goodqueenaly:

For those who don’t know, this is the coat of arms created for the new Duchess of Sussex:

All in all, these arms are very nice, and quite fitting to Meghan Markle (indeed, the Garter King of Arms – a fantastic title, indicating effectively the senior officer in charge of the royal heraldry of England, Wales, and Northern Ireland – stated that “[t]he Duchess of Sussex took a great interest in the design”). The design has quite a few nods to California, her home state: the blue field represents the  Pacific Ocean, the gold bendlets on the field represent rays of sunshine, and at the bottom you can see blooms of the golden poppy, the state flower of California. The wintersweet plants next to the golden poppies are a sweet reminder of their Kensington Palace home, Nottingham Cottage, which has wintersweet growing in front of it. As an indication of her past writing, communication skills, and outreach work, the coat of arms also features three quills and a songbird as a supporter. 

The one interesting aspect of her coat of arms is that it has been impaled – that is, placed side by side – with Harry’s (on the left, above – you can see the lions of England and Scotland and the harp of Ireland, as well as the seashells in honor of his mother’s Spencer family and the five points indicating that he is a grandson of the reigning sovereign). As I gather (though I’m far from an expert), this is atypical in a case like the Duchess of Sussex’s, where she holds these arms in her own right (rather than through her father), and instead an inescutcheon – that is, a shield with her arms placed within a shield of his arms – would have been more expected. I don’t know what the reasoning was here, but I suppose that if anyone knows what he’s doing when it comes to how arms should be presented, it would be the Garter King of Arms.