House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha
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European Royal History
Is King Charles III of the United Kingdom German?

I was going to address this topic when the King visited Germany. I was also going to discuss this topic before the Coronation. Oh, well……better late than never.

I saw many comments on social media about the King and the Royal Family being German. It seems to be a popular belief, and also a very popular insult, to see King Charles III as being German.

I want to approach this issue not just as an historian, but as if I were a lawyer building my case. So here we go!

Question: Is King Charles III of the United Kingdom German?

My answer: No he is not!

Does he have German ancestry?

My answer: Absolutely!

I think this is an important distinction between nationality, ethnicity and ancestry which I’d like to explain and I’d like to explain why I think these distinctions is important.

First of all, why I think nationality is important I believe it is important because perception of nationality is important. Perception of a monarchs nationality has led to some problems. I would like to discuss two cases.

In the Kingdom of Naples and Sicily and the succeeding Kingdom of the Two-Sicilies being perceived as a foreign dynasty was part of the reason why the reigning Bourbon Dynasty was deposed in 1861 under Giuseppe Garibaldi.

Free to permit my indulgence here as I briefly relay the history of the kingdom of Sicily to demonstrate my point.

The Kingdom of Sicily was a state that existed in the south of the Italian Peninsula from its founding by Count Roger II of Sicily in 1130 until 1816. It was a successor state of the County of Sicily, which had been founded in 1071 during the Norman conquest of the southern peninsula.

Capetian Dynasty

Charles I (early 1226/1227 – January 7, 1285), commonly called Charles of Anjou, was a member of the royal Capetian Dynasty and the founder of the second House of Anjou. Charles was the youngest son of King Louis VIII of the Franks and Infanta Blanche of Castile.

The Capetian House of Anjou, or House of Anjou-Sicily, was a royal house and cadet branch of the direct French House of Capét. It is one of three separate royal houses referred to as Angevin, meaning “from Anjou” in France.

In 1263, after years of negotiations, Charles of Anjou accepted the offer of the Holy See to seize the Kingdom of Sicily from the German Hohenstaufens. Pope Urban IV declared a crusade against the incumbent Manfred of Sicily and assisted Charles in raising funds for the military campaign. Charles was crowned King of Sicily in Rome on January 5, 1266.

In 1282, a revolt against Angevin rule, known as the Sicilian Vespers, threw off Charles of Anjou’s rule of the island of Sicily. The Angevins managed to maintain control in the mainland part of the kingdom, which became a separate entity, a separate sovereign kingdom, also styled the Kingdom of Sicily, although it is commonly referred to as the Kingdom of Naples, after its capital.

Sicily eventually passed to the Kingdom of Aragon and then back to the main Royal line of France and eventually to the imperial House of Habsburg.

In 1734, in the aftermath of the War of the Polish Succession, Naples was reconquered by King Felipe V of Spain, a French Prince of the House of Bourbon, who installed his younger son, Charles, as Duke of Parma, and he also became as King Charles VII of Naples, starting a cadet branch of the House of Bourbon. He also became King of Sicily with the name of Charles V of Sicily the next year.

Charles (Carlos) succeeded to the Spanish throne in 1759 upon the death of his childless half-brother King Fernando VI. He became King Carlos III of Spain. But treaty provisions made him ineligible to hold all three crowns simultaneously therefore on October 6, Carlos III abdicated his Neapolitan and Sicilian titles in favour of his third son, because his eldest son Philip had been excluded from succession due to mental instability and his second son Infante Carlos was heir-apparent to the Spanish throne.

The third son became King Ferdinand IV of the Kingdom of Naples and King Ferdinand III of the Kingdom of Sicily. Ferdinand III-IV was the founder of the cadet House of Bourbon-Two Sicilies.

During the Congress of Vienna of 1815, after the Napoleonic Wars, the kingdom of Naples and Sicily were restored and united as one singular Kingdom, with Ferdinand III-IV becoming King Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies under the House of Bourbon.

On April 4, 1860 the latest revolt against the Bourbon regime broke out. Giuseppe Garibaldi, funded and directed by the Piedmontese prime minister Cavour, assisted the revolt.

On October 21, 1860, a Plebiscite regarding the unification of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies with Italy was conducted. The outcome of the referendum was 432,053 (99%) in favour and only 667 in opposition to the unification. Despite claims and evidence of the Plebiscite being “obviously rigged”, many Sicilians viewed the unification as an acceptance of the House of Savoy which were Kings of Sardinia-Peidmont.

King Francis II was the last King of the Two Sicilies from 1859 to 1861. After successive invasions by Giuseppe Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia ultimately brought an end to his rule, as part of Italian unification. After he was deposed, the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies and the Kingdom of Sardinia-Peidmont were merged into the newly formed Kingdom of Italy. Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia-Peidmont became the first King of Italy.

It wasn’t just the House of Bourbon in the Two Sicilies that was deposed, the House of Bourbon as Dukes of Parma were also deposed as well as the House of Habsburg which ruled Tuscany as its Grand Dukes.

The United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom In 1917, the name of the British Royal House was changed from the German Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to the English Windsor because of anti-German sentiment in the United Kingdom during the First World War.

King Edward VII and, in turn, his son, King George V, were members of the German ducal House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha by virtue of their descent from Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, Prince Consort, husband of Queen Victoria, herself the last British monarch from the House of Hanover.

High anti-German sentiment amongst the people of the British Empire during the First World War reached a peak in March 1917, when the Gotha G.IV, a heavy aircraft capable of crossing the English Channel, began bombing London directly and became a household name. In the same year, the King and his family were finally persuaded to abandon all titles held under the German Crown and to change German titles and house names to anglicised versions. Hence, on July 17, 1917, a royal proclamation issued by George V declared:

Our House and Family shall be styled and known as the House and Family of Windsor, and that all the descendants in the male line of Our said Grandmother Queen Victoria who are subjects of these Realms, other than female descendants who may marry or may have married, shall bear the said Name of Windsor….

The name had a long association with monarchy in Britain, through the town of Windsor, Berkshire, and Windsor Castle; the link is alluded to in the Round Tower of Windsor Castle being the basis of the badge of the House of Windsor. It was suggested by Arthur Bigge, 1st Baron Stamfordham.

Of the deposing of the House of Bourbon and it’s Italian kingdoms and the name change of the British royal house during World War I raises a question for me.

How many generations does a family need to live within a region or country to be considered a native of that country?

The concludes Part I. Join me back tomorrow as I will answer some of these questions and conclude this topic of “Is King Charles III of the United Kingdom German?”

Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (Francis Albert Augustus Charles Emmanuel; August 26, 1819 – December 14, 1861) was the husband of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.

Albert was born at Schloss Rosenau, near Coburg, Germany, the second son of Ernest III, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and his first wife, Louise of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg. Albert’s future wife, Victoria, was born earlier in the same year with the assistance of the same midwife, Charlotte von Siebold. Albert was baptised into the Lutheran Evangelical Church on 19 September 1819 in the Marble Hall at Schloss Rosenau with water taken from the local river, the Itz.

His godparents were his paternal grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld; his maternal grandfather, the Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg; the Emperor of Austria; the Duke of Teschen; and Emanuel, Count of Mensdorff-Pouilly. In 1825, Albert’s great-uncle, Frederick IV, Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, died. His death led to a realignment of the Saxon duchies the following year and Albert’s father became the first reigning duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha.

At the age of twenty, he married his cousin, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom. They had nine children. Initially he felt constrained by his role of prince consort, which did not afford him power or responsibilities. He gradually developed a reputation for supporting public causes, such as educational reform and the abolition of slavery worldwide, and was entrusted with running the Queen’s household, office and estates. He was heavily involved with the organisation of the Great Exhibition of 1851, which was a resounding success.

Victoria came to depend more and more on Albert’s support and guidance. He aided the development of Britain’s constitutional monarchy by persuading his wife to be less partisan in her dealings with Parliament—although he actively disagreed with the interventionist foreign policy pursued during Lord Palmerston’s tenure as Foreign Secretary.

August 1859, Albert fell seriously ill with stomach cramps. His steadily worsening medical condition led to a sense of despair. He lost the will to live, says biographer Robert Rhodes James. He had an accidental brush with death during a trip to Coburg in October 1860, when he was driving alone in a carriage drawn by four horses that suddenly bolted. As the horses continued to gallop toward a wagon waiting at a railway crossing, Albert jumped for his life from the carriage. One of the horses was killed in the collision, and Albert was badly shaken, though his only physical injuries were cuts and bruises. He confided in his brother and eldest daughter that he had sensed his time had come.

Victoria’s mother and Albert’s aunt, the Duchess of Kent, died in March 1861, and Victoria was grief-stricken. Albert took on most of the Queen’s duties, despite continuing to suffer with chronic stomach trouble. The last public event he presided over was the opening of the Royal Horticultural Gardens on 5 June 1861. In August, Victoria and Albert visited the Curragh Camp, Ireland, where the Prince of Wales was attending army manoeuvres. At the Curragh, the Prince of Wales was introduced, by his fellow officers, to Nellie Clifden, an Irish actress.

By November, Victoria and Albert had returned to Windsor, and the Prince of Wales had returned to Cambridge, where he was a student. Two of Albert’s young cousins, brothers King Pedro V of Portugal and Prince Ferdinand, died of typhoid fever within five days of each other in early November. On top of this news, Albert was informed that gossip was spreading in gentlemen’s clubs and the foreign press that the Prince of Wales was still involved with Nellie Clifden.

Albert and Victoria were horrified by their son’s indiscretion, and feared blackmail, scandal or pregnancy. Although Albert was ill and at a low ebb, he travelled to Cambridge to see the Prince of Wales on 25 November to discuss his son’s indiscreet affair. In his final weeks Albert suffered from pains in his back and legs.

Also in November 1861, the Trent affair—the forcible removal of Confederate envoys from a British ship by Union forces during the American Civil War—threatened war between the United States and Britain. The British government prepared an ultimatum and readied a military response.

Albert was gravely ill but intervened to defuse the crisis. In a few hours, he revised the British demands in a manner that allowed the Lincoln administration to surrender the Confederate commissioners who had been seized from the Trent and to issue a public apology to London without losing face. The key idea, based on a suggestion from The Times, was to give Washington the opportunity to deny it had officially authorised the seizure and thereby apologise for the captain’s mistake.

On December, 9, one of Albert’s doctors, William Jenner, diagnosed him with typhoid fever. Albert died at 10:50 p.m. on December 14, 1861 in the Blue Room at Windsor Castle, in the presence of the Queen and five of their nine children. The contemporary diagnosis was typhoid fever, but modern writers have pointed out that Albert’s ongoing stomach pain, leaving him ill for at least two years before his death, may indicate that a chronic disease, such as Crohn’s disease, kidney failure, or abdominal cancer, was the cause of death.

I recently examined the family of Charles Wilhelm Ferdinand of Brunswick-Lüneburg. Today I’d like to examine his uncle, Ludwig-Ernst of Brunswick-Lüneburg-Bevern. Specifically I will be examining how he was connected to many other Royal house throughout Europe.

Ludwig-Ernst of Brunswick-Lüneburg-Bevern. (September 25, 1718 – May 12, 1788) was a field-marshal in the armies of the Holy Roman Empire and the Dutch Republic, the elected Duke of Courland. From 1750 to 1766 he was the Captain-General of the Netherlands, where he was known as the Duke of Brunswick or (to distinguish him from his eldest brother Charles, who succeeded to their father’s title of Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg) Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. Another brother was Duke Ferdinand of Brunswick who led the Allied Anglo-German army during the Seven Years’ War.

Ludwig-Ernst of Brunswick-Lüneburg-Bevern

Ludwig-Ernst of Brunswick-Lüneburg-Bevern was the third son of Ferdinand Albert II, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, and his wife, Antoinette Amalie of Brunswick-Lüneburg, youngest daughter of his first cousin Ludwig Rudolph, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg and his wife Princess Christine Louise of Oettingen-Oettingen, the couple were wed on October 15, 1712.

As mentioned, he had family ties with various European royal houses. Ludwig-Ernst’s eldest sister, Elisabeth Christine, was the wife of Friedrich II the Great of Prussia, they had no children. Another sister, Louise, was married to August-Wilhelm of Prussia, the brother of Friedrich II the Great. They did have children and their son, Friedrich Wilhelm, would inherit the Prussian crown as King Friedrich Wilhelm II and they were the ancestors of all the subsequent Kings of Prussia and German Emperors.

Elisabeth Christine of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel

Friedrich II the Great of Prussia

Louise of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel

August-Wilhelm of Prussia

There were many family connections between the Brunswick-Lüneburg and Saxe-Coburg-Saafeld (Gotha) families as well as the Danish Royal family through two of Ludwig-Ernst’s sisters, Sophie Antoinette and Juliana Maria.

Sophie Antoinette of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel was married to Ernst-Friedrich, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld and would they would have illustrious progeny. Their son, Franz, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (later Saxe-Coburg-Gotha) was the father of Leopold I of Belgium and subsequently all the monarchs of Belgium up to today are descendants of Sophie Antoinette. Among Sophie Antoinette’s notable great-grandchildren were Prince Albert, Queen Victoria, Ferdinand II of Portugal, Empress Carlota of Mexico and Leopold II of Belgium. Through Prince Albert and Queen Victoria, Sophie Antoinette would not only be an ancestor of the present British Royal Family, but an ancestor of other occupants of European Thrones such as Spain, Denmark, Norway and Sweden.

Sophie Antoinette of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel

Juliana Maria of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel married King Frederik V of Denmark in 1752. Juliana Maria was his second wife. Their only child was Frederik, Hereditary Prince of Denmark (1753-1806), and he married Duchess Sophia Frederica of Mecklenburg-Schwerin (1758–1794) a daughter of Duke Ludwig of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Princess Charlotte Sophie of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld who was herself a daughter of Franz Josias, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld and Princess Anna Sophie of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt.

Franz-Josias’s brother, was Ernst-Friedrich, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, the husband of Sophie Antoinette of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. Julians Maria was the grandaunt of King Leopold I of Belgium and great-grandaunt of King Leopold II of Belgium, Empress Carlota of Mexico, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom and her consort Prince Albert. Frederik Hereditary Prince of Denmark and Duchess Sophia Frederica of Mecklenburg-Schwerin were the parents of future King Christian VIII.

Juliana Maria of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel

A daughter of Frederik, Hereditary Prince of Denmark and Duchess Sophia Frederica of Mecklenburg-Schwerin was Princess Charlotte of Denmark (1789-1764) who married Prince Wilhelm of Hesse-Cassel and their daughter Louise of Hesse-Cassel (1817 – 1898) was married to King Christian IX of Denmark.

A brother of Princess Charlotte of Denmark, Friedrich Wilhelm (1820 – 1884), was head of the House of Hesse-Cassel. He married first Grand Duchess Alexandra Nikolaievna of Russia, a daughter of Nicholas I of Russia and Charlotte of Prussia, the great-granddaughter Ludwig-Ernst’s sister Louise of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel and August-Wilhelm of Prussia. Friedrich Wilhelm of Hesse-Cassel’s second wife was Anna of Prussia, the youngest of the three children of Prince Charles of Prussia and Princess Marie of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach.

Ludwig-Ernst’s brother Anthony Ulrich of Brunswick was married to Anna Leopoldovna, a Russian princess and niece of Empress Anna. Their son Ivan – Ludwig-Ernst’s nephew – was appointed Emperor Ivan VI of Russia on his birth, but was deposed only months later.

Nor was this all. Empress Maria Theresa of Austria was Ludwig-Ernst’s first cousin (their mothers, Elisabeth Christine and Antoinette Amalie of Brunswick-Lüneburg, were sisters). Wilhelmina of Prussia, Princess of Orange was his niece (her mother was Ludwig-Ernst’s sister Louise Amalie). In addition, Wilhelmina’s daughter Louise, married Charles Georg August, a grandson of Louis-Ernst’s own brother Charles. Later, in 1764, Ludwig-Ernst’s nephew Charles Wilhelm Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel (son of his eldest brother) would marry Augusta, eldest sister of George III of Great Britain….as demonstrated in a recent blog post. Rarely were royal houses so interrelated other as in his case.

Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (German: Franz Albert August Karl Emanuel. August 26, 1819 – December 14, 1861) was born at Schloss Rosenau, near Coburg in the German Confederation of the Rhine, the second son of Ernst III, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and his first wife, Louise of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg. Albert’s future wife, Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom, was born earlier in the same year with the assistance of the same midwife, Charlotte von Siebold.

Albert was baptised into the Lutheran Evangelical Church on September 19, 1819 in the Marble Hall at Schloss Rosenau with water taken from the local river, the Itz. His godparents were his paternal grandmother, Countess Augusta Reuss of Ebersdorf, the Dowager Duchess of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld; his maternal grandfather, August, Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg; Emperor Franz I of Austria; Prince Albert Casimir of Saxony, the Duke of Teschen; and Emanuel, Count of Mensdorff-Pouilly.

In 1825, Albert’s great-uncle, Friedrich IV, Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, died. His death led to a realignment of Saxon duchies the following year and Albert’s father became the first reigning Duke Ernst I of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Albert and his elder brother, Ernst, spent their youth in a close companionship marred by their parents’ turbulent marriage and eventual separation and divorce. After their mother was exiled from court in 1824, she married her lover, Alexander von Hanstein, Count of Polzig and Beiersdorf. She presumably never saw her children again, and died of cancer at the age of 30 in 1831.

The brothers were educated privately at home by Christoph Florschütz and later studied in Brussels, where Adolphe Quetelet was one of their tutors. Like many other German princes, Albert attended the University of Bonn, where he studied law, political economy, philosophy and the history of art. He played music and excelled at sport, especially fencing and riding. His tutors at Bonn included the philosopher Fichte and the poet Schlegel.

Marriage to Queen Victoria

The idea of marriage between Albert and his cousin, Victoria, was first documented in an 1821 letter from his paternal grandmother, Countess Augusta Reuss of Ebersdorf, the Dowager Duchess of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, who said that he was “the pendant to the pretty cousin”. By 1836, this idea had also arisen in the mind of their ambitious uncle Leopold, who had been King of the Belgians since 1831. At this time, Victoria was the heir presumptive to the British throne. Her father, Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, the fourth son of King George III of the United Kingdom and Queen Charlotte (née Duchess of Mecklenburg-Streitz) had died when she was a baby, and her elderly uncle, King William IV, had no legitimate children. Her mother, the Duchess of Kent, was the sister of both Albert’s father—the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha—and King Leopold.

Leopold arranged for his sister, Victoria’s mother, to invite the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and his two sons to visit her in May 1836, with the purpose of meeting Victoria. William IV, however, disapproved of any match with the Coburgs, and instead favoured the suit of Prince Alexander, second son of the Prince of Orange (future King Willem II of the Netherlands). Victoria was well aware of the various matrimonial plans and critically appraised a parade of eligible princes. She wrote, “[Albert] is extremely handsome; his hair is about the same colour as mine; his eyes are large and blue, and he has a beautiful nose and a very sweet mouth with fine teeth; but the charm of his countenance is his expression, which is most delightful.” Alexander, on the other hand, she described as “very plain”. Victoria wrote to her uncle Leopold to thank him “for the prospect of great happiness you have contributed to give me, in the person of dear Albert … He possesses every quality that could be desired to render me perfectly happy.”Although the parties did not undertake a formal engagement, both the family and their retainers widely assumed that the match would take place.

Victoria came to the throne aged eighteen on June 20, 1837. Her letters of the time show interest in Albert’s education for the role he would have to play, although she resisted attempts to rush her into marriage. In the winter of 1838–39, the prince visited Italy, accompanied by the Coburg family’s confidential adviser, Baron Stockmar.

Albert returned to the United Kingdom with Ernst in October 1839 to visit the Queen, with the objective of settling the marriage. Albert and Victoria felt mutual affection and the Queen proposed to him on October 15, 1839. Victoria’s intention to marry was declared formally to the Privy Council on November 23, and the couple married on February 10, 1840 at the Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace. Just before the marriage, Albert was naturalised by Act of Parliament, and granted the style of Royal Highness by an Order in Council.

Initially Albert was not popular with the British public; he was perceived to be from an impoverished and undistinguished minor state, barely larger than a small English county. The British Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, advised the Queen against granting her husband the title of “King Consort”; Parliament also objected to Albert being created a peer—partly because of anti-German sentiment and a desire to exclude Albert from any political role.

Melbourne led a minority government and the opposition took advantage of the marriage to weaken his position further. They opposed the ennoblement of Albert and granted him a smaller annuity than previous consorts, £30,000 instead of the usual £50,000. Albert claimed that he had no need of a British peerage, writing: “It would almost be a step downwards, for as a Duke of Saxony, I feel myself much higher than a Duke of York or Kent.” For the next seventeen years, Albert was formally titled “HRH Prince Albert” (his territorial designation, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, was dropped upon marriage) until, on June 25, 1857, Victoria formally granted him the title Prince Consort. This shoddy treatment of Prince Albert was not repeated with the consort of the next Queen Regnant, Elizabeth II, who’s husband, Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, was made a peer-of-the-realm as the Duke of Edinburgh and was made a Prince of the United Kingdom in his own right in 1957.

Initially he felt constrained by his role of prince consort, which did not afford him power or responsibilities. He gradually developed a reputation for supporting public causes, such as educational reform and the abolition of slaveryworldwide, and was entrusted with running the Queen’s household, office and estates. He was heavily involved with the organisation of the Great Exhibition of 1851, which was a resounding success.

Victoria came to depend more and more on Albert’s support and guidance. He aided the development of Britain’s constitutional monarchy by persuading his wife to be less partisan in her dealings with Parliament—although he actively disagreed with the interventionist foreign policy pursued during Lord Palmerston’s tenure as Foreign Secretary.

A man of progressive and relatively liberal ideas, Albert not only led reforms in university education, welfare, the royal finances and slavery, he had a special interest in applying science and art to the manufacturing industry. The Great Exhibition of 1851 arose from the annual exhibitions of the Society of Arts, of which Albert was President from 1843, and owed most of its success to his efforts to promote it. Albert served as president of the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, and had to fight for every stage of the project.

In the House of Lords, Lord Brougham fulminated against the proposal to hold the exhibition in Hyde Park. Opponents of the exhibition prophesied that foreign rogues and revolutionists would overrun England, subvert the morals of the people, and destroy their faith.Albert thought such talk absurd and quietly persevered, trusting always that British manufacturing would benefit from exposure to the best products of foreign countries.

The Queen opened the exhibition in a specially-designed and -built glass building known as the Crystal Palace on May 1, 1851. It proved a colossal success. A surplus of £180,000 was used to purchase land in South Kensington on which to establish educational and cultural institutions—including the Natural History Museum, Science Museum, Imperial College London and what would later be named the Royal Albert Hall and the Victoria and Albert Museum. The area was referred to as “Albertopolis” by sceptics.

In August 1859, Albert fell seriously ill with stomach cramps. He had an accidental brush with death during a trip to Coburg in the autumn of 1860, when he was driving alone in a carriage drawn by four horses that suddenly bolted. As the horses continued to gallop toward a stationary wagon waiting at a railway crossing, Albert jumped for his life from the carriage. One of the horses was killed in the collision, and Albert was badly shaken, though his only physical injuries were cuts and bruises. He confided in his brother and eldest daughter that he had sensed his time had come.

In March 1861, Victoria’s mother and Albert’s aunt, the Duchess of Kent, died and Victoria was grief-stricken; Albert took on most of the Queen’s duties, despite continuing to suffer with chronic stomach trouble. The last public event he presided over was the opening of the Royal Horticultural Gardens on June 5, 1861. In August, Victoria and Albert visited the Curragh Camp, Ireland, where the Prince of Wales was doing army service. At the Curragh, the Prince of Wales was introduced, by his fellow officers, to Nellie Clifden, an Irish actress.

By November, Victoria and Albert had returned to Windsor, and the Prince of Wales had returned to Cambridge, where he was a student. Two of Albert’s young cousins, brothers King Pedro V of Portugal and Prince Ferdinand, died of typhoid fever within five days of each other in early November. On top of this news, Albert was informed that gossip was spreading in gentlemen’s clubs and the foreign press that the Prince of Wales was still involved with Nellie Clifden. Albert and Victoria were horrified by their son’s indiscretion, and feared blackmail, scandal or pregnancy. Although Albert was ill and at a low ebb, he travelled to Cambridge to see the Prince of Wales on November 25 to discuss his son’s indiscreet affair. In his final weeks Albert suffered from pains in his back and legs.

When the Trent Affair—the forcible removal of Confederate envoys from a British ship by Union forces during the American Civil War—threatened war between the United States and Britain, Albert was gravely ill but intervened to soften the British diplomatic response and thus averting Britain getting involved in the US Civil War.

On December 9, one of Albert’s doctors, William Jenner, diagnosed him with typhoid fever. Albert died at 10:50 p.m. on December 14, 1861 in the Blue Room at Windsor Castle, in the presence of the Queen and five of their nine children. The contemporary diagnosis was typhoid fever, but modern writers have pointed out that Albert’s ongoing stomach pain, leaving him ill for at least two years before his death, may indicate that a chronic disease, such as Crohn’s disease, renal failure, or abdominal cancer, was the actual cause of death.

Prince Albert, Queen Victoria and their nine children, 1857. Left to right: Alice, Arthur, Albert (Prince Consort), Albert Edward (Prince of Wales), Leopold, Louise, Queen Victoria with Beatrice, Alfred, Victoria and Helena.

Prince Albert and Queen Victoria had 9 children, 4 sons and 5 daughters. Prince Albert’s 42 grandchildren included four reigning monarchs: King George V of the United Kingdom; Wilhelm II, German Emperor; Ernst-Ludwig, Grand Duke of Hesse and By Rhine and Charles Edward, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and five consorts of monarchs: Queens Maud of Norway, Sophia of Greece, Victoria Eugenie of Spain, Marie of Romania, and Empress Alexandra of Russia. Albert’s many descendants include royalty and nobility throughout Europe.

On this date in History, February 8, 1960. Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom issues an Order-in-Council, stating that she and her family would be known as the House of Windsor, and that her descendants will take the name Mountbatten-Windsor.

In 1947, Princess Elizabeth (now Queen Elizabeth II), heiress presumptive to King George VI, married Philip Mountbatten. He was born a member of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, a branch of the House of Oldenburg, and had been a prince of Greece and Denmark. However, Philip, a few months before his marriage, renounced his princely titles and adopted the surname Mountbatten, which was the surname of his maternal uncle and mentor, the Earl Mountbatten of Burma, and had itself been adopted by Lord Mountbatten’s father (Philip’s maternal grandfather), Prince Louis of Battenberg, in 1917. It is the literal translation of the German battenberg, which refers to Battenberg, a small town in Hesse. The Battenberg family were morganatic scions of the Grand Ducal House of Hesse and By Rhine (formally Hesse-Darmstadt).

Soon after Elizabeth became Queen in 1952, Lord Mountbatten observed that because it was the standard practice for the wife in a marriage to adopt her husband’s surname, the royal house had become the House of Mountbatten. This statement is rather surprising given Lord Mountbatten’s knowledge of his family’s royal genealogy and history in general. Plainly, Lord Mountbatten was wrong. Although it is true that technically the Queen was a Mountbatten by marriage, it was not true that the name of the Royal House had changed.

Traditionally a female sovereign reigned under the Royal House to which she was born, and the name of the Royal House would not change until the next generation. An example would be Queen Victoria (1837-1901) who was the last monarch of the House of Hanover (the Royal House representing her Patrilineal descent) while her son, King Edward VII (1901-1910) who was a member of the German House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, the same Royal House his father, Prince Albert, The Consort, belonged. It was the name of the Royal House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha that was changed to Windsor by King George V (1910-1936) in 1917.

When Elizabeth’s grandmother, Queen Mary, (wife of George V) heard of Lord Mountbatten’s comment, she informed British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and he later advised the Queen to issue a royal proclamation declaring that the royal house was to remain known as the House of Windsor. This she did on April 9, 1952, officially declaring it her “Will and Pleasure that I and My children shall be styled and known as the House and Family of Windsor, and that My descendants, other than female descendants who marry and their descendants, shall bear the name of Windsor.” The Duke of Edinburgh Is said to have privately complained, “I am nothing but a bloody amoeba. I am the only man in the country not allowed to give his name to his own children.”

On February 8, 1960, seven years after the death of Queen Mary and the resignation of Churchill, the Queen confirmed that she and her children would continue to be known as the House and Family of Windsor, as would any agnaticdescendants who enjoy the style of Royal Highness and the title of Prince or Princess. However, the Queen took a step further from the April 1952 decree and also decreed that her agnatic descendants who do not have that style and title would bear the surname Mountbatten-Windsor.

This Amendment to the earlier decree came after some months of correspondence between the Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and the constitutional expert Edward Iwi. Iwi had raised the prospect that the Royal child due to be born in February 1960 would bear “the Badge of Bastardy” if it were given its mother’s maiden name (Windsor) rather than its father’s name (Mountbatten). Macmillan had attempted to rebuff Iwi, until the Queen advised the acting Prime Minister Rab Butler in January 1960 that for some time she had had her heart set on a change that would recognise the name Mountbatten. She clearly wished to make this change before the birth of her child. The issue did not affect Prince of Wales or Princess Anne, as they had been born with the name Mountbatten, before the Queen’s accession to the throne. Prince Andrew, the current Duke of York, was born 11 days later, on February 19, 1960.

Any future monarch can change the dynastic name through a similar royal proclamation, as royal proclamations do not have statutory authority. However, despite the tradition that the name of the Royal House does change to reflect the Patrilineal descent of the new monarch, it seems unlikely the Prince of Wales will change the name of the Royal House and the House of Windsor will remain.