Meghan Markle and Prince Harry are teaching Archie the importance of manners: ‘Manners make the man’

Meghan Markle has shared a glimpse of her life with Prince Harry as they raise their two children, Archie Harrison and Lilibet Diana, in southern California.

In a new interview published in The Cut, the Duchess of Sussex gave an update on their three-year-old son Archie and how they’ve begun teaching him about manners. “We always tell him: ‘Manners make the man. Manners, manners, manners, manners, manners,’” she told writer Alison P Davis.

Manners aren’t the only lesson that Meghan and Prince Harry have been teaching their toddler. After she picked up Archie from preschool, Meghan reached into the trunk of their car and handed a brand new black backpack to an unhoused man on the corner of the street.

Apart from manners, the parents are also teaching Archie about homelessness. They even made kits to pass out, which contained water, peanut-butter crackers and granola bars. “I ate one!” Archie added.

Since they stepped down as senior members of the royal family in 2020, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have adjusted to their new, normal life in Montecito, California. Recently, the couple took Archie to a classmate’s birthday party but Meghan recalled how everyone was taken aback by their presence at the party.

“I was in a bouncy castle, and I saw this one-year-old inside,” she explained. “I was like, ‘Where’s your mom?’ And this mom on the outside goes, ‘Oh, hi! I’m here. I wasn’t sure if I should come in.’”

“I was like, ‘Do you need your child? Of course you can come in,’” she said laughing.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle welcomed their son Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor in May 2019. In June 2021 – nearly 18 months after stepping down from the royal family – the couple welcomed their daughter, Lilibet “Lili” Diana Mountbatten-Windsor.

At one point during the recent interview, Meghan explained why she’s so protective over photos of her children, and how she refuses to let the media get a hold of their photographs without posting them herself first.

“Sorry, I have a problem with that,” Meghan admitted. “That doesn’t make me obsessed with privacy. That makes me a strong and good parent protecting my child.”

“Why would I give the very people that are calling my children the N-word a photo of my child before I can share it with the people that love my child?” she said. “You tell me how that makes sense and then I’ll play that game.”

The Duchess of Sussex launched the first episode of her podcast Archetypes to Spotify on August 23. In the debut episode, Meghan sat down with friend and tennis star Serena Williams, where she revealed that her son’s nursery had caught on fire while she and Prince Harry were on a royal tour of South Africa in 2019.

Soon after landing in the country, they left four-month-old Archie with a nanny while she and Prince Harry visited Nyanga township in South Africa as part of their royal duties. “We finish the engagement, we get in the car and they say: there’s been a fire at the residence,” she said. “We’d just landed an hour, two hours before. We raced back, and our amazing nanny Lauren, who we’d had all the way from Canada to here, was in floods of tears.”

Meghan explained that their nanny was preparing to put Archie in bed for his nap when she decided to bring him with her to get a snack at the last minute. That was the moment that the heater in the nursery had caught fire.

“We came back, and of course, as a mother...everyone’s in tears, everyone’s shaken,” she said. “And what did we have to do? Go out and give another official engagement.”