Markle shares heartfelt tribute to Prince Archie on his sixth birthday

Meghan Markle has posted an emotional birthday tribute to her eldest child Prince Archie on his sixth birthday.

The Duchess of Sussex, 43, took to her official Instagram page to share a touching tribute to her and Prince Harry’s ‘sun’ – as she revealed the couple hosted an ‘incredibly special’ party for Archie last weekend. 

Prince Harry’s wife, who also shares three-year-old daughter Princess Lilibet with the Duke of Sussex, posted a series of heartfelt words alongside an adorable photo of Archie.

The picture, taken at dusk, showed Archie watching the sunset over the ocean from what appears to be the balcony of their home in Montecito, California. 

Her caption read: ‘Our son. Our sun. Happy 6th birthday to Archie! Thank you for all of the love, prayers, and warm wishes for our sweet boy. He’s six! Where did the time go?

‘(And for all of you who came to celebrate with us at his party last weekend, thank you for making his birthday so incredibly special),’ she continued. 

Prince Harry is expected to miss his son’s actual birthday to attend an event in Las Vegas – making this the second time hasn’t been present on the special day after he skipped the festivities to attend the coronation of his father, King Charles, in 2023.

Archie, who was born on May 6, 2019, has had a somewhat unconventional upbringing compared to his royal cousins.

Public appearances from Archie are rare and much of the world’s understanding of him comes from the few glimpses shared by Meghan and Harry themselves. 

In a recent podcast interview with Jamie Kern Lima, Meghan said: ‘I love being a mom,’ and described motherhood as ‘the most important thing in my entire life.’

She also shared that she writes nightly emails to her children, creating digital scrapbooks to preserve everyday memories.

Meghan’s post highlighted that Archie’s birthday party was held last week, presumably to ensure Prince Harry – who will be in Las Vegas on May 6 – could attend. 

During the work trip, he is expected to launch a new initiative in collaboration with The Diana Award in the Nevada city. 

Last year, for Prince Archie’s fifth birthday, the family celebrated privately at their Montecito home and Meghan baked a lemon cake using fruit from their garden.The celebration included Meghan’s mother, Doria Ragland, and a few of Archie’s school friends.

As Archie turns six in California, his grandfather King Charles remains in the UK where he has unveiled his official Coronation portrait on the two-year anniversary of the historic occasion.

The King, who has not seen his grandchild since 2022 when Prince Harry, Meghan, Archie, and Lilibet came to the UK for the late Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, attended the portrait unveiling alongside Queen Camilla at the National Portrait Gallery.

Former BBC royal correspondent Jennie Bond said today that Meghan and Harry will give Archie a ‘magical’ birthday – but any contact with his British grandfather appears unlikely. She said that this situation will cause ‘great sadness’ for the King.

‘He always loved Harry – he called him “darling boy”. And I’m sure he still loves Harry and would love even more to be able to spend time with Archie and Lilibet’, she said.

‘Charles is a sentimental man and a doting grandfather to George, Charlotte and Louis. And I’m sure as his struggle with cancer continues, he thinks more about the great loss of not being able to spend time with Harry’s children’.

Ms Bond added that she would hope that the royals will reach out to Archie, even though there is a rift with his parents.

Despite not being present, the King is reported to have sent a homemade gift to Archie, possibly a watercolor painting, in line with Meghan’s preference for non-extravagant presents, according to The Sun.

Meghan’s Instagram post is a touching reminder of how quickly time has passed since Archie’s first appearance on the world stage.

And fans of the Sussexes have already begun sending birthday wishes for Archie online. 

It comes after Meghan posted a photo last Friday in an apparent show of support for her husband in the aftermath of his bombshell BBC interview. 

The black and white snap shows the Duke, 40, in a paradisiacal garden while clutching Archie’s hand and carrying Lilibet on his shoulders.

The serene photo was published on her Instagram page hours after Harry took aim at the Royal Family in a no-holds-barred interview with the BBC.

He caused widespread disbelief when he complained in the sit-down interview that King Charles ‘won’t speak to me’ and that he was the victim of an ‘Establishment stitch-up’.

He also accused the Royal Household of interfering in his battle to have his UK police security reinstated – an allegation dismissed by both the Government and Buckingham Palace.

The photo of Harry with the couple’s children marked the second time in a week that Meghan posted photos of their children surrounded by florals.

She shared three images on Sunday last week of Archie and Lilibet in a rose garden with the caption: ‘Sunday kind of love….with my little loves.’

And Meghan celebrated the first day of spring with a new Instagram post showing her picking fresh strawberries with her children. 

The Duchess took to her social media page at the end of March to show off a snap of the delicious-looking fruits she’d collected, likely from the garden at her Montecito mansion. 

Gathered in a metal-wire basket, the strawberries were thought to be held by either Archie or three-year-old Lilibet – although neither of their faces were pictured in the image.

Instead, one of the little ones showcased a strawberry towards the camera while their other hand held tightly onto the container. 

Someone else standing barefoot in the grass could be seen in the background of the snap.

‘Cheers to the first day of spring!’ Prince Harry’s wife captioned the sweet photograph.

Since relaunching her Instagram account on New Year’s Day, Meghan has routinely shared glimpses of her life in Montecito, California – including pictures and videos of her two children with Harry.

The launch of her new account, which has the handle @Meghan, coincided with her new cooking show and lifestyle brand As Ever.   

From the glimpses Meghan has revealed on social media, six-year-old Archie has unsurprisingly changed a lot since we last saw him as a baby. 

Most of the snaps of the children show them in the garden with their faces hidden.

There has been a huge reaction to these posts – with many followers expressing delight that the children have both inherited their father’s fiery red hair.

The family moved to California with Archie, who was less than a year old at the time, and their daughter Lilibet was born in 2021.

Meghan and Harry have worked hard to keep their children out of the spotlight by carefully controlling their public image.

Vanity Fair reported last month that after years of treading a fine line between privacy and publicity, Meghan seems to have worked out out how to balance them both.  

While Lilibet was born in the US after the Sussexes had stepped down, Archie began his life in May 2019 while his parents were working royals.  In September and October 2019, he accompanied his parents on a tour of southern African, visiting Malawi, Angola, South Africa and Botswana, and he was photographed with South Africa’s Archbishop Desmond Tutu. 

There was some expectation that Harry and Meghan’s children would also be public figures – but from the beginning the couple have bypassed tradition.

For instance, they delayed Archie’s birth announcement until after they had returned home from the hospital. The usual protocol is for a royal birth to be made public shortly after it has happened   

But even though the couple made it clear they wanted more privacy for their children, they went on to announce the gender of their second child when Harry and a heavily-pregnant Meghan did their explosive interview with Oprah Winfrey.

This was mocked on an episode of Comedy Central’s South Park, called The Worldwide Privacy Tour, in which a couple known as the Prince and Princess of Canada travel the world in search of their privacy, while giving sit-down television media interviews demanding their privacy. Reference to them comes only obliquely, through physical resemblance and, in the Prince of Canada’s case, the promotion of a book called Waaaagh. 

The first public picture of Lilibet was a profile view in the family’s 2021 Christmas card, and the public didn’t see her whole face until the following summer. 

Also in 2021, Meghan shared a snap of Archie feeding chickens in a coop during an interview with Ellen DeGeneres – without showing his face.

Meghan’s Instagram posts suggest that the couple have become more comfortable giving the public a  peek into their lives – as long as it is on their terms. 

In February, Archie featured in a post as Meghan filmed herself walking around her garden in Montecito.

And for Valentine’s Day, Meghan shared a clip of her son and daughter making treats with red bagels and strawberries, including a picture of the back of Archie’s head.

In the video, one of their children, thought to be Archie, was heard saying, ‘Mummy, I can do it if you want me to’ as Meghan watered the plants.

Meghan then said ‘only if you want’, before handing him the hose.

Royal observers were ecstatic at catching a glimpse of the young prince’s personality, and gushed about how ‘grown-up’ and ‘polite’ he sounded 

In March, a clip of Meghan baking biscuits with her two children appeared on screen on the Drew Barrymore Show

In the video, Lilibet was seen standing on a step next to the kitchen counter. It only showed her from behind.

Later on, some little hands were also seen grabbing some of the finished cookies from the boxes.

At the end of the clip, Archie, whose face wasn’t shown, was seen standing and eating a cookie as Meghan leaned in to give him a kiss on his head. 

Meghan has even begun to reveal more about her children in interviews, saying in April that she hoped to be home in time for Archie to lose his first loose tooth. She was attending the Time100 Summit in New York City when she made the comment.

On April 27, Meghan shared photos of the children in the garden with the caption: ‘Sunday kind of love… with my little loves’. 

The post also included a snapshot of Archie as he looked at some pink flowers and another photo of him holding a flower in front of his face.

The Duchess of Sussex recently spoke about about filming her Netflix show – With Love, Meghan – around her kids.

During an appearance at the Time100 Summit, Meghan said she chose not to film inside her own home to protect her children. 

Instead, Meghan hired a nearby $8million farmhouse to film in.

‘When people say, ‘Why didn’t you film in your house? Well, I have kids coming home for their nap and 80 people in the kitchen isn’t really the childhood memory I’d want them to have,’ Meghan said.

She added that ‘we were really fortunate to find something close by,’ before saying  drawing a boundary for her family is ‘how I take care of myself’. 

The Duke of Sussex lost a Court of Appeal challenge against the Home Office over his security arrangements last week.

It followed a decision of the Executive Committee for the Protection of Royalty and Public Figures to downgrade his high-level police protection after he and Meghan stepped down from full-time royal duties to move to the US.

Since then, Harry has argued his private protection team in the US no longer has access to the UK intelligence information needed to keep his wife and children safe.

The prince said losing the legal challenge meant it was now ‘impossible’ for him to bring Meghan and their children to the UK safely.

He said because of the decision over the loss of his security protection, he cannot ‘see a world in which I would be bringing my wife and children back to the UK at this point.

‘I can only come to the UK safely if I am invited, and there is a lot of control and ability in my father’s hands.’

Harry said he wanted ‘reconciliation’ with the Royal Family but claimed the King ‘won’t speak to me’. 

He said: ‘Ultimately, this whole thing could be resolved through him, not by intervening, but by stepping aside and allowing the experts to do what is necessary.

‘There have been so many disagreements between myself and some of my family.

‘Of course, they will never forgive me for lots of things but… there’s no point in continuing to fight any more.

‘Life is precious. I don’t know how much longer my father has, he won’t speak to me because of this security stuff. It would be nice to reconcile.’

As the children grow up outside the Palace, Harry and Meghan will have to navigate uncharted territory when it comes to deciding when – and if – to share private moments of their children’s lives with the world.

But in the meantime, Meghan’s followers are delighted to see more glimpses into her children’s life across the pond. 

While Harry has said he will miss his son’s birthday this year to attend an event in Las Vegas, Meghan is more than likely to have a fun-filled day planned at home.