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What is a royal?

Posted on August 10, 2024 | by Dave Cross | Leave a Comment

The term “royal” often conjures images of crowns, palaces, and centuries-old traditions. However, what exactly constitutes a “royal” can vary depending on the context. In the modern British monarchy, there are several ways to define who is considered a royal. This article will explore three such definitions: holding the style “His/Her Royal Highness” (HRH), being a member of the royal family by descent or marriage, and being a working royal. Each of these definitions offers a different perspective on what it means to belong to the British royal family.

1. Holding the Style HM or HRH

One of the most formal and legally recognised ways to be considered a royal is by holding the style “His/Her Majesty” (HM) or “His/Her Royal Highness” (HRH). This designation has its roots in British legal tradition, specifically in the Letters Patent issued by King George V in 1917 and later updated by Queen Elizabeth II in 2012.

Historical Context

The Letters Patent of 1917 were issued by King George V during a time of anti-German sentiment during World War I. The letters were designed to limit the number of people entitled to the style HRH, focusing the title on the closest relatives of the monarch. Under these guidelines, only the children of the sovereign, the children of the sovereign’s sons, and the eldest living son of the eldest son of the Prince of Wales were entitled to the HRH style.

In 2012, Queen Elizabeth II issued a new Letters Patent to extend the HRH title to all children of the eldest son of the Prince of Wales, rather than just the eldest living son. This change ensured that all of Prince William’s children, not just Prince George, would hold the HRH title.

Current Royals with HRH Style

As of 2024, the individuals entitled to the HRH style are:

Charles III
Camilla (the wife of the King)
Prince William, Prince of Wales (eldest son of the King)
Catherine, Princess of Wales (wife of the Prince of Wales)
Prince George of Wales (eldest son of the Prince of Wales)
Princess Charlotte of Wales (daughter of the Prince of Wales)
Prince Louis of Wales (youngest son of the Prince of Wales)
Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex (younger son of the King)
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (wife of the Duke of Sussex)
Prince Archie of Sussex (son of the Duke of Sussex)
Princess Lilbet of Sussex (daughter of the Duke of Sussex)
Princess Anne, The Princess Royal (daughter of Elizabeth II)
Prince Andrew, Duke of York (younger son of Elizabeth II)
Princess Beatrice, Mrs Mapelli Mozzi (elder daughter of the Duke of York)
Princess Eugenie, Mrs Brooksbank (younger daughter of the Duke of York)
Prince Edward, Duke of Edinburgh (youngest son of Elizabeth II)
Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh (wife of the Duke of Edinburgh)
James, Earl of Wessex (son of the Duke of Edinburgh)
Lady Louise Windsor (daughter of the Duke of Edinburgh)
Prince Richard, Duke of Gloucester (grandson of George V)
Birgitte, Duchess of Gloucester(wife of the Duke of Gloucester)
Prince Edward, Duke of Kent (grandson of George V)
Katharine, Duchess of Kent (wife of the Duke of Kent)
Princess Alexandra (granddaughter of George V)
Prince Michael of Kent (grandson of George V)
Princess Michael of Kent (wife of Prince Michael of Kent)

The Duke and Duchess of Sussex and the Duke of York have agreed not to use their HRH styles except when on official royal family business.

James, Earl of Wessex and Lady Louise Windsor do not use the princely titles they are entitled to or their HRH styles.

Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet are entitled to HRH styles under the 1917 Letters Patent, but they have never yet used these styles.

2. Being a Member of the Royal Family

Another definition of being a royal is broader and includes anyone who is a direct descendant of Queen Elizabeth II or who is married to one of her descendants. This definition encapsulates a larger group, reflecting the extended royal family, which may include individuals who do not hold the HRH style but are nonetheless considered part of the royal family by virtue of their lineage or marriage.

Current Members of the Royal Family

As of 2024, the following individuals are considered members of the royal family by descent or marriage:

Charles III
Camilla (wife of the King)
Prince William, Prince of Wales (eldest son of the King)
Catherine, Princess of Wales (wife of the Prince of Wales)
Prince George of Wales (eldest son of the Prince of Wales)
Princess Charlotte of Wales (daughter of the Prince of Wales)
Prince Louis of Wales (youngest son of the Prince of Wales)
Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex (youngest son of the King)
Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (wife of the Duke of Sussex)
Princess Archie of Sussex (son of the Duke of Sussex)
Princess Lilibet of Sussex (daughter of the Duke of Sussex)
Princess Anne, The Princess Royal (sister of the King)
Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence (husband of the Princess Royal)
Peter Phillips (son of the Princess of Wales)
Savannah Phillips (daughter of Peter Phillips)
Isla Phillips (daughter of Peter Phillips)
Zara Tindall (daughter of the Princess Roya)
Mike Tindall (husband of Zara Tindall)
Mia Tindall (daughter of Zara Tindall)
Lena Tindall (daughter of Zara Tindall)
Lucas Tindall (son of ZaraTindall)
Prince Andrew, Duke of York (younger brother of King)
Princess Beatrice, Mrs Mapelli Mozzi (eldest daughter of the Duke of York)
Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi (husband of Princess Beatrice)
Sienna Mapelli Mozzi (daughter of Princess Beatrice)
Princess Eugenie, Mrs Brooksbank (youngest daughter of the Duke of York)
Jack Brooksbank (husband of Princess Eugenie)
August Brooksbank (eldest son of Princess Eugenie)
Ernest Brooksbank (youngest son of Princess Eugenie)
Prince Edward, Duke of Edinburgh (youngest brother of the King)
Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh (wife of the Duke of Edinburgh)
Lady Louise Windsor (daughter of the Duke of Edinburgh)
James, Earl of Wessex (son of Duke of Edinburgh)

This list represents the extended royal family, including younger generations who may not hold the HRH title but are nonetheless royals by descent.

3. Being a Working Royal

A more functional definition of being a royal involves being a “working royal.” This term refers to those members of the royal family who actively perform duties on behalf of the Crown. These duties include public appearances, charitable work, and representing the monarchy both within the United Kingdom and abroad. Under the reign of King Charles III, the number of working royals has been streamlined to focus on those closest to the line of succession.

Current Working Royals

As of 2024, the working royals under King Charles III are:

Charles III
Camilla
Prince William, Prince of Wales
Catherine, Princess of Wales
Princess Anne, The Princess Royal
Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence (husband of the Princess Royal)
Prince Edward, Duke of Edinburgh
Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh
The Duke of Gloucester
The Duchess of Gloucester
The Duke of Kent
Princess Alexandra

These individuals are the primary faces of the British monarchy, regularly engaging with the public and fulfilling official duties. The focus on a smaller group of working royals is part of Charles III’s vision for a more modern and efficient monarchy.

Conclusion

The concept of being a “royal” in the British context is multifaceted and can be defined in several ways. Whether through the formal title of HRH, lineage, marriage, or active service to the Crown, each definition captures a different aspect of royal life. Understanding these distinctions provides a deeper insight into the structure and functioning of the British royal family as it continues to evolve in the 21st century.

Royal Titles Decoded: What Makes a Prince or Princess?

Posted on April 25, 2024 | by Dave Cross | 8 Comments

Royal titles in the United Kingdom carry a rich tapestry of history, embodying centuries of tradition while adapting to the changing landscape of the modern world. This article delves into the structure of these titles, focusing on significant changes made during the 20th and 21st centuries, and how these rules affect current royals.

The Foundations: Letters Patent of 1917

The framework for today’s royal titles was significantly shaped by the Letters Patent issued by King George V in 1917. This document was pivotal in redefining who in the royal family would be styled with “His or Her Royal Highness” (HRH) and as a prince or princess. Specifically, the 1917 Letters Patent restricted these styles to:

The sons and daughters of a sovereign.
The male-line grandchildren of a sovereign.
The eldest living son of the eldest son of the Prince of Wales.

This move was partly in response to the anti-German sentiment of World War I, aiming to streamline the monarchy and solidify its British identity by reducing the number of royals with German titles.

Notice that the definitions talk about “a sovereign”, not “the sovereign”. This means that when the sovereign changes, no-one will lose their royal title (for example, Prince Andrew is still the son of a sovereign, even though he is no longer the son of the sovereign). However, people can gain royal titles when the sovereign changes – we will see examples below.

Extension by George VI in 1948

Understanding the implications of the existing rules as his family grew, King George VI issued a new Letters Patent in 1948 to extend the style of HRH and prince/princess to the children of the future queen, Princess Elizabeth (later Queen Elizabeth II). This was crucial as, without this adjustment, Princess Elizabeth’s children would not automatically have become princes or princesses because they were not male-line grandchildren of the monarch. This ensured that Charles and Anne were born with princely status, despite being the female-line grandchildren of a monarch.

The Modern Adjustments: Queen Elizabeth II’s 2012 Update

Queen Elizabeth II’s update to the royal titles in 2012 before the birth of Prince William’s children was another significant modification. The Letters Patent of 2012 decreed that all the children of the eldest son of the Prince of Wales would hold the title of HRH and be styled as prince or princess, not just the eldest son. This move was in anticipation of changes brought about by the Succession to the Crown Act of 2013, which ended the system of male primogeniture, ensuring that the firstborn child of the Prince of Wales, regardless of gender, would be the direct heir to the throne. Without this change, there could have been a situation where Prince William’s first child (and the heir to the throne) was a daughter who wasn’t a princess, whereas her eldest (but younger) brother would have been a prince.

Impact on Current Royals

Children of Princess Anne: When Anne married Captain Mark Phillips in 1973, he was offered an earldom but declined it. Consequently, their children, Peter Phillips and Zara Tindall, were not born with any titles. This decision reflects Princess Anne’s preference for her children to have a more private life, albeit still active within the royal fold.
Children of Prince Edward: Initially, Prince Edward’s children were styled as children of an earl, despite his being a son of the sovereign. Recently, his son James assumed the courtesy title Earl of Wessex, when Prince Edward was created the Duke of Edinburgh. His daughter, Lady Louise Windsor, continued to use the same style as she did before her father became duke – the style for the daughter of a duke being identical to that for the daughter of an earl.
Children of Prince Harry: When Archie and Lilibet were born, they were not entitled to princely status or HRH. They were great-grandchildren of the monarch and, despite the Queen’s adjustments in 2012, their cousins – George, Charlotte and Louis – were the only great-grandchildren of the monarch with those titles. When their grandfather became king, they became male-line grandchildren of a monarch and, hence, a prince and a princess. It took a while for those changes to be reflected on the royal family website. This presumably gave the royal household time to reflect on the effect of the children’s parents withdrawing from royal life and moving to the USA.

Special Titles: Prince of Wales and Princess Royal

Prince of Wales: Historically granted to the heir apparent, this title is not automatic and needs to be specifically bestowed by the monarch. Prince Charles was created Prince of Wales in 1958, though he had been the heir apparent since 1952. Prince William, on the other hand, received the title in 2022 – just a day after the death of Queen Elizabeth II.
Princess Royal: This title is reserved for the sovereign’s eldest daughter but is not automatically reassigned when the previous holder passes away or when a new eldest daughter is born. Queen Elizabeth II was never Princess Royal because her aunt, Princess Mary, held the title during her lifetime. Princess Anne currently holds this title, having received it in 1987.

The Fade of Titles: Distant Royals

As the royal family branches out, descendants become too distanced from the throne, removing their entitlement to HRH and princely status. For example, the Duke of Gloucester, Duke of Kent, Prince Michael of Kent and Princess Alexandra all have princely status as male-line grandchildren of George V. Their children are all great-grandchildren of a monarch and, therefore, do not all have royal styles or titles. This reflects a natural trimming of the royal family tree, focusing the monarchy’s public role on those directly in line for succession.

Conclusion

The evolution of British royal titles reflects both adherence to deep-rooted traditions and responsiveness to modern expectations. These titles not only delineate the structure and hierarchy within the royal family but also adapt to changes in societal norms and the legal landscape, ensuring the British monarchy remains both respected and relevant in the contemporary era.

Princess Elizabeth and the baby Prince Charles

How Charles was very nearly not a prince

Posted on December 22, 2021 | by Dave Cross | 1 Comment

There’s been a lot of talk over the last year or so about why the children of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex don’t have titles. But did you know that Prince Charles was very nearly not born a prince? It’s an interesting story and shows that Archie and Lilibet’s situation isn’t as strange as you might think.

Let’s start by reviewing the rules about who is or isn’t a prince. For centuries, this was controlled by ill-defined customs and it was as recently as 1917 that George V issued Letters Patent defining the rules on who would receive a royal title (that is, who would be able to use HRH and be a prince or princess). The rules he came up with were as follows:

Children of a monarch
Children of the sons of a monarch
The eldest son of the eldest son of the Prince of Wales

The last rule on that list was tweaking by the Queen in 2012, so it now reads:

Children of the eldest son of the Prince of Wales

The effect of that change was that the second and third children of Prince William became Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis – which they wouldn’t have been before the change.

When we look at these rules, we can see that they define the princely status of the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren of a monarch. It makes sense that the only great-grandchildren who get royal titles are the children of the eldest son of the Prince of Wales as they are the people who will be the core of the royal family in the future. The bit about “the eldest son” might need to be changed when if the eldest child of a Prince of Wales is a daughter – but that’s a problem for a later date.

The list also explains some of the questions that are frequently asked about titles.

Archie and Lilibet Mountbatten-Windsor aren’t currently entitled to princely status (but that will change when their grandfather is king)
The children of Princess Anne were never going to have royal titles (but they would have received noble titles if Mark Phillips had accepted the earldom he was presumably offered when he married Anne)
The Duke of Gloucester, Duke of Kent, Princess Alexandra and Prince Michael of Kent all have royal titles because they are the grandchildren of George V

The only anomaly left is that the children of Prince Edward are entitled to royal status but don’t use it. This was a decision taken by their parents. The children do have that status, they just choose not to use it. The children are entitled to override their parents’ decision when they reach their eighteenth birthdays, but Lady Louise has just passed that milestone and there has been no announcement of her title changing.

So, as I said above, this explains why Archie and Lilibet Mountbatten-Windsor are not currently given royal status. This is how royal experts always expected it to work. No-one should be surprised at the situation. And the situation will change when Prince Charles becomes king. They will then be the children of a son of a monarch and will become Prince Archie and Princess Lilibet. I believe that this will be the first example of someone gaining princely status because a new monarch took the throne.

But it might not have been that way. There could have been an earlier example.

Think back to October 1948. George VI is on the throne. He has two daughters – Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret. Both women were grandchildren of George V when they were born and were therefore born princesses as the daughters of a son of a monarch. Princess Elizabeth married the Duke of Edinburgh in November 1947 and by October 1948 it was well-known that she was expecting her first child.

But consider that child – who we now know to be Charles. He was born as a grandson of a monarch, but not the child of the son of a monarch. Being the son of a daughter of a monarch, he would not be expected to receive a royal title. He would, presumably, have been known as the Earl of Merioneth (his father’s subsidiary title). And when Anne was born two years later, she would have been Lady Anne Windsor. Similarly to Archie and Lilibet, they would have both been given royal titles when their mother became queen in 1952 but, until then they would have suffered under the gender bias of George V’s rules.

However, their grandfather noticed the problem and pre-empted it. In October 1947 (a few weeks before Charles was born) he issued Letters Patent declaring that all children of Princess Elizabeth would be given royal status. Unfortunately, he only changed the rules specifically for her children and didn’t think to put a rule in place that would cover any future situations where we had a princess who was first in line to the throne and old enough to be having children (something that will become more common now that monarchs tend to live longer and we’ve abolished male-preference primogeniture). Just another little point that will need adjusting as the royal family tries to work in a less sexist manner – but that’s a topic for another article.

I confess that I hadn’t heard this story until a few weeks ago and I’m rather embarrassed to admit that I failed to realise how close we came to having someone who was second in line to the throne who didn’t have a princely title. Did you know about this?

Their Royal Highnesses

Posted on February 17, 2019 | by Dave Cross | 2 Comments

Let’s try to understand why certain members of the royal family are known as His (or Her) Royal Highness and others aren’t. Are there rules that determine this? What are those rules?

Well, of course there are rules. There are good statistical reasons to believe that anyone with British ancestry is related to a British monarch if you go back far enough. So we need to limit the spread of “royal-ness” so that only the people nearest the throne are allowed to use royal titles. And, for the purposes of this article, for “royal titles” we mean the right to call yourself His (or Her) Royal Highness – which almost always means you’re also a prince or princess.

The rules are actually pretty simple. There are three of them. You are an HRH if you fulfill one of the following criteria:

You are a child of a monarch.
You are a child of a son of a monarch.
You are a child of the eldest living son of the Prince of Wales.

The first two rules were laid down by George V in Letters Patent in 1917. The last one was amended by Elizabeth II in 2012 – previously only the eldest living son of the eldest living son of the Prince of Wales would have qualified.

Notice that the rules are rather sexist – men do better out of the rules than women do. Also, note that the rules say “a monarch” and not “the monarch”. That’s important as it explains why people like the Dukes of Kent and Gloucester are both HRH (they are both sons of sons of George V).

You can also gain the title HRH by being a woman who marries someone with the title. It doesn’t, typically, work that way for men marrying women with the title. One important exception is Prince Philip who was made HRH the day before he married Princess Elizabeth. And in 1996, Elizabeth II added a rule saying that a woman who divorced an HRH would lose her right to the title.

So let’s look at who currently has the title. We’ll start with the current Queen and her descendants.

Elizabeth II is not HRH (because she’s HM – Her Majesty – which is better)
Prince Philip was made an HRH as he married Elizabeth
The Queen’s four children are all HRH
Prince Charles’ two sons are both children of the son of a sovereign – so they are HRH
Prince William’s children are all children of the eldest son of the Prince of Wales – so they all qualify
Prince Harry’s future children, however, will not qualify under the current rules (but they will qualify once Prince Charles becomes king)
Princess Anne’s children suffer from the sexism in the rules and do not qualify – neither, therefore, do their children
Prince Andrew’s two daughters are children of a son of a monarch and, therefore, qualify. Any children they have will not.
Prince Edward’s children do qualify. But he has asked for them not to use their royal titles. So they use the titles of children of an Earl.

Moving back a generation, we get to Princess Margaret and her children. Princess Margaret was the child of a monarch (George VI) so she was HRH. Her children do not qualify (in the same way that Princess Anne’s children didn’t).

Edward VIII had no children, so he need not concern us, and we can move back to the other descendants of George V. George V had six children. They are all dead, but some of his grandchildren are still alive. And the ones who are children of George’s sons are entitled to be HRHs. Those are:

Prince Richard, The Duke of Gloucester
Prince Edward, The Duke of Kent
Prince Michael of Kent
Princess Alexandra

The descendants of George’s daughter, Princess Mary, are excluded for the same reasons as the children of Princess Anne and Princess Margaret – the sexism built into the rules.

It’s worth noting that the children of the Gloucesters and Kents are all great-grandchildren of a monarch and, as such, none of them are HRHs. As an aside, this means that the next time the dukedoms of Gloucester and Kent are inherited, they will cease to be royal dukedoms.

You can see from this, I hope, that having or not having the right to be called HRH is not a good indicator of how high up the line of succession a person is. The first person in the line who isn’t an HRH is James, Viscount Severn at number 11. The lowest person on the list who is an HRH is Princess Alexandra at number 49. 35 of the people in the top 50 of the line are not HRHs.