Tag Archives: Royal

That Woman

Famous Figures,
Wallis Simpson in 1936, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

The recent death of Queen Elizabeth brought many things to mind, including “That Woman”—the epithet chosen by Elizabeth’s mother for Bessie Wallis (Warfield) (Spencer) Simpson, whose marriage to King Edward VIII was the catalyst for Elizabeth’s eventual reign. Remembering the story of Wallis Simpson led me to investigate my own family’s version of “That Woman”: Lucille Forden, whose multiple divorces made her infamous and even thwarted her run for a seat in Congress.

“Those Women” shared some things in common. Wallis Warfield and Lucille Forden each had three husbands. Although neither was born in Baltimore, it was the city that both called home for most of their formative years and early adulthood. Continue reading That Woman →

Regnal names in the U.K.

Royal Lines,
Queen Elizabeth II, the Duke of Edinburgh, King Charles III (then Duke of Cornwall), and Princess Anne, October 1957. Source: Library and Archives Canada

Following the example of his mother Queen Elizabeth II, the new monarch of the United Kingdom has officially chosen his first given name as regnal name: King Charles III. I previously speculated that the new king might choose the names George VII , Philip, or, as a longshot, King Arthur . Historically, it’s popular for monarchs to choose their first names–since the creation of the United Kingdom, the only monarchs to break the pattern by reigning with a subsequent given name have been Victoria, Edward VII, and George VI.

Regnal names in the United Kingdom have a complex history, particularly those which were used for monarchs of England or Scotland prior to the unification of the two kingdoms. Until 1603, England and Scotland had separate monarchies, although royals of the two kingdoms frequently intermarried. (All English monarchs since Henry II were descendants of Malcolm III of Scotland, and all Scottish monarchs since James II of Scotland were descendants of Edward III of England; see this chart.) Queen Elizabeth I’s closest heir after her death was her first cousin twice removed (in two ways), King James VI of Scotland, who subsequently became known as King James I of England. Continue reading Regnal names in the U.K. →

Next generation royal family

Family Stories, Royal Lines, , ,
Buckingham Palace group following the wedding of Prince William, the new Duke of Cambridge, and Catherine Middleton, April 2011. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

I recently came across an article on the shift that will occur when the present Prince of Wales succeeds his mother. This article seemed to me to muddy the fairly straightforward waters, so here is my attempt to describe the coming changes in nomenclature.

Let’s begin by supposing that the Prince of Wales will be King Charles III and the Duchess of Cornwall will be Queen Camilla.  I have seen references to Prince Charles as King George VII, one of his other forenames, and of course the present Duchess of Cornwall has sometimes been accorded the future title of Princess Consort. Continue reading Next generation royal family →

Learned Larneds

American History, Family Stories, Royal Lines, , , ,
Geraldine, Queen of the Albanians

Years ago, Jeff Record sent me an ahnentafel report on his ancestry, curious to see if we had any connections back in Kansas. While we identified several common ancestors in New England, I was curious about his great-great-grandmother Mary Elizabeth (Neff) Young (1864-1898) of El Dorado, Kansas. Neff is not in my own ancestry, but it is the surname of some distant cousins I remembered from my childhood. I frequently went to Kansas over the holidays as a child and would stay at my grandparents’ farm in Sedgwick, Kansas. Most often my mother’s siblings and their children would also be there; sometimes there were more distant cousins present, and at the time I had no idea how they were related to me. The Neffs were some such cousins that would occasionally visit as two of their boys were the same age as myself and a few of my first cousins. Later, as I got interested in genealogy, I learned that they were my third cousins: their mother’s father’s sister Carrie Etta (Wright) Learned was a sister of my matrilineal great-grandmother Daisy Alice (Wright) Horton. Continue reading Learned Larneds →

Marriage-go-round

Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, Royal Lines, , , , , ,
Anna of Bohemia, Queen of Hungary. Courtesy of Wikipedia.org

Sometimes – as Chris Child and Jeff Record know – one gets drawn back to the same subject matter only to find new patterns. (I would venture to say many other genealogists know this dynamic well.) For me, in this example, it is an interest in matrilineal lines, a favorite subject of my colleague Julie Helen Otto; lately, this interest has taken shape around the progeny of Anna of Bohemia, Queen of Hungary, whose husband later succeeded as Holy Roman Emperor. To look at her daughters’ daughters (and daughters’ sons) is to enter a thicket of queens and kings, empresses and princes. Famously, both Queen Victoria and Catherine the Great descend from Anna through the female line – a subject for another post, perhaps? Continue reading Marriage-go-round →

Heirs apparent, heirs presumptive

Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, Royal Lines, ,

With Prince Philip’s recent death, Prince Charles has succeeded his father as the 2nd Duke of Edinburgh. This is the third creation of the dukedom,[1] most recently bestowed upon Prince Philip in 1947 as the son-in-law of King George VI, and limited to Philip’s male-line descendants. In 1999, it was announced that Prince Philip’s youngest son, Prince Edward, Earl of Wessex, would follow his father as Duke of Edinburgh when the present title “eventually reverts to the Crown.” With Charles now bearing the title, a fourth creation of the dukedom should ensue on the eventual passing of Queen Elizabeth II, when Prince Charles would succeed as monarch and all his current titles are then available for new creations. However, there are a few extremely unlikely possibilities that would not make Prince Edward the Duke of Edinburgh of the fourth creation quite yet. Continue reading Heirs apparent, heirs presumptive →

Philippian mysteries

Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, Research Methods, Royal Lines, Technology, , ,

With Prince Philip’s recent death, several colleagues shared with me the story that recalled how in 1993 the Duke of Edinburgh had helped solve a Russian Romanov murder mystery. This was one of the earliest high profile uses of mitochondrial DNA to confirm historic remains, and something I frequently talked about in my early talks on using DNA in genealogy.[1] I gave two lectures at NEHGS while I was still in college in the early 2000s, the first one on Abraham Lincoln’s maternal ancestry (which I also discussed as having a possible mtDNA component, utilized nearly two decades later) and the other on DNA. These were also the only talks I made using overhead projector transparencies, before finally switching over to PowerPoint. They also both showed how designing charts has always gone hand-in-hand with my genealogical interests. Continue reading Philippian mysteries →

The ancestry of Archie Mountbatten-Windsor

Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, Royal Lines, , , , , ,
King George I of the Hellenes. Carte de visite by André-Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri; Scott C. Steward collection

To mark the second birthday of Archie Mountbatten-Windsor, and with the imminent birth of his younger sister, Christopher C. Child and I have continued our (occasional!) series on Archie’s ancestry. The first segment, covering parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great-grandparents, appears here.

This generation of great-great-great-grandparents includes the origins of the surnames Mountbatten and Windsor. The name Mountbatten derives from Archie’s father’s father’s father’s mother’s father, the 1st Marquess of Milford Haven; the name Windsor — also the house name of the current British Royal Family — comes via Archie’s father’s father’s mother’s paternal grandfather, King George V. Just over 100 years after the Princes of Battenberg became Mountbattens and the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha adopted (in England) the surname Windsor, a descendant bears both names, marking the 1947 marriage of Lord Milford Haven’s grandson Philip to King George’s granddaughter Elizabeth. Continue reading The ancestry of Archie Mountbatten-Windsor →

Retroactive surnames

Family Stories, Genealogical Writing, Royal Lines, ,
Geoffrey “Plantagenet,” Count of Anjou

Following up on my prior post on retroactive suffixes, I’ll now discuss the other practice of retroactive surnames. This frequently occurs in publications relating to royalty in the medieval period, the best example being the “surname” Plantagenet. Geoffrey V, Count of Anjou (1113-1151), had Plantagenet as an epithet or nickname, but this was not used as a surname by himself or his children. His son Henry II became King of England in 1154 as the first Angevin monarch, as Geoffrey was a member of the House of Anjou. Three centuries later in 1448, Geoffrey’s great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandson Richard, 3rd Duke of York (1411-1460), adopted “Plantagenet” as his family name. The surname Plantagenet was even used by two illegitimate children of Richard’s son King Edward IV. However, Richard’s male line soon died out in the aftermath of the Tudor conquest of England in 1485. The last living legitimate male born with the surname Plantagenet was Richard’s grandson, Edward Plantagenet, Earl of Warwick, who was beheaded in 1499, and King Edward IV’s illegitimate son Arthur Plantagenet, Viscount Lisle, died in 1542. Continue reading Retroactive surnames →

ICYMI: Royal cartes de visite

Collections, Family Stories, ICYMI, Royal Lines, , , ,

[Author’s note: These blog posts originally appeared in Vita Brevis between December 2017 and February 2018.]

Princess Louis of Hesse (Princess Alice Maud Mary of Great Britain, 1843–1878) holding her daughter Victoria ca. 1864. CDV by George Washington Wilson.

To mark the death ten days ago and the funeral this weekend of HRH The Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (1921-2021), I thought it might be useful to remind readers of four blog posts covering some of the iconography of the British royal family, since they illustrate Prince Philip’s grandmother, Princess Victoria, Marchioness of Milford Haven;[1] her parents Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine,[2] and Princess Alice of Great Britain;[3] and her grandparents Queen Victoria[4] and Prince Albert, the Prince Consort.[5]

Louis IV, Grand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine (1837–1892). CDV by Camille Silvy

The series covers Victoria and Albert’s family, including the present queen’s great-grandparents, King Edward VII[6] and Princess Alexandra of Denmark.[7] In the genealogically complex world of the Victorian era royal caste, Prince Philip was Queen Alexandra’s great-nephew, just as his wife Queen Elizabeth II[8] was a great-great-niece of Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse. Continue reading ICYMI: Royal cartes de visite →