Prince Harry & Meghan Markle *Will Not* Upstage The Queen With Archewell Awards
While Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have stepped away from their royal duties, the couple has no intention of competing with Queen Elizabeth II with their Archewell project.
After both the Daily Mail and The Sun wrote that the Sussexes plan to create their own awards ceremony to upstage the Queen’s birthday honors list, representatives for Meghan and Harry’s Archewell endeavor cleared the air immediately.
“The woke couple will recognize do-gooders in the fields they like to champion,” The Sun claimed.
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"We look forward to sharing more about Archewell's work in the weeks ahead but any suggestion that it is intended to rival the U.K. honors list is false. Furthermore, the trademark application has followed the normal course of business for the U.S. Trademark process and any suggestion otherwise is also false," they shot back.
The website describes Archewell as "an organization committed to creating compassionate communities online and off, to serve our collective wellbeing." Right now, the site just has a home page with an email subscription box and the definitions of the words "Arche," which is a "Greek word meaning 'source of action'" and "Well," "a plentiful source or supply; a place we go to dig deep."
The Queen’s birthday honors are awards in which she grants knighthood and other titles such as MBEs (Member Of The Most Excellent Order Of The British Empire), OBEs (Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) and CBEs (Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire) to applaud achievements across the U.K.
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The Sun wrote that Harry and Meghan "filed papers" in the U.S., which stated that they want to celebrate "charitable service, education, science, literature, racial justice, gender equity, environmental stewardship, youth empowerment, health and mental health" through Archewell.
The couple has yet to launch Archewell, which is largely due to the coronavirus pandemic, but the site has been live since October. An insider told ELLE that "while Archewell hasn’t already had a formal launch, it is still already all of their work — the structure, the events, the research they’re doing, the people that they’re meeting. All of the effort they are putting in is within that umbrella. Over time, it is going to grow and grow."
In June, a source told Vanity Fair that Harry and Meghan "are in no hurry to launch Archewell, they want to get it right, that’s really important to them."
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"This is something that they want to do for the rest of their lives so they’re not going to be pressured into launching something that’s still in the relatively early stages of development," the insider added.
When Archewell does take off, the couple won’t be able to knight anyone as only the Queen can do so, but the Queen has encouraged Prince Charles and Prince William to be involved in knighting ceremonies.
Prince Harry isn’t the only of the Queen’s grandsons to launch his own prize or charity either. In October, Prince William announced the Earthshot Prize in collaboration with Sir David Attenborough, which will award $1.35 million each to five winners over the next decade for initiatives to combat climate change.