Hello, world. An image of 6-week-old Archie Mountbatten-Windsor was published on social media by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex for Father’s Day.CreditThe Duke and Duchess of Sussex
LONDON — The first time Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor was introduced to the world, a mere two days after he was born in May, he slept through the whole meet-and-greet.
He wore a knit cap then, and his face was only partly visible in the arms of his excited father, Prince Harry, a.k.a. the Duke of Sussex. His mother, Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, stood by them, smiling almost nonstop. His father joked that Archie was already showing “a little bit of facial hair.”
In another post on Instagram, we became acquainted with his feet, peeking out from a cream blanket.
On Sunday, as Britain and other countries celebrated Father’s Day, his parents unveiled Archie again — at least part of him — in all his bald, bright-eyed glory.
The sepia-tone Instagram image shows him staring intently at the camera, clutching the finger of a man presumed to be Harry. To be fair, his tiny head bore evidence of fuzz.
By Sunday evening, the image had racked up more than 1.5 million “likes.” The reaction was predictably rapturous — “Beautiful,” was a popular sentiment — but some commentators wanted more.
Perhaps eager to deduce if Archie is a ginger like his father, one person wrote: “Why won’t they show his hair color?! I’m dying over here!”
After giving birth to their first child, the duchess had mostly kept out of the public eye, choosing to be absent from functions like President Trump’s controversial state visit to Britain this month.
But days later, she appeared at an annual parade called trooping the color that commemorated the official birthday of the British sovereign. (Queen Elizabeth II’s 93rd birthday actually fell in April.)
The queen met her eighth great-grandchild — who is seventh in line to the throne — at Windsor the day he was introduced in public. The occasion was again revealed on social media, and only a sliver of Archie’s cheek was visible in that photo. Prince Philip and the duchess’s mother, Doria Ragland, were also present.
Since becoming a couple, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have upended certain traditions, including tossing out the traditional photo opportunity to showcase the newest royal in favor of choosing carefully curated images online — rankling most of the British press.
Now, as if in answer to a plea to “Show us your baby!” the couple obliged.
But they appear determined to do it in tiny bits, perhaps out of privacy concerns. For the duchess’s first Mother’s Day, the couple unfurled the photo of Archie’s feet, with the hand of a woman presumed to be the duchess cupping them.
Quoting the writer Nayyirah Waheed, the post read: “My mother was my first country; the first place I ever lived.”
But now the world knows a bit more: Archie has less hair than most British royals, a direct gaze and quite the grip.
