The Duke and Duchess finally have Instagram!
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle joined the social media world on April 2nd, and they already have over 4 million followers.
There's just one catch, though — the username they're using actually belongs to someone else.
Here's the tale of @sussexroyal.
Before she was a member of the royal family, she had an active Instagram presence.
In it, she documented her time on the TV show Suits, as well as her fashion choices, and her daily life. All in all, a regular celebrity Instagram account.
With her engagement to Prince Harry came the deletion of not only her Instagram account, but Twitter and Facebook, too.
No one member of the royal family has their own social media account.
In order to preserve the accounts she used to have, fans saved and re-uploaded everything from her former Instagram account.
Users like @thetigunofficial serve as online archives for the time when Meghan was simply a TV star.
Meghan is only present on social media through official, palace-approved accounts.
She doesn't get to post, but she is featured on pages like @kensingtonroyal, which is the palace's official Instagram account.
While she's cut off from having a mass audience, Meghan has found ways around avoiding social media.
You'll notice that the photo credit on this Tweet goes to "The Duchess of Sussex."
Please join me and welcoming the Duke and Duchess of Sussex to Instagram. Hope they like memes.
This is the first sort-of personal account of the royal family. Harry and Meghan will share it, obviously.
You can find it at @sussexroyal.
The couple intends to use their Instagram account as an extension of their outreach efforts.
For instance, Harry's first pictures include his support for mental health initiatives, especially for young people.
The couple thanked the people of Sussex for a surprise shower thrown for them.
They also took the opportunity to ask that all presents meant for the next royal baby be put towards charitable donations, instead.
It focuses greatly on the charities and causes he cares about.
Emphasis has been placed on his work with veterans and members of the armed forces, mental health programs, and environmental science.
Well, other than the fact that everything is in the third person, because it looks like all of their captions have to go through a PR department first.
Royal life is weird.
That's according to Kevin Keiley, anyway.
Before the Duke and Duchess owned the account, Keiley had the handle @sussexroyals.
And no, it wasn't a royal fan account. He used it to support his favorite football (soccer) team.
See, Keily is a fan of Reading Football Club, nicknamed the Royals.
And he lives in West Sussex. So...one and one equal @sussexroyal.
To make matters more awkward, he'd had that account for three years before it was nabbed from under his nose.
He told Radio 1 that his son texted him laughing at the situation.
"I got a jokey text from my son, which said, ‘Ha ha, I see your handle has gone then’.
I thought ‘What’s that all about?’"
His previous handle is clearly gone. It seems Instagram renamed his account to @sussexroyal, which he's not thrilled with.
"I didn’t ask for this. I’ve had the account for years – it’s not very pleasant."
I would be mad, too!
They cited that their terms of service allows them to make changes to an account if it's been inactive for a long time.
It all seems a little weird to me.
