Can the Royals hold office?

[Guinastasia]

D’oh! I can’t believe I missed that. Yes, you’re right. I must have been thinking of the Admiralty.

[Northern_Piper]

*Originally posted by Polycarp *
**<snip>

Second, there are not “a whole lot” of English subjects descended from Victoria – and the Battenbergs (who became Mountbattens) were close to the Royal Family long before Philip met Elizabeth. On some formal paper relative to Elizabeth’s early adulthood (marriage certificate? something related to the accession?) the principal witness is “Milford Haven” – who is the Marquess of Milford Haven, one of the Mountbattens.**

Polycarp, I respectfully have to disagree about the numbers of British descendants of Queen Victoria. Based on the very detailed geneology of the Royal Family found in Harold Nicolson’s biography of George V, by my count, at the time of George V’s death in 1936, there were at least 45 descendants of Victoria living in Britain.

1. Descendants of Edward VII: 15

2. Descendants of Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh: 2

3. Arthur, Duke of Connaught, and his descendants: 5

4. Descendants of Leopold, Duke of Albany: 4

5. Descendants of Princess Alice (Mountbatten’s grandmother): 13

6. Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll: 1

7. Princess Beatrice and her descendants: 5

I’ve omitted from this count all of King Edward’s descendants in the Norwegian royal family, Princess Victoria’s descendants in the German and Greek royal families, Prince Alfred’s descendants in the royal families of Rumania and Yugoslavia, Prince Arthur’s descendants in the Swedish royal family, and Princess Beatrice’s descendants in the Spanish royal family. If all of those were added in, there would indeed be “a whole lot” of descendants of Victoria.

*Originally posted by Guinastasia *
**<snip>

Mountbaden was indeed a member of the royal family. His mother was the eldest child of Queen Victoria’s 2nd daughter-Princess Alice, the Duchess of Hesse-Dharmstadt. His mother’s younger sister Princess Alix became the Empress of Russia. His father was a Battenberg-his grandfather’s first cousin. **

Guinastasia, I guess my question is more how you define the Royal Family. No disputing that Louis Mountbatten was descended from Queen Victoria, but let’s put that in context. He was George VI’s second cousin, which sounds pretty distant. Looking at the same geneology, I calculate that George VI had 34 second cousins, all descendants of Queen Victoria. Would you say that they were all part of the Royal Family?

Personally, my impression is that the Mountbattens had certain status because of their personal relationship with the Royal Family, as both you and Polycarp mention, but I wouldn’t myself say that they were part of the Royal Family.

[sirjamesp]

*Originally posted by Polycarp *
First, it’s my impression that parts of Magna Charta, the (English)Bill of Rights, and a few other statutes made law by the Crown in Parliament permanently restrict specific rights of the monarch and are binding on later monarchs. SirJames, can you confirm or correct this?

Polycarp: The powers (or rights) of the Monarch are indeed restricted, but this is not the same as placing him / her under the control of the Law.

For instance, the Queen cannot declare that all households are to pay her a direct tax of, say, £5; the power to levy taxes resides with Parliament. She could, however, go round to each house in the land and steal £5 from each by whichever means necessary, and the law could not touch her.

This ignores the fact that Parliament could soon strip the Queen of the crown (and hence her immunity also), but the principle remains: the Queen is outside of the law.

[APB]

*Originally posted by Northern Piper *
APB, would you really say that Mountbatten was a member of the Royal Family?

That was one of the reasons why I qualified my comment with the caveat ‘arguably’. (One could also quibble about whether the Viceroy of India was a political appointment, although, in the particular context of 1947, it clearly ought to be regarded as such.) Mountbatten’s ‘royal’ status was always a borderline case, although he, of course, was always the person most keen to present himself as such. His proximity to the Royal Family in 1947 was sufficiently close that some did feel that his appointment as Viceroy was inappropriate.

The ‘Royal Family’, which has always been an informal description, never a precisely defined term, was a much more amorphous concept in the 1940s than it has since become. The tendency, particularly within royal circles, was then still to regard descendants of Queen Victoria as ‘family’. That many of the poorer cousins, including some of the Mountbattens, retained apartments in some of the royal palaces reinforced that perception.