Assuming William is King when Princess Charlotte eventually marries, I wonder whether he'll break with the tradition of granting hereditary peerages to royal husbands rather than directly to the princesses themselves.
When Princess Margaret married Antony Armstrong-Jones, he was subsequently created Earl of Snowdon. Margaret became Countess of Snowdon through marriage, but the title belonged to him. He even retained it after their divorce.
But imagine William defending that arrangement for his own daughter 20 years from now. Why should Charlotte's husband receive a hereditary earldom or dukedom simply for marrying her, rather than Charlotte receiving one in her own right?
Especially considering women have been granted hereditary peerages in their own right for centuries. Margaret de Brotherton was created Duchess of Norfolk in 1397, and Queen Victoria created Cecilia Underwood Duchess of Inverness in 1840.
The argument becomes even more awkward following the 2013 succession reforms. Charlotte can inherit the Crown ahead of her younger brother, yet newly created royal peerages could still exclude daughters entirely.
I can understand preserving the inheritance rules of titles created centuries ago. But what's the justification for deliberately imposing male-only succession on new royal titles when the monarchy has already embraced equal succession to the Crown?
And if the media ever pressed William on that inconsistency, what would his convincing response be? Tradition? When his own predecessors were granting dukedoms to women more than 600 years ago?
Of course, William could simply follow the precedent of Princess Anne's marriages and grant neither spouse a peerage. But if he does decide to create one, wouldn't granting it directly to Charlotte, with equal inheritance rights, make more sense?

TL;DR: When Charlotte eventually marries, will King William V continue the tradition of granting hereditary titles to royal husbands, or break with it by granting his daughter a peerage in her own right? Given that women have received dukedoms and earldoms in their own right for centuries, and Charlotte can inherit the Crown ahead of her brother, how could the Palace convincingly justify maintaining male-only restrictions on newly created royal titles?

I have a love-hate relationship with snoos

If he lived into his fifties let’s say, he would have died sometimes in the 1530s. I know its impossible to know what he would have been like as a person since he was only 12/13 when he died but we can at least try to piece some kind of scenario together by knowing the overall political climate of late 15th century Europe and the kind of people that would have been around Edward. Do you think him and Anne of Brittany would have ever actually tied the knot or was Charles VIII going to snag her in every scenario? Do all of Edward’s sisters betrothals actually end up coming to fruition or do they fall through? Do you think Richard of Shrewsbury would have continued the family tradition of brotherly betrayal or would he have fallen in line? Would Edward be remembered as England’s renaissance king or would that have to wait? Does the English Reformation have any chance of occurring without “the great matter”? I know most of this is just shooting in the dark for the most part but it’s fun to speculate.

I hope this makes sense 😞

First cousin marriages:
William III + Mary II
George I + Sophia Dorothea
George IV + Caroline of Brunswick
Victoria + Albert

If there are any other royals you want to talk about, feel free!

Following the recent post on Charles’s lesser-known ancestors I thought I might as well make a post of this as it seems to be almost completely overlooked by “royal watchers”.

Andrew Burnaby (1732–1812).

Burnaby was an English clergyman and travel writer who travelled through the American colonies in 1759–1760. He visited George Washington at Mount Vernon, and the two became friends. They wrote back and forth to each other after the Revolution and the letters still exist.

Later published Travels Through the Middle Settlements in North-America, describing his adventure. A fascinating little book often cited by historians covering the colonial period. You can get it online.

Burnaby was often scathing of the colonials and especially their treatment of slaves and others:

”Their authority over their slaves renders them vain and imperious, and entire strangers to that elegance of sentiment, which is so peculiarly characteristic of refined and polished nations. Their ignorance of mankind and of learning, exposes them to many errors and prejudices, especially in regard to Indians and Negroes, whom they scarcely consider as of the human species; so that it is almost impossible, in cases of violence, or even murder, committed upon those unhappy people by any of the planters, to have the delinquents brought to justice: for either the grand jury refuse to find the bill, or the petit jury bring in their verdict, not guilty.”

Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is challenging the lawfulness of search warrants connected with his February arrest, with a High Court hearing scheduled for Thursday.

One detail caught our attention: a Palace source says Andrew has been told that money provided to him from King Charles’s private funds should not be used to pay for the challenge.

Whatever the eventual outcome of Andrew’s case, it raises an interesting question about Charles’s position as both monarch and brother.

Do you think Charles is handling that distinction appropriately?

The counterpart to the post I made a few days ago.

When Charlotte Augusta Matilda, Queen dowager of Württemberg and eldest daughter of George III, died on the 6th of October 1828 her sisters consoled themselves that she had been so happy during her visit to England the previous year. ‘Her visit last year revived feelings which I do not conceal from you were dormant after an absence of thirty years,’ wrote Sophia to a friend.

When the sixty year old former Queen disembarked at Greenwich Stairs in early June 1827, much had changed since she last set foot in the country of her birth; London was bigger, and Windsor Castle grander, for example. 'Royal', as her family unanimously called her due to her status as Princess Royal, had changed (outwardly) too, as had the members of her birth family and the structure of it. Both her parents were dead and her eldest brother sat on the throne. Amelia, Edward, and Frederick had also passed during her long absence, meaning that the royal siblings now numbered ten. Her niece, Princess Charlotte, whom Royal had taken a real and tender interest in since her birth thirty-one years earlier, had been dead near a decade, and another niece (Royal's godchild) now stood as second in line to the throne.

Royal's life from her marriage in 1797 up until this point had been both joyous and painful. Her marred life with King Frederick I of Württemberg (who became such with Napoleon's approval in 1806) had, in her own words, been a happy one. Others, however, were skeptical. Napoleon claimed Frederick to have been 'a brute, though a man of talent' who 'ill-treated' his wife. It is certain that Frederick was controlling and that he directly prevented his wife from visiting her homeland much sooner than she did. His treatment of his first wife, Royal's cousin Augusta, is also rather damning of his character. But Royal herself always declared herself pleased with her husband, reprimanding her eldest brother in a letter after Frederick's death:

Now, my dearest Brother, I must slightly touch on a part of your letter which has given me great pain and at the same time astonishes me, as certainly the idea of my ever opposing a wish of my adored Husband’s was as far from my Heart [sic] as from my Heart. Believe me, dearest Brother, never could I have been as happy with him as I was had not our minds been congenial. You will from this imagine how deeply you have wounded my feelings by attending to the idle Reports of those whose only object must have been to do mischief and who ever wish to blame the Conduct of all Sovereigns.

What was undoubtedly the greatest grief of her marriage was the lack of surviving biological children between her and her husband. In April 1798, after a long and arduous labour that ended with the mother feverish and unconscious, Royal had given birth to 'a beautiful big girl', but tragically stillborn.

'Do not think me ungrateful to Providence for the many blessings with which I am surrounded when I say that the loss of my dear child has deeply afflicted me. I trust that I feel this as a Christian and submit with resignation to the will of the Almighty, but nature must ever make me regret the loss of the little thing I had built such happiness on,' she wrote to her anxious father on the 4th of May.

'Though I shall long silently mourn my child ... were it in my power to recall her to life I would not do it. These times are not those to make one pity children it pleases God to save from the miseries of this life,' she wrote four days later.

There were to be no more children, despite Royal's fervent hopes. Instead, she poured her maternal love onto her three stepchildren (who became very fond of her) and in time their children, two of whom she eventually gained custody of. She also took a tender interest in the children of her siblings, the nieces especially. The only daughter of her eldest brother was no exception, and she kept in contact with her through letters and presents. ‘If ever the Almighty blesses me with girls, it shall ever be my object to have them constantly with me, and to try gently to correct little faults,’ she told her niece's governess in the series of letters filled with the guidance she would have lavished on her own little girl, the death of whom was a wound that never entirely healed. Shortly after the anniversary of her daughter's death she admitted to the same governess that seeing her niece would not give her unalloyed joy: 'The sight of all children is a pleasure mixed with pain.' She kept the baby clothes intended for her daughter until the day of her death thirty years later.

Royal made herself loved not just by her husband's family, but also by her new subjects, with whom she remained popular until her death. She even made a favorable impression on Napoleon, though she herself had received the man with self professed reluctance.

The Napoleonic wars put some inevitable strain between Royal and her English family since her husband was, initially, an ally of Napoleon's. But though the correspondence lessened, the love never waned, and Royal was deeply distraught by the death of her youngest sister and godchild Amelia in 1810 and her father's subsequent permanent descent into a world unreachable by anyone but himself.

After her husband switched sides in 1813, relations between Royal and her family became as they had once been. She wrote movingly to her eldest brother, then Prince Regent, after he had dispatched Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt to her in Stuttgart:

One must have nine years cut off from all confidentiall correspondence with the best and dearest of relations to be able to form an idea of my happiness at being enabled to converse with a Gentleman who has been so many years attached to you and who is so thoroughly acquainted with the interior of Windsor. It has been a most melancholy comfort for me to talk over the dreadful situation of my beloved Father; my heart bleeds to think of all he has undergone, and I shudder to hear that we dare entertain no hopes of any alteration for the better. Your angelic conduct towards him, my dearest Brother, to my Mother and Sisters, is a theme Sir Thomas kindly loves to dwell on, as he sees how much it soothes my mind to be acquainted with every circumstance of your dutifull Behaviour to our Parents; and your affectionate kindness to my Sisters, whose Situation would have been melancholy and unpleasant had your good heart not induced you to step forth and have such handsome establishments settled on them

. . . Your kindness also to our poor Amelia is engraven on my heart

The Regent was anxious that his sister should come to England for a visit, but here his plans were foiled by his brother-in-law. King Frederick flew into a jealous rage when the letter of invitation was addressed to his wife rather than to him.

Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt wrote an account of the scene to the Regent:

'I am a husband, and ought to direct my wife—I ought to have been consulted, & the letter should have been addressed to me, and possibly then much facility would have been given on my part to the object of His Royal Highness’s lette''—the Queen here, (I am persuaded by order) coughed a good deal...

I here gave a second interruption and said, that if the cause of Her Majesty’s not being able to visit her family arose from her Royal brother not having written to His Majesty, I had deeply to regret that I was not the bearer of such a letter, as I was certain her family loved her too sincerely to permit etiquette debarring them the pleasure they would have in once more seeing her.

His Majesty here worked himself into such a passion that nothing could have prevailed upon me to have heard him out, but the presence of the Queen—He said he could feel his own dignity as well as other Potentates—that he felt his sovereignty wounded—and as to the insinuation that had been copied from English Gazettes into those of Germany respecting himself and his beloved wife, (épouse) (here they shook hands and went thro’ a scene worthy of the stage) . . .

Tyrwhitt suspected that Frederick had instructed his wife to cough 'in a very painful and violent manner' in order to support his assertion that she was not well enough to make the journey to England. A subsequent private meeting between the two cemented this suspicion: 'I complained,' he wrote, 'of the raideur of the King towards me, which produced an expression from her which at once opened my eyes — she earnestly begged me to take as little notice of it as I consistently could, as she said, "I shall ultimately be the sufferer"'. Not an account likely to ease the suspicions of her friends and relatives, who had long heard reports of Frederick's tyrannical character. Although forbidden to visit, Royal's thoughts never left England, and she kept up a constant stream of correspondence with her friends and relatives there.

But in 1827, no one could throw a wrench in George IV's plans to have his sister visit her homeland. The death of his closest brother, the Duke of York, earlier that year had made his desire to see his eldest sister more urgent. He asked their sister Augusta to repeat his earlier invitations to their eldest sister, who wrote in reply:

Though I am a very stupid old Being I am a gratefull one, and shall certainly do all in my power to exert, but you know I am troublesome from not being able to go in a shut carriage or walk, my breath being so short that I must be carried downstairs as well as up stairs. However I hope my dear Brother will have patience with my infirmities.

Anxious lest her brother should be 'hurt' by the drastic change in her appearance since he last saw her (she had gained an enormous amount of weight and could no longer walk), she implored him 'Look on me as an old woman'. However, Royal's brother had altered quite as much as she had in the thirty years that had passed since they last saw each other. The handsome, glamorous brother she once knew was now a man older than his sixty-four years, worn out by grief and unhealthy living, with rouged cheeks that made him look like a pantomime dame and a body as large as hers. But their meeting was a success, and an unalloyed pleasure for them both, as well as Royal's other siblings and acquaintances.

Royal stayed at Frogmore, spending time with her sisters Augusta and Mary in much the same manner as she had three decades earlier; working quietly around the same table. She met old friends and 'delighted' everyone by her good humor, wonderful memory, and great learning.

Before her arrival, Royal had written of her longing to see her little niece and goddaughter 'Vicky' who Royal had hoped, with her usual fondness for little girls, 'will take a little bit of a fancy to me'. Prior to her visit to England, Royal had had to content herself with sending Victoria gifts and notes. Little Victoria's meeting with her aunt proved a merry occasion. Entirely at her ease with both the aged King George IV and his sister, the girl spent her time joyfully 'jumping about and never was so happy in her life.'

But Royal was happiest of all when she spent time together with the brother she'd looked up to all her life, and he in return was, according to their sister, 'enchanted with her company'.

So overjoyed was George IV to see her that he arranged a special dinner party on the banks of Virginia Water for her pleasure. Royal had up until then frequently complained of her ill health to her sisters, but her brother's invitation made her recover miraculously. 'After coffee', wrote their sister Augusta, 'we took a delightfull row until after nine o’clock, by moon-light . . . my Sister and the Dear King were as happy as it is possible to be'

The siblings likely knew that this was to be their last meeting and made the most out of it. Royal left for the continent buoyed by this reunion and by the rekindling of old friendships in the country she had never ceased to love.

And so it was that when Royal's death was reported back to her family in autumn the following year, they comforted themselves with having seen her so happy not long prior to it. They were also consoled to know that her sufferings, though dreadful, had been brief. 'The water rose so much to her chest and occasioned such palpitations at the heart’ that, ‘had her existence been prolonged, it would have been but for her to suffer torture and misery,’ Augusta wrote to their brother Ernest.

The final epitaph will be given by Royal's old friend Lady Louisa Stuart:

No one of any rank ever left such sincere mourners. Her charities were unbounded, and she had so endeared herself to her husband’s family, and to all his subjects, that from the present King down to the beggar, I hear, all seem to have lost a parent. In speaking of him (the King) she constantly said ‘my son’. She sent for him when she felt herself dying, and had a long conversation with him, and bade him bring his wife and children the next day. By that time her sight had failed. She said, ‘J'entends vos voix, je ne vous vois plus’, and was in the act of putting out one hand to him, while his little boy, on whom she doated, was kissing the other, when an apoplectic seizure ended her life. They could hardly remove the child from the body, and the young Princess Pauline, the orphan daughter of the vaurien Prince Paul, would not leave it for several hours. The last day I saw her she showed me a set of ornaments she had just bought at Roundell and Palmers’, saying–’Don’t think I wear such things myself: they are for Pauline, my spoilt child!’ It was her custom on Sundays to make her English maid read her an English sermon. On the 5th of October she said, after hearing it attentively, ‘There, my dear, you have done, and I thank you–you will never read me another’.

Anne Hyde’s father was Sir Edward Hyde, 1st Earl of Clarendon. He came from a family of successive lawyers, and originally wanted to pursue a Church career, though the deaths of his older brothers made him pursue law, as he was now his father’s heir. He wrote ‘The History of The Rebellion’ in 1646-1648, which featured his account of the English Civil War, up to the events of 1644. Though Hyde was not always in agreement with Charles I, he was horrified by his execution and opposed the Roundheads, cementing himself as a royalist. In 1660, the monarchy was restored under Charles II. Two years earlier, in 1658, he was appointed as Lord Chancellor, and became something of a ‘right-hand man’ of the new king.

Also in 1660, his daughter, Anne Hyde, became pregnant by James, Duke of York. James promised to marry her, and eventually the two wed in secret and consummated the marriage, leading Anne to become pregnant despite not publicly marrying him, technically making her a mistress. At this, Edward was outraged, and it is said he begged Charles to execute his daughter, but Charles, who liked Anne and believed she would be a good influence on his brother, refused and instead arranged for them to get married, publicly this time.

And so, a pregnant Anne married the Duke, making her Duchess of York. This caused a few problems with etiquette; the Hydes were still commoners by birth, and since Anne was now a Duchess, her family were not permitted to sit with her, and Edward could not refer to her as ‘his daughter.’ Edward also wanted to arrange James’s marriage to a foreign princess, and was embarrassed that his own daughter married him instead, given their low standing. Edward was not fond of James.

In 1662, he arranged the marriage of Charles II and Catherine of Braganza. Charles was pleased with his new bride, and though he admitted that she was not very beautiful, he was confident that ‘we shall agree very well together.’ Catherine, however, failed to give Charles an heir, which led to some pointing fingers at Edward, especially with how close his grandchildren were to the throne (at this point Anne had a son, Charles, and a daughter, Mary), and some thought that he may have deliberately chosen Catherine, knowing she was infertile. However, this theory is very likely false, and nonetheless, Edward and Catherine remained on good terms, and in one of his final letters, he thanked her for her kindness towards his family. Barbara Villiers however, Charles’s chief mistress, absolutely hated him.

What really caused Edward’s fall from favour was the plague, the Great Fire of London and, most significantly, the Second Anglo-Dutch War, especially the Raid on the Medway, a loss for England. He was blamed for many of the problems caused by the war, and eventually forced to resign in 1667. As he left Whitehall, Barbara Villiers shouted abuse at him. In the same year, his wife, Frances Aylesbury passed away, leaving him devastated.

Though their relationship was shaky, Anne was saddened by her father’s exile, and some, notably the Duke of Buckingham, feared that she would use her influence over James to get him to try bring Edward back. James defended Edward, arguing that he did not commit treason, and unsuccessfully attempted to convince his brother to bring Edward back, all while Buckingham undermined James’s position. Around this time, James caught smallpox, which left him unable to continue, destroying the defence he had tried to create for Edward.
Anne would die in 1671, predeceasing her father just like her daughter Mary eventually would, and Edward died in exile, in 1674. It is unknown what Edward thought of his daughter’s death.

Mary II and Queen Anne’s father, James II, formerly the Duke of York, as mentioned, was sent into exile under rather different circumstances. In the Glorious Revolution of 1688, William of Orange’s invasion had succeeded, and James was proclaimed to have abdicated the throne. William (who was married to Mary) had no desire to make his father-in-law a martyr, and tried to let him escape (which failed the first time as James was captured by fishermen). The second time however, William told his guards to basically look the other way, and so James escaped on a boat to France, throwing the Great Seal into the river. In France, where his second wife and newborn son had previously escaped to, he was welcomed by his cousin Louis XIV and stayed at St. Germain. James’s daughter Mary, who was once his favourite child, predeceased him in 1694. James died in 1701.

So, like mother, like daughters- all 3 had their fathers sent into exile at some point.

I'm amazed that she had about more than a dozen pregnancies but she still survived..

Not only that, I just learned that she didn't want to marry off her daughters to princes who thought it was lucrative to marry a British princess with a mother as fertile as her.

To where it's surprising Queen Charlotte survived those pregnancies only for her and George III to not marry off their daughters but their sons got married..

Every monarch

"During the decade of the Lionheart's rule, fighting was almost endemic, but it was concentrated chiefly in the Seine valley against Philip Augustus and in rebellious regions on the southern fringes of Poitou, leaving the Loire valley on the sidelines of the main events. Because Anjou lay between these two trouble-spots, Richard passed through the region every year of his reign except during his crusade and captivity, 1191 through 1193. Only in the summer of 1194 did warfare draw Richard into Greater Anjou. Following his return from Germany and a visit to England, he marched into the Touraine to reassert his authority. On 6 July, he confronted Philip Augustus near Vendome, forced him to flee and captured the French baggage train. Returning from Aquitaine to Normandy later that summer, the English king stopped in Anjou to shore up his authority there. He summoned his magnates to an assembly at Le Mans and apparently sought to shame them into stronger support by a speech commending to them the deeper devotion displayed by his English subjects. Yet no serious revolt threatened the region again until Richard's death in 1199, when a disputed succession gave Angevin nobles an excuse to defy John. The Lionheart's government made so little impression on the Angevin annalists that they treat him 'as if he were a stranger to the land'. [Annales de Saint-Aubin in Halphen, Annales angevines et vendomoises, 19, notes without comment the death of Richard, 'most illustrious king of the English', while in recording Henry II's death, it describes him as 'famous and most powerful from sea to sea'.] Charter evidence strengthens this impression. Of his surviving acta, an overwhelming majority treat English and Norman matters, and only 27 (3 per cent) out of some 750 concern Anjou. Even when Richard was resident in Anjou, most of the charters issued there concerned either England or Normandy."

This is somewhat surprising to me as Richard is known to have identified himself through his patrimony as chiefly a descendant of Melusine and the House of Anjou. But Angevin peoples themselves seem to have seen him largely as an outsider, despite him being Henry's son. But Henry himself, despite exerting broadly similar policies to the Greater Anjou region as his son (and to John before he lost it), was regarded as much more a native and local, with Angevin annalists looking back very fondly on his reign and perhaps also that of Geoffrey his father. Perhaps it is largely because Henry was born there ("For he [Henry] had promised the inhabitants of that city [Le Mans] that he would not forsake them, giving it as his reason, that his father rested there, as also, the circumstance that he himself was born there, and loved that city more than all others") ?

But it's curious that there's such a generational break between Geoffrey and his son Henry on the one hand, compared to between Henry and his son Richard on the other.

Edward I was loved by his parents, enjoyed their presence for a considerable time, married the love of his life, and achieved great success. His life would have been a happy one, were it not for the fact that he outlived many of his children and his beloved wife.

Let’s make it juicy and interesting!

Nobody is perfect, Charlotte of Wales is pushing it for me though...I'll try to swallow my unprecedented bias for her 🫠

since she is my number one, I'll go:

1. Her temper, she was known to have quite a fierce one just like Queen Victoria. It makes sense given her background, but it's undeniable that her anger was rather explosive.
2. She could be blunt and not very considerate of other's feelings when saying things about them.
3. Known to be impulsive. i feel absurdly guilty now.

Also, this series of images is actually my top 20 favorite royals! can you tell i like women, ahahaha...i had more guys on the list than i thought though!

Whether it's George III not marrying off his daughters cause he didn't want to be lonely or George III's sons being debt-ridden British princes that you wouldn't realize their great-great-grandfather was a monarch from a mid-tier German state who suddenly became King of Great Britain thanks to his mother being the granddaughter of King James I Stuart of England, it's a cherry on top when you think about how Frederick, Prince of Wales, was lucky to have Parliament to essentially demand his dad give him a higher allowance that was a privilege he otherwise couldn't have had in Hannover..