Her mother was. But when she was crowned in 1952 she **chose **the regnal name Queen Elizabeth II.
Could her mother have chosen that name when her husband became King and she his Queen Consort or does the consort position not have that right as they’re not themselves reigning per se?
Yup, the numbers only go to reigning monarchs, not Queen Consorts.
/thread
Ordinals only apply to regnal names. It doesn’t matter how many queen consorts named Elizabeth have existed between the regnal Elizabeths I and II.
I have never heard of anyone numbering consorts. Why would you? Clearly the current queen is Elizabeth II because she is the second regnant Elizabeth.
(And if you did number consorts, wouldn’t that make Prince Phillip, Phillip II. That could be confusing, especially as one of the much more famous Phillip IIs would become Phillip I.)
The first Queen Elizabeth was not Henry VIII’s saughter, but his mother.
However, by convention, the regnal numbers attach only to Queens Regnant, not Queens Consort. The present Queen, like her predecessor of the same name, two Marys, Anne, and Victoria, and all the Kings, has certain prerogative powers plus the role of embodying British sovereignty in one individual. For all the Queens Consort, those rights and duties subsisted in their spouses, the Kings. That they happen to share a title with some monarchs does not make them monarchs themselves.
The numbered queens are the queens regnant, so only Elizabeth Tudor and Elizabeth Windsor count. However, counting queens consort, the wife of King George VI is actually the fourth. You need to include Elizabeth Woodville (the wife of King Edward IV) and her daughter Elizabeth of York (the wife of King Henry VII, the mother of King Henry VIII, and so the grandmother of Queen Elizabeth I). So, if queens consort were included in the count, Elizabeth Tudor would have been Elizabeth III.
Edited to add:
No – his maternal grandmother.
I don’t see the point in numbering monarchs either, it makes more sense to me when they added descriptors instead - Elder, Younger, the Lionhearted, the Lily-livered, what-have-you. If the numbering’s for posterity it makes it harder to differentiate between monarchs in practice.
**Polycarp **wrote:‘The present Queen, like her predecessor of the same name, two Marys, Anne, and Victoria, and all the Kings, has certain prerogative powers plus the role of embodying British sovereignty in one individual.’ In light of Divine Right this makes sense in differentiating between a consort and a monarch in an immutable way, until one considers a consort who was previously an heir apparent.
Bolding mine. I’m sorry, don’t understand this part. A consort who was previously heir apparent?
Elizabeth of York, the first daughter of Edward IV, was heir apparent until the birth of her younger brother Edward. (It’s more complex than that, but that’s good as a first approximation to the truth.)
I’m thinking of the political marriages made between monarchs w/ their issue who are inline for the throne, either presumptive or apparent. Before they marry, they’re entitled to a certain reverence on account of being born royal but when they marry a king or queen they lose that entitlement, being no longer on the road to sovereignty. Prince Albert was in the Saxe-Coburg and Gotha line when he married (became consort of) HM Queen Victoria for example.
How is one born w/ Divine Right but lose it along the way?
Thanks. But doesn’t that make her heir presumptive rather than apparent?
Sorry, yes, you’re right: a princess can never be heir apparent, since she can always be replaced by a son of the monarch.
I’m not sure that one does lose the right of succession simply by marrying someone further up that line. Is that what you’re getting at?
I mean, I believe the Duke of Edinburgh is something like 485th in line for the British throne in his own right. My understanding is that if aliens invaded and killed off the other 484, he’d become King Phillip I or whatever he chose to style himself.
She can be the heir apparent if her father (who isn’t yet the monarch) dies.
The Duke renounced his Greek and Danish titles before becoming naturalised and after obtaining permission to marry the Princess Elizabeth but was again styled HRH after his marriage. So, he was born a Prince, gave up his Prince title and was given it back in 1957 by his wife. I don’t know what number he’s in line but I bet you’re right or close to it (I don’t know who’s married a Catholic lately.)
But I’m getting at something more abstract, which is that a monarch takes control of a country w/ the assertion that God (or some deity) has charged them w/ the responsibility of doing so and therefore they and their issue have a divine right to reign inborn. How can one give up or lose something inborn?
No, the Princess Victoria would have ceased to be heir presumptive if her uncle – her deceased father’s older brother – King William IV had had a legitimate child.
King Edward VIII did it, though by the time of his reign most people didn’t believe in the divine rights of kings.
I don’t really think there’a a GQ answer to this. I mean, Phillip’s marriage to Princess Elizabeth didn’t affect his position in the British line of succession. I was aware he renounced other titles, though not British ones. Presumably when someone does something like that, they discuss it with God beforehand and get His permission.
These days, no-one really takes the whole “divine right” thing seriously in any case.
That’s because William was older than her father and therefore any child he had would automatically come ahead of Victoria in the line of succession.
But suppose George, Prince of Wales and Prince Regent, had instead died around 1810. His daughter, Princess Charlotte, would have been heir apparent from that point on - because there was no possibility of a prince being born who could come between her and the throne.
Yes, you’re right. Furthermore, if she had given birth to a living daughter, that daughter would have been heir apparent from birth. In each case, there would have been the odd situation of an heir apparent who could not become Prince of Wales. However, I don’t think the situation has ever happened historically.