Duchess Meghan expecting baby number 2 with Prince Harry; apparently connected to Diana

Another royal great-grandchild is on the way: Prince Harry and Duchess Meghan are pregnant with their second child.

A spokesperson for the couple confirmed in a statement to USA TODAY on Sunday that the Duke and Duchess of Sussex are expecting. The revelation had a special connection to Princess Diana: Harry's late mother made headlines on Valentine's Day 1984 when she announced her second pregnancy. She gave birth to Harry on September 15 of that year.

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex's Valentine's Day statement did not say when or where the baby would be born. The couple have been living in Southern California since March, just before the pandemic brought travel around the world to a halt.

The news means that their first child, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, will turn two in May and will now have a brother or sister.

Meghan and Harry's friend, photographer Misan Harriman, posted a new black-and-white photo of the couple on Instagram to celebrate the news. It shows Harry sitting barefoot on the grass, Meghan on his lap, her hand resting on a prominent baby bump visible under her casual maxi dress. Harriman's hashtags indicate that the photo was taken remotely using an iPad.

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This child will be a member of the British royal family, but is likely to be born in the United States, as 36-year-old Harry and 39-year-old Meghan Markle now live in Santa Barbara County, California, near where Markle was born and raised.

The new baby will be the tenth or eleventh great-grandchild of Queen Elizabeth II (94) and her husband Prince Philip (99). Archie was the eighth child and their granddaughter Princess Eugenie gave birth to her first child, a boy, on February 9. Granddaughter Zara Phillips Tindall is also expecting her third child.

Buckingham Palace issued a statement to USA TODAY saying the Queen, her husband Prince Charles and the entire family were “delighted” with the Sussex news and wished them all the best.

Harry and Meghan's second child and Prince Charles' fifth grandchild will be the eighth in line to the throne, just behind Archie and Harry and after his Cambridge cousins, Prince George (7), Princess Charlotte (5) and Prince Louis (2).

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Like Archie, the second Sussex baby is unlikely to receive a title from the Queen: Harry and Meghan have rejected one for Archie.

In July, Meghan suffered a miscarriage. She opened up about her loss in a remarkably candid column for the New York Times titled “The Losses We Share.” She detailed her experiences in intimate detail, describing how the tragedy occurred on a “morning that began as normally as any other day.”

However, it is unclear how openly Harry and Meghan will discuss the details of the new baby's birth – where it will take place, who the godparents will be, when the birth certificate will be submitted and so on.

The couple was cautious with such information about Archie's birth on May 6, 2019, not revealing where it took place and only announcing the birth after it had already happened and she had returned home.

Only later, after his birth was officially registered, did the world learn that Archie was born in an American hospital, the Portland, in London. Unlike the birth of Harry's royal nephews and nieces, the couple refused to allow pictures of the baby before his christening ceremony.

This break with royal customs enraged the British tabloid media and further exacerbated an already strained relationship, culminating in Harry and Meghan's surprise announcement in January 2020 that they would step back from their senior royal roles and move to North America to seek greater freedom, privacy and financial independence.

This sparked two months of bitterness and mutual recriminations, as well as tense negotiations with Harry's family and palace courtiers and angry accusations from the tabloid press that the couple were neglecting their duty to get rich in America.

Now they're rising Hollywood moguls who've signed high-priced deals with Netflix and Spotify to produce entertainment content and podcasts. They're in quarantine like everyone else, but they're spending the pandemic in their newly purchased home, a sprawling luxury estate in pricey Montecito outside Santa Barbara. And they've recently won a series of legal battles against tabloid newspapers for defamation and invasion of privacy.

The Queen hasn't seen Archie in person since the fall of 2019, in part because of the pandemic, which has kept the nonagenarian royals sheltered in a royal bubble at Windsor Castle for most of the past nine months. Like everyone else, the Queen and her husband have learned how to call their family on Zoom.

A new Sussex baby also raises questions about citizenship. Archie, born in London, is a native Brit but can also one day apply for American citizenship through his American mother Meghan if he wants to.

But if the new Sussex baby is born in the United States, he or she will immediately become an American citizen thanks to the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and could therefore vote, apply for an American passport or even one day run for President of the United States.

And since he is the child of a British citizen born abroad (Harry), he could also claim British citizenship as an adult. Because he is so low in the line of succession, it is unlikely that he will ever ascend to the throne, so his citizenship status is less pressing – unless he or she wants to become prime minister one day.

Contributors: Hannah Yasharoff, Kim Willis

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Meghan Markle pregnant: Prince Harry and the Duchess are expecting their second baby