I heard that QEII’s wedding gift to Camilla was her own coat-of-arms.
But wouldn’t she already have one from her own family? I was under the impression that she came from the gentry? Or is this something different? I realize that there are strict rules regarding how and when a woman can use a coat-of-arms that came from her father, but those seem mainly to deal with what happens if the husband doesn’t have one. And that’s obviously not the case here.
And does anyone know where I could see this coat-of-arms on the web?
No, she doesn’t already have one. She is entitled, by courtesy, to use her father’s arms if he has any (which I presume he does). While married she would have been entitled to use her husband’s. But there’s a very common misconception in America that “your family has arms” – nope, any more than your family as a unit owns the old family homestead where your great-grandfather lives and which he owns. It may pass to you, or to your relatives, someday. But while he lives, it’s his, not the rest of the family’s. Arms work very much like that; they belong to the heir of line or the heir male (a distinction we need not explore), not to all his kith and kin.
So presumably what the Queen has done is ordered the College of Heralds to blazon (write a legal description of) arms for the Duchess of Cornwall in her own right, as opposed to family arms which she bears by courtesy, and owing to the fact that this marriage is (de facto) semi-morganatic, and she is not to bear the arms of her heir-apparent husband.
Presumably when they’ve completed a blazon, it will be “tricked” (drawn in color) and made public. It will probably look something like this, which is if my Googling is accurate the arms of the County of Cornwall: http://www.marjon.ac.uk/cornish-history/pix/crest.jpg
I thought all descendents of the original grantee of arms were entitled to bear them in some manner, only that, according to the British system, each male descendant must “difference” his arms from the primary holder. True, only one man bears the arms as given…the original grantee or his eldest direct male descendant. The other male descendants add marks of cadence and use other devices to distinguish theirs from the original. And I thought female descendants can as well.
Males can difference arms of their ancestor, but again that’s by courtesy. Wives and daughters display the arms of their husband/father on a “lozenge” (elongated diamond). The idea here is that the consort of the King-to-be should have her own arms.
