So lets say you’re the daughter or second son of a British peer, let’s say an earl, as I understand it you have a title of respect like being called a lady or honourable. Do your kids get any sort of title? Grandkids? What if your father is the King? Does it make a difference?
It’s going to depend a lot on the country, you know. Did you have any in mind?
UK although it would be interesting to know how it works all over the place.
The UK has two types of peerages, life and perpetual. A life peerage is given to a single person in recognition of something great they’ve done, and then that’s it. When they die, so does the title; nobody else inherits it (though I suppose someone else in the future might be awarded the same title).
A perpetual peerage has no expiration date, and is passed on to heirs indefinitely. It’s still possible for it to end, if the holder dies without any heirs, or if he or she does something so heinous (along the lines of treason) that it’s revoked. It’s also possible that the heir of a title ends up being the monarch her or himself, in which case it becomes irrelevant (the monarch already holds so many titles that nobody would notice one more), and I think that in that case the monarch can officially retire it. But there’s no reason a perpetual peerage can’t last a thousand years or more.
That wasn’t the OP’s question. The question was how long is the second son or daughter, who won’t inherit the title addressed with some title of respect. And does that carry down to the children or grandchildren of the non-inheritor?
If it never died out, there would be few, if any, people in the country (other than recent immigrants) who weren’t m’Lord or m’Lady.
In China primary titles of nobility dropped a rung with each generation to stop the family holding too much power, eg: if you were appointed Duke, son would be, say, Marquis *, grandson, Earl etc. until they were back as commoners.
- Chinese titles are obviously approximations.
In Britain there are to a small extent differences between the Scottish, English and Irish peerages, but whilst a title goes on to the last heir in a straight line, ‘courtesy titles’ — given to the children ( the first-born is often given a lesser title of his father the peer ) — are not hereditary.
General explanation: Laura.
Note most people in Britain barely think of the aristocracy unless they meet one.
If your father is the King, there will be a lot of different rules of succession ( royals are aristocrats in the sense they have aristocrats as part of their circle of friends, but they are not part of the aristocracy — the last is inferior and separate from royalty ) but usually the children not in line to the throne are given real peerages. Or fall into those reserved royal titles pre-defined for the order they are born in ( eg: the eldest before succeeding is Prince of Wales, the second is Duke of York etc., unless death helps one move up a rung sometimes: just as in France the eldest is the Dauphin, presently the Duke of Burgundy, son of the King Louis XX ).
Except that the children of life peers and peeresses do get the title of ‘The Honourable’. Not that most of them use this, except in the most formal of contexts.
Here’s a site that lists the descendants of Queen Victoria including a column giving titles. But it’s difficult to slog through.
For a lot of people the column entry is blank despite them having a title. Also a lot of folk have titles via another ancestor than Vicky. Some were awarded titles later or gained them thru marriage.
And there are other complications. Great grandchild Alexander Ramsay of Mar was a commoner but that was due to his mother, a princess, renouncing her title to marry a commoner.
I gave up trying to find the first “natural” commoner-by-birth descendant and then work backwards to find the sequence.
So let’s say there is an Earl (we’ll call him The Earl of Grantham) and he has a daughter (let’s call her Lady Edith). And then Lady Edith has a child (let’s call her Marigold). Assuming Marigold was legitimate, would she be Lady Marigold, or does it stop with her mother?
I can’t be bothered to wade through it myself, but the Wiki article on courtesy titles should answer your question:
This was the driving engine of the plot of Trollope’s novel, “Is He Popenjoy?” In it, the permanent title is held by the Marquis of Brotherton, and the son of the marquis is known as “Lord Popenjoy,” and the question was whether the baby presented to the family was legitimate. It’s a typical Trollope novel in which difficult people among the nobility hold titles and safe incomes while the nice people among them are threatened with the terrible possibility of having to work for a living. Not everyone would consider the death of a baby to be a happy ending, but the Victorian Era could be unflinching at times.
Okay you got me, but watching Downton Abbey makes me curious.
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Isn’t that what you were getting at in your OP? I did leave out the fact that Lady Edith is the 2nd daughter, and her older sister (let’s call her Lady Mary) has already had a son who is the presumptive heir.
It would stop with Edith. Precedence doesn’t go through female lines.
(There are a handful of earldoms that can be inherited by women, so depending on the circumstances, Edith could possibly become the Countess in her own right, and Marigold would become Lady Marigold when that happened. It’s not likely, though.)
I was curious in general but the show gets me thinking on the topic.
It stops with her mother. In the UK children cannot derive a courtesy title or precedence from their mother, unless the mother hold’s a title in her own right. Unless Lady Edith was created a countess (marchioness, or duchess) in her own right her daughter would take precedence from her father & Edith’s husband. If that man was a commoner Marigold would be plain Miss Marigold Gregson. Also until 2004 adopted children didn’t have courtesy titles so prior that year if Edith married the Marquess of Hexham and he adopted Marigold (doesn’t matter whether she’s legitimate or not) she would become Miss Marigold Pelham instead of the Lady Marigold Pelham.
So Miss Marigold is considered a full fledged commoner?
What the OP is asking about is courtesy titles. Courtesy titles are not hereditary. The rules, as always, are complex and largely arbitrary.
Suppose we have John Smith, Duke of Blackacre. It’s common for peers to have more than one title, so John is also Earl of Whiteacre.
John’s eldest son Joseph has the courtesy title of Earl of Whiteacre. When John dies, he will become Duke of Blackacre and his eldest son, if and when he has one, will be Earl of Whiteacre.
Jobn’s second son Peter will be The Lord Peter Smith. He’ll be The Lord Peter Smith all his life and his wife, if he marries, will be The Lady Peter Smith (though she may chose not to use such a gender-bending title). His children will have no title. The same conventions will apply to John’s third and subsequent sons.
John’s daughters will all be e.g. The Lady Jane Smith. This courtesy title will be for life. Their husbands and children will have no titles.
The same rules would apply if John were a Marquis, rather than a Duke.
If John were an Earl, his eldest son would use any subsidiary title (e.g. Viscount Greenacre) as above, and his daughters would be “The Lady . . .” as above. However his younger sons would be “the Honourable Peter Smith”.
If John were a Viscount, his eldest son would use any subsidiary title (“Lord Redacre”). All his other sons and all his daughters would be “The Honourable . . .”
Finally, if John were a Baron, the lowest degree of the peerage, all his children of either gender would be “The Honourable . . .”
All the above goes for England and Ireland. There are different rules in Scotland, naturally.
In Downton Abbey, everyone in the family is a commoner except the Earl, the Countess and the dowager Countess. Even the Earl’s heir is a commoner until he actually inherits. The English peerage is narrowly circumscribed; only the current holder of the title and (if the holder is male) the holder’s wife/widow are members of the peerage, strictly speaking. The rest of the family are all commoners.
The Lady Diana Spencer, for example, was a commoner (despite being the daughter of an Earl) until she married the Prince of Wales.