If Meghan Markle entertains any aspirations of ascending to the throne as Queen of England, she’s pursuing an unconventional path. When she became engaged to Prince Harry in 2017, he occupied only the fifth position in line to the British throne. Subsequently, the couple opted to withdraw as active members of the Royal Family at the commencement of 2020.
However, should she harbour a secret desire for that title, there might be a peculiar route for her to lay claim to it – provided she doesn’t object to an asterisk as large as Buckingham Palace.
Firstly, there’s a Korean-American technology multimillionaire and occasional hip-hop artist by the name of Andrew Lee, who proclaims himself as the king of a cyberstate named Joseon. Rest assured, we’ll return to the Meghan narrative shortly.
Joseon, which perceives itself as the digital successor to the historical kingdom that reigned over the Korean peninsula from 1392 to 1897, is the inaugural digital state to receive official recognition from a member of the United Nations.
And the UN member in question? You guessed it: the Caribbean nation of Antigua and Barbuda, which formalised diplomatic ties with Joseon in a ceremony last June. Indiana-born Mr Lee established his cloud-based blockchain realm in March 2022, four years after being designated the presumptive ‘crown prince of Korea’ by an individual named Yi Seok.
Yi Seok was the final direct descendant of the House of Yi, the ultimate royal dynasty of Joseon, to reside in Korea – hence, the claim possessed some degree of legitimacy. Anyway, the peculiar aspect about Andrew Lee is that he doesn’t aspire to be the sole monarch of a cyber state. Quite the opposite: he advocates for everyone to assume the role of a monarch of their own cyber state. And that encompasses… Meghan Markle.