James, Earl of Wessex, could have taken an HRH title but spent his summer driving tractors on the Sandringham estate. He turned 18 with a choice in front of him, one his parents deliberately left open.
The announcement about his exam results and his next step arrived this week, and the wording of it answered a separate question entirely. His sister made the same call weeks earlier.
Buckingham Palace confirmed James, Earl of Wessex won’t take up senior royal duties
Queen Elizabeth’s grandchild James, Earl of Wessex, appears set to pass on his royal titles in adulthood, going by a Buckingham Palace announcement.
Thursday, Aug. 13 brought word that the 18-year-old had secured the A-level grades he needed for his next step. His parents are Prince Edward and Sophie, the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh. A working senior royal is not what that step involves.
He starts at the Royal Agricultural University in Cirencester, Gloucestershire, this fall, the palace confirmed to PEOPLE. “The Earl of Wessex will be going to the Royal Agricultural University to study Rural Land & Property Management. He will head straight there without taking a year out,” a palace spokesperson said.
That Buckingham Palace statement referred to him only as the “Earl of Wessex” when his birthright as a grandson of the late Queen entitles him to a royal title or HRH styling in public.
Prince Edward’s son’s royal titles were left to him to decide, as were his sister Lady Louise’s. Their parents gave both the choice at 18, and neither appears to be taking it. Louise, 22, graduated from the University of St. Andrews last month under the name “Louise Mountbatten-Windsor.”
Sophie explained the family’s thinking to The Sunday Times in 2020. “We try to bring them up with the understanding that they are very likely to have to work for a living. Hence, we made the decision not to use HRH titles. They have them and can decide to use them from 18, but I think it’s highly unlikely,” she said.
The Queen Elizabeth grandson royal titles question puts him alongside cousins as well as his sister. Princess Anne declined titles for Peter Phillips and Zara Tindall at birth and brought them up without royal obligation attached.
“I think it was probably easier for them, and I think most people would argue that there are downsides to having titles,” Anne told Vanity Fair in 2020. “So I think that was probably the right thing to do.”
Prince William alone among the late Queen’s eight grandchildren holds a full-time working royal role, following Prince Harry’s 2020 step back and move to the U.S.
WHAT DO YOU MAKE OF HIS DECISION?
Originally reported by Ashna Gaur for Mandatory
