However, it is clear the DM doesn't know what they are talking about as they claim the king will 'keep it himself' - that is not possible. The title merged with the crown, so he no longer has it.
So, according to this article, giving Edward the title "Duke of Edinburgh" would ruin Charles's plan for a slimmed down monarchy because James would eventually inherit. Good grief. They obviously don't understand the way the titles work.
Because James would potentially inherit the dukedom does not mean he is part of the monarchy. Ask any of the ducal peers in England.
The anonymous courtier is the person who made the misinformed statements, although the writer of the article ought to have factchecked them.
Yes, the courtier clearly lacks insight into how British titles function. However, I am afraid it is not impossible that the courtier's views are shared by senior royals or court officials. There have certainly been incidents in the past which demonstrated that even royals and their advisors are sometimes ignorant about titles or other aspects of their own monarchies.
It is also possible that the courtier is simply making excuses because the real motive for the turnaround is not something the King wishes to highlight for the public. Fear of Scotland leaving the union and resentment of his brother have been suggested, and if either of those concerns are real, they are not something that the king would be keen to share with the public, even in unofficial leaks.
While I would normally not put too much stock into a single anonymous source in the Daily Mail, I think it is significant that over the last year and a half there have been multiple leaks to separate media outlets (including at least one reported by a respected royal correspondent) indicating that the public agreement between Elizabeth, Philip and Charles in 1999 is unlikely to be fulfilled - and that there have been no leaks attempting to rebut those stories.
I also think the then-Prince Charles's statement to People magazine in 2021 backtracking on the 1999 agreement by stating that "no final decisions have been taken", Prince Edward's own interviews in 2021 suggesting it was an open possibility but not a guarantee, and the 2019 grant of a Scottish earldom all lend credibility to the leaks.
(The aforementioned announcements and articles have all been posted on this forum, many of them in this thread, but if someone wishes me to repost them I can do so.)
A) He was apparently offered a dukedom as a wedding present, but he didn't want it. He also didn't want his children to be styled as HRH prince(ss). That in itself tells a lot.
The agreement on the eventual grant of the dukedom of Edinburgh and the decision on the styles of future children were announced in the same press release, so he evidently didn't see any contradiction between them. (I don't either.)
Upon his marriage to Sophie, was Prince Edward offered the dukedom of Cambridge?
It was what an anonymous courtier claimed, speaking to Richard Eden of the Telegraph in 2010:
Whether or not the bit about Cambridge is true (it could have been intended as a stopgap until he received the planned dukedom of Edinburgh), I trust the story about the Earl of Wessex title being inspired by the film Shakespeare in Love. The story has been reported elsewhere, the film premiered the year before Prince Edward's marriage, the title had not been used since the 11th century, and Prince Edward (who aspired to a film career) was certainly more interested in present-day films than in 11th-century English history.
Now I have to find more information on this topic since my frame of reference was the 
