Interesting question. When royal younger sons have married, they have been given titles in their own right, but their wives have not. The Countess of Wessex, e.g., is so called because she is the wife of the Earl of Wessex, not because she has had any title conferred on her, or because she has inherited one. So if, hypothetically, Harry were to be created Duke of Sloane on entering into a civil union with Sebastian, his Reason for Living, Sebastian would still be just plain old Sebastian. He wouldn’t get a title of his own, and he wouldn’t acquire any courtesy title as the civil partner of a Duke.
When royal daughters have married, in most cases their husbands have already had titles, and no new titles were conferred. Likewise where royal daughters married untitled men, no new titles were conferred. Neither of Princess Anne’s husbands, for example, have a title. When the then Princess Elizabeth married in 1947, her husband renounced his foreign titles and was created Duke of Edinburgh, but perhaps that precedent is not quite in point. As the likely heir to the throne, she was at the centre of court life, and it would have been awkward for her husband to have the status of a commoner.
Earlier kings did sometimes give titles to their homosexual lovers, but they also sometimes gave titles to their heterosexual lovers. As the latter practice has fallen into disuse in the last couple of centuries, I cannot imagine that the former is likely to be revived.
Re: UDS’s post #21 – Your point is valid and probably has a lot to do with the creation of the Dukedom of Edinburgh for Philip, but there’s another related issue: Philip was in fact a part of the extended Royal Family before his marriage – he’s a lineal descendant of Queen Victoria, and some absurdly high number (85th or something of the sort) in line for the throne in his own right. The Mountbattens, Philip’s mother’s family, were regulars at extended Royal Family get-togethers such as Christmas at Sandringham, prior to the courtship of Philip and Elizabeth. I have no idea how muh that may have influenced George VI but it’s worth noting.
Well, there’s this factor; it was considered prudent for him to renounce his title of Prince of Greece and Denmark, something previous consorts of princesses were never expected to do. Maybe George VI thought it was asking a bit much to expect him to become plain old Philip Mountbatten. (Maybe, indeed, he thought that himself, and indicated that it would be so much easier to wave goodbye to his princeness if he could console himself with duchy.)
Unfortunately, AFAICT, civil unions do not entitle one to the privileges of marriage in regards to titles and so forth. Sir Elton John’s being civilly unioned (that’s one of the many reasons I hate the concept – what’s the verb?) with David Furnish didn’t entitle David to use a courtesy title, as wives of knights do.
If/when the UK actually gets full-on same-sex marriage, that may be another story. My guess would still be ‘no.’
He has expressed the desire to be George VII when he ascends the throne, not Charles III. I’m not sure whether he can, by convention, pick any name at all like the Pope or if he has to stick to one of his given ones; if the latter it’ll be Charles or George as he won’t go for Philip I (and sure as hell won’t be Arthur II).
Surname-wise the Royals tend to use Windsor these days but when you’re the monarch you don’t really need a last name. If you need ID you can just flash some money or a postage stamp.
As recently as the mid-1980s when I was serving in the US Navy, it was the practice to announce (over the 1MC, i.e., the ship’s PA system) the arrival of commanding officers of warships in port by giving their ship’s name. So if the CO of the USS Ed Zotti were visiting his old Annapolis roommate onboard his ship, the USS Cecil Adams, the quarterdeck watch on the Cecil Adams would announce “Ed Zotti, arriving” when he presented himself to the OOD and requested permission to come aboard (ditto, mutatis mutandis, when he departed).
Several folks who had the experience of Presidential visits to their ships in port claimed that when the President of the US would present himself to the quarterdeck watch, the announcement over the 1MC was simply “United States, arriving” (thankfully, there was no USS United States in active service at that time). Since I wasn’t privileged enough to serve on a ship that received a visit from POTUS, I can’t verify that was actually the case. Don’t know if what I describe above re: CO’s is still the case or not, either.
When he went to university, he chose to enroll simply as ‘William Wales’, avoiding using titles when leading a relatively normal life, and I presume this carried over into his time in uniform, so indeed ‘Wales’ actually was his surname, at least at that time and in those situations.
Edit: errrr, yes, I know that’s the other prince, but no doubt the little brother followed the example set.
True, but don’t forget that when a Dame (the equivalent title to “Sir”) is married, her husband does not get to use a title. So it’s not like there is any fairness built into the system at the moment.
Of course the most obvious example of that unfairness is that the wife of a king is a queen, while the husband of a queen is merely a prince (if that).
A question which Unca Cece has already addressed, of course:
I suspect that the “husband of a ‘Dame’ is not a ‘Sir’” reflects the same basic orientation, though; that a woman’s status can be parasitic on her husband’s, while a man needs to earn his own honors and can’t “leech” off his wife’s status.
Except that historically that proves not to be true. Marrying a heuiress got you ‘entitled’ to be created whatever she was heiress of, on the death of your father-in-law. To take one memorable sequence of three such instances in three generations, Ralph Neville, whose father was a minor lord in northern England, married the daughter of the Earl of Westmorland, and was duly created Earl of Westmorland iure uxoris (“in right of his wife”). His son Richard married the heiress to the Earl of Salisbury, and was duly created Earl of Salisbury. And his son Richard married the heiress to Warwick and was duly created Earl of Warwick. (It was the younger Richard who was named Kingmaker.) It was at this same time that the remote Howard ancestor of the prsent Duke of Norfolk, at that point only a minor baron, married the daughter of the Duke of Norfolk (not heiress; the title went to her brother) – and when the father died and then the brother was killed (“d.s.p.” – Latin for “deceased without progeny.”), his wife suddenly became heiress, and the Howards have hung onto the Dukedom of Norfolk ever since (not to mention glomming onto Suffolk, Arundel, and a few other titles, mostly by heiress marriage.)
Perhaps the most outrageous of such claims was the one facing Elizabeth I Tudor in 1558 – the widower of her half-sister Mary was Philip II of Spain, and he believed that England should come to him “by the crown matrimonial” – He’d married the Queen, after all, and been duly crowned King (perhaps a piece of the reason why Queens’ husbands since then are only made Prince?) – and though his wife had died, he was, by gum, still entitled to the English throne! Needless to say, this didn’t go over big, but it furnished a legal pretext for the diplomatic and bellicose maneuvering of the next few decades, including Philip getting the Pope in his pocket to excommunicate Elizabeth and all her followers, the Spanish Armada, and other such fun events.
No, Philip II himself never claimed to be King of England once Mary I had died. The marriage treaty had made it clear that he was to hold that title only for the duration of the marriage and that he was not to interfere with the English succession if Mary predeceased him. The treaty explicitly laid down that any rights he had in England as Mary’s husband would die with her unless there were surviving children from the marriage. Philip had been unhappy with those conditions when they had first been proposed, but he had agreed to them and subsequently he was scrupulous in keeping to the terms of the treaty. Nor was he ever crowned in England. It is true that there was an assumption that he would be if Mary ever produced a child, partly because it was recognised that Philip would have to become regent if that child succeeded as a minor. None of those eventualities however arose.
Once Mary died, Philip recognised Elizabeth as her successor and initially remained on good diplomatic terms with her, viewing her as a useful counterweight against the French. He also actually objected to Elizabeth’s excommunication, although only because the Pope had failed to consult him.
It is also worth noting that Philip did have his own (albeit extremely remote) claim to the English throne, based not on his marriage to Mary I but on his descent from John of Gaunt. This would later be used by some English Catholics trying to promote the claims of his daughter, the Archduchess Isabella, as a Catholic candidate for the English throne.
Her Majesty did offer Princess Anne’s 1st husband, Mark Phillips, an earldom when they married, but he declined. Later when Anne was pregnant with her 1st child the Queen offered to create Anne’s children prince(ss)s of th realm by letters patent, but Anne declined. That’s why today they’re plain “Mr Peter Phillips” and “Miss Zara Phillips”.
Historically, the gay lovers of English Kings tended to get named Dukes or Earls:[ul]
[li]William II (William Rufus) doesn’t seem to have given titles to his favorites, just cash. [/li][li]for Richard I (the LionHeart), his most documented bed partner was already King Philip II of France. [/li][li]Edward II created Piers Gaveston as Earl of Cornwall.[/li][li]James I made Esme Stuart Duke of Lennox (among other titles).[/li][li]then James I made another favorite, Thomas Carr Viscount Rochester.[/li][li]another James I favorite, George Villiers, became Duke of Buckingham. [/li][li]Even Queen Anne had her mistress Sarah Churchill made Duchess or Marlborough.[/ul][/li][/QUOTE]
Whoa…Richard the Lion Heart had a homosexual lover? Do you have a citation for that?! I’ve never heard it said before.
Few of those are confirmed as “gay lovers”, mostly rumors based upon their “special” freindship. The term is often “favorite”.
See this:
"Following Villiers’ introduction to James during the king’s progress of that year, the king developed a strong affection for Villiers, calling him his ‘sweet child and wife’; the personal relationships of James are a much debated topic, with Villiers making the last of a succession of favourites on whom James lavished affection and rewards. The extent to which there was a sexual element, or a physical sexual relationship, involved in these cases remains controversial. "
"Hoveden mentions how Richard and King Philip “ate from the same dish and at night slept in one bed” and had a “passionate love between them”, which some historians have taken to imply a homosexual relationship. In addition, there are allusions to the Books of Samuel’s depiction of Jonathan and David in this passage, though overall, Hoveden is chiefly concerned with the politics of the relationship. The historian, John Gillingham, has suggested that theories that Richard was homosexual were probably stemmed from an official record announcing that, as a symbol of unity between the two countries, the kings of France and England had slept overnight in the same bed. He expressed the view that this was “an accepted political act, nothing sexual about it; … a bit like a modern-day photo opportunity”
