is the British royal family as awful as Netflix says?

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  • EirenistEirenist Shipmate
    Let's hope so. But it won't be easy for them. They will still be a Story.
  • Alan29Alan29 Shipmate
    I think he's Harry Wales officially, but is more likely to use Mountbatten-Windsor, which is Archie's surname.

    I think thats what he was in the army.
  • My step grandmother managed to go by t
    Eirenist wrote: »
    Let's hope so. But it won't be easy for them. They will still be a Story.

    I don’t think their starting their own podcast will have helped with this.
  • Alan29 wrote: »
    I think thats what he was in the army.

    Yes indeed. At school, and in the forces, both the Duke of Cambridge and the Duke of Sussex used "Wales" as a surname - that being their father's senior title. Similarly, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie used "York" as a surname at school.

    All four of these people have since acquired different surnames - the Princesses through marriage, and the Dukes through being granted their own titles. So it would be "normal" for the Dukes to call themselves William Cambridge and Harry Sussex if they wanted a surname. But they are free to call themselves whatever they like.


  • The custom is - and it is of medieval standing - that the children of a royal house take the "of Whatever" as their surname until they either get a proper title or (in the case of females) marry.

    "Prince Harry of Wales" is a courtesy title. Duke of Sussex is a peerage. Historically (anyway) the difference between being able to sit in Parliament or not. This is why "Duke" is promotion for a "Prince". Though this is due to Prince/Princess title inflation. In medieval times such persons were just "Lord" or "Lady" unless they were the Prince/Princess of Wales. (The only princedom that is a peerage.)
  • Why not Harry Battenburg or Harry Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Both are historically accurate but hysterically funny in one person's attempt at rewriting history to save face and retain power.

    Neither is accurate for the simple reason that the royal house formally adopted, by Letters Patent, the name of Windsor in 1917.

    If you're going to disregard name changes such as this, and accept the custom that a child takes the surname if his/her father, then Prince Harry should pass on his own under those rules, so it would be Archie Harruson Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg 😂
  • Gramps49Gramps49 Shipmate
    Sighthound wrote: »
    The custom is - and it is of medieval standing - that the children of a royal house take the "of Whatever" as their surname until they either get a proper title or (in the case of females) marry.

    "Prince Harry of Wales" is a courtesy title. Duke of Sussex is a peerage. Historically (anyway) the difference between being able to sit in Parliament or not. This is why "Duke" is promotion for a "Prince". Though this is due to Prince/Princess title inflation. In medieval times such persons were just "Lord" or "Lady" unless they were the Prince/Princess of Wales. (The only princedom that is a peerage.)

    I have been going through my Ancestry, By the 1500s I am beginning to see a lot of very interesting titles.
  • If you're going to disregard name changes such as this, and accept the custom that a child takes the surname if his/her father, then Prince Harry should pass on his own under those rules, so it would be Archie Harruson Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg 😂

    If you follow the rule of father's name only without changes then I think you arrive at the simpler surname of Oldenburg.

    (Hence the disparaging name of "Mrs Oldcastle" used by some in republican circles to refer to the Queen.)
  • Gee DGee D Shipmate
    All four of these people have since acquired different surnames - the Princesses through marriage, and the Dukes through being granted their own titles. So it would be "normal" for the Dukes to call themselves William Cambridge and Harry Sussex if they wanted a surname. But they are free to call themselves whatever they like.

    (My emphasis)

    As indeed are we all, provided that we're not doing so for some nefarious purpose.
  • Why not Harry Battenburg or Harry Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Both are historically accurate but hysterically funny in one person's attempt at rewriting history to save face and retain power.

    Neither is accurate for the simple reason that the royal house formally adopted, by Letters Patent, the name of Windsor in 1917.

    If you're going to disregard name changes such as this, and accept the custom that a child takes the surname if his/her father, then Prince Harry should pass on his own under those rules, so it would be Archie Harruson Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg 😂

    How wonderful it would be if we could all call on Letters Patent at times of crisis in order to reinvent ourselves.
  • BroJamesBroJames Purgatory Host, 8th Day Host
    You don’t need them. You can change your name any time you like so long as there’s no intention to defraud. If you need legal documentation you can use a Deed Poll.
  • Why not Harry Battenburg or Harry Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Both are historically accurate but hysterically funny in one person's attempt at rewriting history to save face and retain power.

    Neither is accurate for the simple reason that the royal house formally adopted, by Letters Patent, the name of Windsor in 1917.

    If you're going to disregard name changes such as this, and accept the custom that a child takes the surname if his/her father, then Prince Harry should pass on his own under those rules, so it would be Archie Harruson Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg 😂

    How wonderful it would be if we could all call on Letters Patent at times of crisis in order to reinvent ourselves.

    You're better off! In Britain, one can simply write up a document and call it My Own Personal Letters Patent and issue it in the name of @ExclamationMark.

    In Canada, we have thirteen provinces and territories with their own name-changing procedures, which a few of my friends have implemented. One friend threatened her parents with a name change to Earth Cookie.
  • TheOrganistTheOrganist Shipmate
    edited January 4
    If you're going to disregard name changes such as this, and accept the custom that a child takes the surname if his/her father, then Prince Harry should pass on his own under those rules, so it would be Archie Harruson Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg 😂

    If you follow the rule of father's name only without changes then I think you arrive at the simpler surname of Oldenburg.

    (Hence the disparaging name of "Mrs Oldcastle" used by some in republican circles to refer to the Queen.)

    Oldenburg is the house. As a son of a younger son of a younger son Prince Philip wouldn't have been entitled to use the name of the house but the surname, so Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg.

  • Pity - *Betty Oldcastle* has a certain ring to it, like the name of a possible character in Coronation Street...
    :naughty:
  • Gramps49 wrote: »

    I have been going through my Ancestry, By the 1500s I am beginning to see a lot of very interesting titles.

    Keep it up. I found that though I am a pleb of the first order I have incredibly aristocratic ancestry. I took me ages to find my first knight, now I am blase about KGs and earls.

    I suspect we all have something similar. My latest discovery was that my mother descended from Edward III via four of his sons!
  • KwesiKwesi Shipmate
    Gramps49: My latest discovery was that my mother descended from Edward III via four of his sons!

    What?! A free-love commune in fourteenth century England.
  • la vie en rougela vie en rouge Circus Host, 8th Day Host
    Sighthound wrote: »
    Gramps49 wrote: »

    I have been going through my Ancestry, By the 1500s I am beginning to see a lot of very interesting titles.

    Keep it up. I found that though I am a pleb of the first order I have incredibly aristocratic ancestry. I took me ages to find my first knight, now I am blase about KGs and earls.

    I suspect we all have something similar. My latest discovery was that my mother descended from Edward III via four of his sons!

    Sadly, not all of us. My mother traced our family tree some years back, and we are solid peasant stock.
  • Sighthound wrote: »
    Gramps49 wrote: »

    I have been going through my Ancestry, By the 1500s I am beginning to see a lot of very interesting titles.

    Keep it up. I found that though I am a pleb of the first order I have incredibly aristocratic ancestry. I took me ages to find my first knight, now I am blase about KGs and earls.

    I suspect we all have something similar. My latest discovery was that my mother descended from Edward III via four of his sons!

    Sadly, not all of us. My mother traced our family tree some years back, and we are solid peasant stock.

    My great great great grandfather was a famous peasant :) George Loveless, leader of the Tolpuddle Martyrs.
    We were peasants then became cotton mill fodder...
  • Marvin the MartianMarvin the Martian Admin Emeritus
    Sighthound wrote: »
    Gramps49 wrote: »

    I have been going through my Ancestry, By the 1500s I am beginning to see a lot of very interesting titles.

    Keep it up. I found that though I am a pleb of the first order I have incredibly aristocratic ancestry. I took me ages to find my first knight, now I am blase about KGs and earls.

    I suspect we all have something similar. My latest discovery was that my mother descended from Edward III via four of his sons!

    Sadly, not all of us. My mother traced our family tree some years back, and we are solid peasant stock.

    Me too, and bloody proud of it I am too.

    I suspect that websites like Ancestry take one or two liberties with the truth when it comes to who was begotten of whom several hundreds of years ago. After all, there weren’t many records kept back then, and there’s nothing like the promise of discovering you have royal ancestry to keep the punters rolling in...
  • Sadly, not all of us. My mother traced our family tree some years back, and we are solid peasant stock.

    A significant fraction of "solid peasant stock" also has a trace of royal ancestry. There were enough royal offspring around (on both sides of the blanket) and enough irregular shagging that there aren't many generations between the King's acknowledged bastard and the outlaw shagging the tavern girl.

    A pretty consistent 10% of children seem to have had genetic fathers other than the man that society acknowledged as their father (per DNA evidence). Some estimates seem to suggest that a quarter of the UK's population have William the Conqueror somewhere up their family tree.
  • BelisariusBelisarius Admin Emeritus
    edited January 4
    Fun fact: All descendants of the Bourbon Dynasty* also have Edward III as an ancestor (through his daughter Isabella).

    * Rossweisse, actually, was one; she posted once she was a descendant of Henri IV and one of his mistresses.

    ETA:
    Some estimates seem to suggest that a quarter of the UK's population have William the Conqueror somewhere up their family tree.
    If a 2003 DNA analysis was correct, 16 million men at the time were descendants of Genghis Khan.
  • KwesiKwesi Shipmate
    I go back to Adam and Eve, and so does my wife and the rest of our extended families. Of course, that was when we live in the East African Rift Valley.
  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    At an average rate of two children per generation, which is what is required to keep the population steady, it takes twenty generations to have a million descendants, and another ten to have a billion, which I think is the rough population of the world before the industrial revolution. (A rough attempt to do the sums to take interbreeding into account suggests to me that it does not have a significant effect on the necessary number of generations if it's purely random.)
    If one allows twenty-five years a generation that means anyone alive in 1520 who has got descendants has about a million descendants now multiplied up by the degree to which the UK population has grown, so somewhere between a half and a sixth of the population could be descended from, not Henry VIII because he has no living descendants, but maybe Henry VII or say Thomas More or Thomas Cromwell. All the population of England could in theory be descended from Henry IV whose line of legitimate descendants died out but who from wikipedia appears to have had several illegitimate great-grandchildren.
  • It's open to question about there being descendants of Henry VIII. Although he didn't acknowledge the two oldest children of Mary Boleyn, the chances are that they were Henry's. The fact that both Catherine and Henry Carey held royal appointments points to this, particularly for Catherine who was a lady in waiting to both Anna of Cleves and Catherine Howard. Furthermore, Catherine became Mistress of the Bedchamber to Elizabeth I: even at the time the appointment of the wife of a relatively obscure knight to such a position, particularly one who had not been in Elizabeth's household before she ascended the throne, caused comment. It was also remarked during Elizabeth's reign that both Catherine and Henry Carey had the colouring of Tudors, as did some of their children.
  • Gramps49Gramps49 Shipmate
    Kwesi wrote: »
    I go back to Adam and Eve, and so does my wife and the rest of our extended families. Of course, that was when we live in the East African Rift Valley.

    I have yet to go back that far; however, I can claim to be a direct descendent of the Finnish god, Ukko, the god of sky and thunder. (My wife reminds me of that when I get angry) WikiTree gave me that info, though it does admit the connection is in dispute.

    Did you know the actual name of the Windsors is Saxe-Coburg-Gotha? King George V changed the name in 1917. Still, I have ancestors who claim the Windsors stole the throne from us--and I mean we go further back than even the Tudors.
  • BelisariusBelisarius Admin Emeritus
    Another (slightly more-on-topic) Fun Fact:

    Princess Anne was the only woman participating in the 1976 Olympics not required to take a chromosome test.
  • Pity they didn't try - I'd have loved to be a fly on the wall watching some hapless official try to get the better of a princess who'd faced off a gunman.

    Princess Anne is a Good Thing.
  • SojournerSojourner Shipmate
    A “thing”= indeterminate gender. Perhaps a buccal swab might have been in order....
  • KwesiKwesi Shipmate
    Gramps49: I have ancestors who claim the Windsors stole the throne from us--and I mean we go further back than even the Tudors.

    So, Gramps49, you're a Plantagenet out of the Angevins. I'm still trying to figure out "My latest discovery was that my mother descended from Edward III via four of his sons!" Please enlighten!
  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    One ancestor had them as four different great-(x-great )-grandfathers surely. What is the difficulty about that?
  • Ah, the sons of Edward III! Two of them - Edward, the "black" prince, and Lionel, Duke of Clarence, were renowned for their licentiousness.

    John of Gaunt had three separate families: the children of his first wife (Henry IV, etc); his daughter with his second wife, Constanza of Castile, an ancestress of Catherine of Aragon; and the children of Katherine Swynford, legitimised by Richard II, the Beauforts, from whom we get Henry VII - and there was another illegitimate child when he was a teenager. The most interesting of the wives was Swynford, who was Geoffrey Chaucer's sister-in-law. Originally from Hainault, she was literate and first came into the orbit of John when she was made governess to his daughters, later taking charge of all his children. It is likely through her that Chaucer was employed as a tutor to the Lancaster children, and a case can be made for The Canterbury Tales having been written for them.
  • The history of an aristocratic family refers to an "acknowledged bastard" being born in 1679, and given a farm tenancy. It states that the bastard's family still had the tenancy in the mid C19th. That would be my family. I can trace mine back to 1799, but that still leaves a 120 year gap. One positive is that it is the aristocratic family acknowledging us, rather than us claiming the aristocratic family.

    If I could bridge that 120 year gap to my satisfaction, I'd go back to Joan Beaufort (widow of James I) and her second husband James Stewart, the Black Knight of Lorne, and then back from there to a whole array of royalty.
  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    It's open to question about there being descendants of Henry VIII. Although he didn't acknowledge the two oldest children of Mary Boleyn, the chances are that they were Henry's.
    I hadn't realised that. That casts a number of events in Elizabeth's reign in a different light to realise that people thought it was possible. In particular I hadn't realised that the Earl of Essex (the one who tried to lead a coup at the end of Elizabeth's reign) thought he might actually be descended from Henry VIII, or at least thought other people might think that.
  • Gramps49Gramps49 Shipmate
    So, Gramps49, you're a Plantagenet out of the Angevins

    Yes

    I am not very good at explaining family ties, other than yes, there is a direct line.
  • When in my teens, my genealogically-inclined cousin showed me my connexion with Edward III but she said not to be too fixated on it, as I shared him with about a 100,000 others-- I'm not sure where she got the figure, but I've seen that and greater estimates elsewhere. More to my interest was my Mohawk ancestress from the late 1700s, about whom I would love to learn more, as the tale is fascinating (her father or brother was a comrade of a Loyalist ancestor in Butler's Rangers, a nasty but effective guerilla outfit in upstate New York, and on her relative's demise, he married her and took up his land grant near Niagara on the Lake). Sadly, my cousin's research material was kondo-ized into a dumpster when she went into an assisted-living facility where she died a few years ago.
  • BelisariusBelisarius Admin Emeritus
    Interesting--one of my great-grandfathers was thought (though never confirmed) to have Mohawk ancestry as well. He was a Black Irishman from Upstate NY; judging from the photos I've seen, the possibility is quite strong.
  • Curiosity killedCuriosity killed Shipmate
    edited January 5
    Dafyd wrote: »
    It's open to question about there being descendants of Henry VIII. Although he didn't acknowledge the two oldest children of Mary Boleyn, the chances are that they were Henry's.
    I hadn't realised that. That casts a number of events in Elizabeth's reign in a different light to realise that people thought it was possible. In particular I hadn't realised that the Earl of Essex (the one who tried to lead a coup at the end of Elizabeth's reign) thought he might actually be descended from Henry VIII, or at least thought other people might think that.

    It's the plot of Phillipa Gregory's The Other Boleyn Girl - that Mary was Henry's mistress before he married Anne.


    If you have Scots ancestry it's not unlikely that you'll get traced back to Robert the Bruce at some point for similar reasons.
  • DafydDafyd Shipmate
    edited January 5
    It's the plot of Phillipa Gregory's The Other Boleyn Girl - that Mary was Henry's mistress before he married Anne.
    I knew Mary Boleyn had been Henry's mistress: I hadn't realised there were possible children, or more importantly who was descended from those possible children.

    I'm in the middle of The Mirror and the Light at a point where both Mary and Elizabeth have been retrospectively declared illegitimate: descendants of Mary Boleyn could make a half a case that they had a better claim than Elizabeth did.

  • I would urge some degree of caution about any indication on Ancestry that one of your ancestors might be a Royal.

    Mrs Claypool and I have both been researching our family trees and we have both found occasions where it appeared that an ancestor was someone quite important. For me, it was that an ancestor was a governor general in one of the early settlements in the US. For Mrs Claypool, it was that an ancestor was on the Mayflower. In both cases, careful investigation proved that the links were spurious - that other people had seen someone with a similar name and made the connection without any due diligence. In some cases I have seen, Person X has been made the parent of Person Y, even though there are only 5 years difference between their dates of birth!

    In my experience, far too many people on Ancestry have made connections which really don't stand up to investigation.
  • I would urge some degree of caution about any indication on Ancestry that one of your ancestors might be a Royal.
    I agree, there were several errors when we looked into my father's history (btw, it's difficult trying to pin down ancestors who are mobile poor mill workers living in shared rented accommodation with illegitimate children).
  • Kwesi wrote: »
    I go back to Adam and Eve, and so does my wife and the rest of our extended families. Of course, that was when we live in the East African Rift Valley.

    Hey, my family traces back to those two too ... !!! ... We're RELATED ... !!!
    (say: "to those two too" ten times as fast as you can ...)
  • Dafyd wrote: »
    It's open to question about there being descendants of Henry VIII. Although he didn't acknowledge the two oldest children of Mary Boleyn, the chances are that they were Henry's.
    I hadn't realised that. That casts a number of events in Elizabeth's reign in a different light to realise that people thought it was possible. In particular I hadn't realised that the Earl of Essex (the one who tried to lead a coup at the end of Elizabeth's reign) thought he might actually be descended from Henry VIII, or at least thought other people might think that.

    Robert Devereaux was the son of Lettice Knollys, grandson of Catherine Carey whose mother was Mary Boleyn.
  • I can't recall who it was, but a British (I think) comedian had a routine in which he proved that he was his own grandfather (or something).

    Anyone remember this? Might have been mumble mumble years ago.
  • I can't recall who it was, but a British (I think) comedian had a routine in which he proved that he was his own grandfather (or something).

    Anyone remember this? Might have been mumble mumble years ago.

    Not sure, but Who Do You Think You Are? managed to show Eastender Danny Dyer to be a descendant of Edward IV of England, and also that comedian Greg Davies was descended from Llywelyn Fawr (Llywelyn the Great), Prince of Wales. Davies did then find that half the population of north Wales also claimed ancestry from Llywelyn!
  • I can't recall who it was, but a British (I think) comedian had a routine in which he proved that he was his own grandfather (or something).

    Anyone remember this? Might have been mumble mumble years ago.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2akFlmUe3g
  • BelisariusBelisarius Admin Emeritus
    edited January 5
    I can't recall who it was, but a British (I think) comedian had a routine in which he proved that he was his own grandfather (or something).

    Almost happened to Stephen Wyman.

    ETA:

    Not quite being your own grandfather, but Nero wound up being Claudius's stepson, son-in-law, grand-nephew, first-cousin-once-removed, and second-cousin-twice-removed.

    Less dramatically, all of Henry VIII's wives (including Anna of Cleves) were descendants of Edward I; Catherine of Aragon and (I think) Catherine Parr were further descended from John of Gaunt.

  • I can't recall who it was, but a British (I think) comedian had a routine in which he proved that he was his own grandfather (or something).

    Anyone remember this? Might have been mumble mumble years ago.

    Not sure, but Who Do You Think You Are? managed to show Eastender Danny Dyer to be a descendant of Edward IV of England, and also that comedian Greg Davies was descended from Llywelyn Fawr (Llywelyn the Great), Prince of Wales. Davies did then find that half the population of north Wales also claimed ancestry from Llywelyn!

    I have a friend who was born and raised in New Zealand who has done careful research on her family history and found that she is also descended from Llywelyn Fawr. I must tell her that she's not as special as she might think! (I take it that the aforementioned Welsh prince put it about a bit...)
  • As it happens, my uncle is also my great uncle, and therefore his own uncle. (His adoptive parents adopted their daughter's illegitimate child.)
  • On one side we go back to the grandmother of Blanche Parry - I have what is reputed to be her (unused) bride chest in my bedroom.
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