No kidding. This is why I eventually gave up trying to learn the history of the French monarchy. Why in heaven’s name did every freaking king have to be named Louis?
That makes sense. What I’ve never understood is why they only started numbering after the Norman Conquest. For example, there were reigning kings of England named Edward, long before Edward I.
It’s not simply because they changed dynasties, because that’s happened several times since, e.g. when William of Orange was brought in, he wasn’t William I. And William the Conqueror was not unrelated to the previous kings of England, so that’s not it, either.
So why?
Monarchical ordinals weren’t actually used until later - they applied the numbers retroactively:
The historians probably just decided arbitrarily that the Norman Conquest was a good place to start. After all, the Anglo Saxon Edwards were well known by their epithets, and most the rest all had really weird names that weren’t going to get used again anyway …
Yes, if the heir apparent dies leaving only daughters his eldest one becomes heiress apparent. This has never happened in British history. There was however one heiress apparent; Anne. After her father, James II, was deposed her sister (Mary II) & brother-in-law (William III) were made joint-monarchs by Parliament. Princess Anne was placed after children they may have in the line of succession, but before any children William might have had with a future wife. So when Mary II died without leaving living offspring Anne become her brother-in-law’s heiress apparent. In any even he never bothered remarrying.
Queens of what? Strictly speaking, the current Elizabeth II isn’t queen of the same sovereign country as Elizabeth Woodville or Elizabeth of York. The current one is the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, whereas the former were Queens of England. If you are going to include in your numbered Elizabeths those from countries which joined the union, then you’ll have to count the Scottish Elizabeth de Burgh (1306–1327) as well, as Elizabeth I; the current Elizabeth would therefore be Elizabeth V. Otherwise the current Elizabeth II really is Elizabeth II.
But it’s not for posterity, it’s for the time of their reign; what’s often attached for posterity, and many times by the regnant’s enemies, is the nick.
I’m reasonably sure that Juan II of Aragon did not fancy being called The Usurper (name given by the Navarrese), nor Carlos II of Navarre as The Bad One (name given by the French). Both of them used the ordinals during their reigns.
Unfortunately for the Scots, there’s a bit of Anglo-centrism going on here. Just as the parliament at Westminster took over from the parliament at Edinburgh, the numbering of the British and UK sovereigns took over from the English numbering, not the Scottish numbering. If it had been important to the Scots, they could have asked for the Parliament to meet at Berwick on Tweed. and could have asked for the first British sovereign to be dually numbered. However, after 1700, the first dually numbered British monarch would have reigned from 1820 as William IV and III – so they would have been looking a long way into the future with that one.
Didn’t I read here somewhere that Prince Charles, if and when he becomes King, is not going to be Charles III, but instead take some other name entirely?
It’s believed he wishes to be called George VII, in honour of his grandfather.
But Albert never renounced his claim to Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, was its heir presumptive from 1844 and would have succeeded his brother, Ernest II, had he still been alive in 1893. His eldest son, the future Edward VII, did renounce his claim, but Albert’s second son, Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, then succeeded Ernest.
[QUOTE=Giles]
Unfortunately for the Scots, there’s a bit of Anglo-centrism going on here. Just as the parliament at Westminster took over from the parliament at Edinburgh, the numbering of the British and UK sovereigns took over from the English numbering, not the Scottish numbering. If it had been important to the Scots, they could have asked for the Parliament to meet at Berwick on Tweed. and could have asked for the first British sovereign to be dually numbered. However, after 1700, the first dually numbered British monarch would have reigned from 1820 as William IV and III – so they would have been looking a long way into the future with that one.
[/QUOTE]
One must however remember that in 1953, in the wake of MacCormack v Lord Advocate, Churchill supported the view that in future the higher number should be used. That is a particularly neat solution because (1) if applied retrospectively from 1707, none of the numbers would be different, (2) if applied retrospectively from 1603, only the two King Jameses would be different and they used both numbers anyway and (3) almost none of the names of pre-1603 Scottish monarchs where this would make a difference are ones that have been used for royal children recently.
[QUOTE=Malden Capell]
It’s believed he wishes to be called George VII, in honour of his grandfather.
[/QUOTE]
A belief that Clarence House has in the past denied.
I stand corrected! 
I look forward to the Prince of Wales, in the interests of good relations with his Scottish subjects, taking the regnal name Robert, and ruling as King Robert IV of the United Kingdom.
**Feldon ** is in the right here – you can in theory have a Heiress Apparent, but he misspoke the definition of the specific circumstances.
If the Heir Apparent (or his heir apparent, etc.) dies having sired one or more daughters but no sons, his eldest (or only) daughter can be kept from the throne only by her own death (or revolution or abolition of the monarchy, of course). Those are the conditions for apparency rather than presumptivity.
But his given names are Charles Philip Arthur George. It would be very unusual to take a regnal name that isn’t part of his birth name. Only Robert III ever did that in Britain.
Since he won’t reign as Charles, and has denied that he will be called George, I therefore look forward to England getting itself a King Arthur at last.
Plus William of Orange, who was William II of Scots and William III of England.
I don’t pay much attention to UK royalty, but I always thought that the dynasty name switched (to Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, or something hideous like that) when Victoria married Prince Albert, and that was what was later changed to Windsor. Yet the article keeps calling their descendants Hanoverians. Can someone explain?
I understand Clarence House would find it unseemly for Charles to be known to have any kind of plan for after his mother dies; it implies at a basic level he looks forward to her death and people in line of succession who do such things have (though not recently but historically) found themselves in dire straits.
Even in his interview last year w/ American television Charles wouldn’t broach the subject in the slightest. He’ll admit to wanting his reign to be an honorable one and that’s about it. How would you like it if your son said, “Mom, when you’re gone I’m redoing this whole house to get your touch off it.”?
Tldr - he’ll be George. He wouldn’t be Phillip, it would insult his father (or his father’s memory), he won’t be Charles as the article outlined and King Arthur would be a laugh. I think it’s always been meant for him to be King George; when he was born it was known he’d reign some day and the names are picked deliberately.
The article says
The point here is that Charles’s have had their problems as British monarchs and - from the last paragraph - our Prince Charles is actually descended from the Hanovarian kings who took over from the Stewart Charles’s.
Later on the artice says
Again making the point that George is a Hanovarian name brought over from Germany in the 18th century.
They are not suggesting that the royal family are Hanovarian, they are clearly the House of Windsor (or is it Mountbatten-Windsor?), but they do trace their descent from the Hanovarians.
It seems like they are to me. They included George V in their list of “Hanoverian Georges.” And although it’s less clear, they also imply that it was the Hanover name that was changed to Windsor.
It’s from an English paper, so maybe they just assume that everybody knows what they mean, but IMO it’s confusing.
To be completely clear on this, it was the custom of the various British and Commonwealth nations that a royal House consisted of the first king to ascend the throne in that male lineage and all his heirs, male and female, descended from him in strict male descent. Inheritance through a woman changed the House name for her heirs to her consort’s House, unless she married into a cadet line of her own House, as Mary Queen of Scots among others did.
Thus Henry II, great-grandson of the conqueror through Matilda, who married Geoffrey Plantagenet, began the House of Plantagenet. Margaret Beaufort, by male ancestry a Plantagenet, married Edmund Tudor, and her son Henry VII began the House of Tudor. James VI of Scots, a Stuart, was the great-grandson of Henry’s daughter Margaret, who married James IV, and he began the English House of Stuart. His descendant Sophia was married to the Elector of Hanover, and her son George I took the throne as the next Protestant heir after Anne.
By this custom Victoria was the last monardh of the House of Hanover; her son Edward VII, who was of course also son of Prince Albert in his male lineage, began the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Buyt the second king of that House changed the House name to Windsor by Letters Patent.
By Letters Patent in 1956 and 1960, Her present Majesty changed that custom. She declared that the House name her grandfather had adopted 40 years before would continue to be the royal House of her own descendants. By those same Letters Patent “Mountbatten-Windsor” is the surname her male-line descendants should use when in need of a surname.
However, “Mountbatten” is like Windsor a coinage. The name “Battenberg” was the surname adopted by a branch of the Grand Ducal lineage of Hesse that descended from a morganatic marriage. One of them, Prince Louis of Battenberg, joined the Royal Navy, rose to command it, becoming a naturalized British subject, and at the time George V changed his House name to Windsor, he changed his own surname to Mountbatten. His daughter married Prince Andrew of Denmark and Greece. When their son Prince Philip renounced his distant claims to those two thrones to follow his grandfather’s footsteps in the Royal Navy, he adopted his mother’s maiden name.
Prince Charles and his sons and brothers belong by male lineage to the same royal house as the King of Norway, the Queen of Denmark, and the pretender to the Greek throne: the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg. Aboput seven generations back the Glucksburgs were a family of the minor Danish nobility with a shirttail relationship to the Danish royal house a dozen generations before. By an odd concatenation of events his fourth son became King of Denmark and set about creating a Danish cottage industry of exporting monarchs.