New year, old rumor. Just because it’s 2025 that doesn’t mean the world is done speculating about the biggest Royal Family talking point in recent months: that Prince Harry and Meghan Markle‘s marriage is on the rocks. This time, it’s Meghan herself who has only added fuel to the flames with her grand comeback to Instagram — and all it took was the absence of three little letters to get the people talking.
Harry and Meghan have maintained a social media presence in recent years through their Archewell Foundation account, but New Year’s Day saw Meghan make a personal return to the app for the first time in half a decade. The former actress made a new account, sporting the mononymous handle @meghan, and shared a single video in which she was filmed (by Harry himself) running along a beach and writing “2025” in the sand.
The content of her inaugural post might’ve been harmless, but Meghan’s bio is doing nothing to drown out those divorce rumors.
Meghan Markle missing a single word leads to new theories she’s divorced Prince Harry
On her new Instagram account, Markle has officially dubbed herself “Meghan, Duchess of Sussex.” On the face of it, this seems nothing but accurate, seeing as this is the official royal title she was given by the late queen upon her marriage to Harry. Except that’s actually not the case. Her official title is “Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex.”
Due to the complicated, antiquated rules of the British aristocracy (may I present Exhibit A: Princess Michael of Kent), the dropped “the” actually changes the meaning of the title entirely. Although Meghan (wisely) turned off the comments on her first post, those on X immediately spotted the — probably unintentional — hidden meaning of Meghan’s bio.
It’s true — technically, Meghan should only drop the definite article from her title if she is divorced. For instance, Sarah Ferguson still goes by Duchess of York, but she has not called herself “Sarah, the Duchess of York” since divorcing Prince Andrew in 1996. As Royal detectives have also noticed, initially Markle simply called herself “Meghan” in her bio before updating it to read “Meghan, Duchess of Sussex” so this does indicate the wording was deliberate and something she put some thought into.
Another curious detail about Meghan’s new Instagram account is that sleuths have realized that it was actually created way back in June 2022 but has remained inactive for the past two and a half years. Clearly, the duchess has been planning on making a personal comeback to social media for some time but has held off until now for some unknown reason. Or until she was single again, if you believe the divorce conspiracy theorists. Whatever the case, speculation surrounding the state of Harry and Meghan’s marriage remains the biggest source of gossip when it comes to the Royal world, despite Meghan’s desire to ring in the new year with a big change and a fresh start.
Published: Jan 2, 2025 08:54 am