Surname of the Royal Family
Apr. 18th, 2010 05:50 pmSomeone at my party incautiously asked what the surname of the royal family is. Fortunately I couldn't remember much of the history at the moment, but then I went to look for a summary. This is extremely non-accurate, but I just wanted to give the general idea that it's all surprisingly vague and inconsistent.
As far as I was able to work out from wikipeida and the straight dope article, the royal family often belongs to a royal house with a different name than their nominal surname, if any. The originally Scottish Stuarts were comparatively simple -- or at any rate, any complexity in their surname was not recorded prominently on wikipedia. But then all the convenient male heirs had their heads chopped off, died, converted to catholicism, fled England, abdicated, or some combination of the above. I'll try to skip over all of the Lord-Protector-Cromwell and Old-Pretender-James and William-and-Mary-of-Orange and so on.
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But I hope it's clear that, while I don't fully understand it, I am sceptical of anyone who makes simple, sweeping pronouncements on the the way it is. (I'm in broad agreement to anyone who says it doesn't matter much and the Queen can go by whatever she likes, but the traditions are not detailed enough for there to be one necessarily correct answer.)
( Read more... )
As far as I was able to work out from wikipeida and the straight dope article, the royal family often belongs to a royal house with a different name than their nominal surname, if any. The originally Scottish Stuarts were comparatively simple -- or at any rate, any complexity in their surname was not recorded prominently on wikipedia. But then all the convenient male heirs had their heads chopped off, died, converted to catholicism, fled England, abdicated, or some combination of the above. I'll try to skip over all of the Lord-Protector-Cromwell and Old-Pretender-James and William-and-Mary-of-Orange and so on.
( Read more... )
But I hope it's clear that, while I don't fully understand it, I am sceptical of anyone who makes simple, sweeping pronouncements on the the way it is. (I'm in broad agreement to anyone who says it doesn't matter much and the Queen can go by whatever she likes, but the traditions are not detailed enough for there to be one necessarily correct answer.)
( Read more... )