100 Facts About The British Royal Family

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Do you know why Queen Elizabeth II’s descendants use the surname Mountbatten-Windsor, even though her father was born neither a Mountbatten nor a Windsor? For most of us, surnames are a simple matter, but for the British Royal Family, the answer takes us through over a century of European history and reflects both sweeping geopolitical trends and more personal domestic matters. Hi, I’m Erin McCarthy, editor-in-chief of MentalFloss.com. We’ll get into the story behind that surname, along with many more facts about the British Royal Family—from scandal-plagued kings to truck-driving queens—in this episode of The List Show. Let’s get started.

When Queen Victoria, from the House of Hanover, died in 1901, Britain’s royal house took the German name of her husband, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Royal intermarriage was quite normal at that time. Albert was actually Victoria’s first cousin, and the couple’s descendants would go on to occupy palaces in various countries, including Greece, Norway, Denmark, Russia, Sweden, Romania, Yugoslavia, and Spain, as well as Germany. Most importantly, they had a son who would become King Edward VII. Edward, or Bertie, as he was sometimes known, is a fascinating character—we’ll get back to him in a bit—but there’s still the matter of how the Mountbatten-Windsors came to be.

Edward’s son, who became King George V after his father’s passing, began his reign less than a decade before the onset of World War I. In 1917, with the war raging and a rising tide of anti-German sentiment in Britain, George abandoned the Germanic House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and christened his royal house The House of Windsor, also announcing that his family would adopt Windsor as its surname when necessary. Until then, royals merely referred to their house, rather than a last name. While that is still the case for members of the family entitled to a royal style, such as His Royal Highness, even Prince William has used a last name on occasion—including when he and his wife took legal action against a tabloid for invading their privacy back in 2012.

It wasn’t just a vague anti-German feeling that led to the name change. A few specific factors may have played a role. Just a month before the announcement, a German bombing on London’s East End had killed British schoolchildren. The planes that carried out the attack were known as German Gotha bombers, echoing the Saxe-Coburg-Gotha House of the royal family. George took the name Windsor from Windsor Castle, which has been an off-and-on home for British royalty since William the Conqueror founded it nearly a millennium ago. Queen Elizabeth II can trace her lineage all the way back through William the Conqueror, the Norman Duke whose conquest of England was an important turning point in European history.

That explains the Windsor part of little Archie’s last name, but where does Mountbatten come from? It traces back to Elizabeth’s husband, Prince Philip, who was born into the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg. In 1947, he renounced his rights to the Greek and Danish thrones and adopted the surname of his mother’s side of the family, Mountbatten. That name is an anglicization of the German Battenberg. The couple are cousins through multiple familial ties. Depending on how you look at it, they are either third cousins or second cousins once removed.

Apparently, the choice of surname caused some tension between the newlyweds. While Philip wanted his descendants to be known as Mountbattens, Elizabeth II initially sided with her mother and Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who wanted continuity in the royal family name. A compromise was struck, as the Queen and Duke announced that their descendants would have the last name Mountbatten-Windsor.

Elizabeth II is now the world’s longest-reigning monarch, having reigned over the U.K. and some of its Commonwealth realms for over 69 years. She has more than 15 years of experience over the current runner-up for longest-reigning monarch, Hassanal Bolkiah, the Sultan of Brunei. That also makes Prince Charles the longest-waiting heir apparent in British history. He has been first in line for the throne for decades, and at 72 years old, he will be the oldest British monarch to be crowned, if and when that day comes.

Elizabeth’s nearly seven decades as Queen are especially notable since she wasn’t born an heir apparent to the throne. She would have never become Queen if her parents had had sons. It was only with the Succession to the Crown Act of 2013 that female heirs to the throne are no longer passed up in the line of succession by their younger brothers. It took the death of Elizabeth’s grandfather, King George V, the abdication of the throne by her uncle, Edward VIII, and the eventual death of her father, King George VI, to install Elizabeth on the throne.

Edward VIII famously abdicated to marry Wallis Simpson, an American who many considered an unfit wife for the King. While the story has a romantic aspect, Edward is not viewed as a heroic figure due to his controversial actions before World War II, including visiting Nazi Germany and meeting with Adolf Hitler. Edward later denied involvement in anti-British plots but was effectively removed from the picture when he was appointed governor of the Bahamas in 1940.

When Edward abdicated, his brother, George VI, ascended the throne. His stuttering problem was dramatized in the film “The King’s Speech.” The King himself thanked the speech therapist Lionel Logue for his support in preparing for his coronation speech. The “reluctant king” found another important ally closer to home: his wife, Queen Elizabeth, who was referred to as “the strength behind the throne.”

If you’re wondering why this Queen Elizabeth wasn’t known as QE2, it’s because the Queen Mother was never a queen regnant, or ruling monarch. She married into the royal family and was considered a queen consort, while only queens and kings regnant are given Roman numerals. During World War II, some suggested the Queen Mother and her daughters, Elizabeth and Margaret, should leave Buckingham Palace for a safer country, such as Canada. She famously responded, “The children won’t go without me. I won’t leave the King. And the King will never leave.”

Even the royal family wasn’t entirely shielded from the tumult of war. Buckingham Palace was bombed in September 1940. A few years later, Elizabeth’s daughter, the future Queen Elizabeth II, became the first female royal family member to enter the armed forces as a full-time active member, serving as a truck driver and mechanic in the Auxiliary Territorial Service.

But now that she’s the Queen, what does Elizabeth II actually do? The Crown’s power has been limited since King John issued the Magna Carta in 1215, and England’s Bill of Rights of 1689 created a constitutional monarchy in which the King or Queen’s power is strictly limited by law. Over the years, that power has been further circumscribed until reaching its essentially ceremonial role today.

Roughly once a year, the Queen presents a speech at the state opening of Parliament, though she doesn’t write the speech herself. While this is happening, a member of parliament is taken “hostage” in Buckingham Palace, a now-ceremonial holdover from Charles I’s tense relationship with his country’s governing body. Today, no one expects to actually hold onto the “hostage” in an emergency situation.

When the Queen isn’t engaging with the public, her duties include sending out birthday notes to centenarians in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth countries. She has sent almost two hundred thousand such messages over the years. The Queen is known to spend most of her private weekends at Windsor Castle, where she enjoys the largest and most famous dolls’ house in the world, featuring electricity, running water, and working elevators.

Windsor Castle reportedly requires a team of dozens of employees to maintain. Buckingham Palace, the Queen’s primary residence, has its own unique features, including an in-house ATM accessible to the royal family. The Palace was also the location of the Queen’s famous corgi breeding program, which started with Elizabeth’s 18th birthday present, Susan, and led to 14 generations of pups at the palace.

Not everyone is a fan of the monarchy, of course. One criticism centers around the amount royals pay—or don’t pay—in taxes. Prince Charles, for example, faced criticism when it became known that he was paying less than 24 percent in taxes on earnings from his estate. Separate reports suggested that the Prince pays less tax, as a percentage, on his multimillion-dollar income than his staff pay on their earnings.

The Queen has someone break in her new shoes. As her dresser, Angela Kelly, put it, “The Queen has very little time to herself and not time to wear in her own shoes.” The Windsors are quite opinionated when it comes to fashion. Young boys, for example, never appear in public with long pants on; they wear shorts, as it is considered more appropriate for their status.

Most unmarried royal women aren’t supposed to wear tiaras. Unless you were born a princess, tiaras signify a royal woman’s relationship status. Members of the family are required to pack a black outfit for any trip, just in case they should need to appear after a moment of public tragedy. This norm became evident when Queen Elizabeth was in Kenya when her father died back in 1952.

When Elizabeth arrived back in England, she had to stay on the plane until an appropriately somber ensemble could be brought to her. And a black outfit isn’t the strangest thing royals have been known to travel with. It has been reported that Queen Elizabeth sometimes travels with her own supply of blood in case of emergency when visiting countries with a questionable supply.

The monarch also technically owns the British seabed and the rights to all of Scotland’s gold-mining activity. The Royals are big on tradition, and one custom involves fruitcake, as the British Royal family has often used fruitcake for their wedding cakes, dating back to Queen Victoria. Tradition dictates that they then save some of that cake to be eaten in celebration of their future children’s christenings.

Some traditions have fallen by the wayside over the years. When Princess Diana wed Prince Charles back in 1981, she chose not to vow to “obey” her husband, as tradition would have it. In doing so, Diana may have started a new tradition: neither Kate Middleton nor Meghan Markle mentioned “obeying” in their vows.

Diana was an unorthodox royal in many ways. She was the first royal bride to have a paying job before her engagement and the first Englishwoman to marry the heir to the British throne in roughly 300 years. Prince Charles famously dated his future second wife, Camilla Shand, years before meeting Diana.

If you think this is getting complicated, just wait. Lady Di and Charles had a very brief courtship—it’s estimated they might have only spent time together in person around a dozen times before their wedding. During their marriage, Prince Charles had an affair with Camilla, who was also married at the time, and the royal couple eventually split. Charles would go on to marry Camilla nearly eight years after Diana’s death.

I mentioned Edward VII, Queen Elizabeth II’s great-grandfather, earlier. He was sometimes known as “Edward the caresser,” a nickname he apparently earned. Edward’s purported lovers include the famous French actress Sarah Bernhardt. Edward’s scandals weren’t limited to the bedroom, though. Before his accession, he was part of the “royal baccarat scandal,” an international disgrace centered around accusations of cheating in a card game.

We talked about Edward’s grandson, King George VI, earlier in the video, and about George’s daughter, Elizabeth. But Elizabeth’s sister, Princess Margaret, has her own tumultuous story. Pablo Picasso wanted to marry her, according to his friend and biographer, despite the fact that the two never met.

Margaret’s most notable love affair was with Group Captain Peter Townsend. Townsend was a divorcee and therefore considered an unfit pairing for the Princess in some corners of Britain. When Margaret was 23, Townsend was stationed at the British embassy in Brussels to buy time for Margaret to turn 25, at which point she would have more power to choose her groom without approval from her sister, the Queen. After all that, she chose not to wed Townsend and instead ended up marrying a photographer named Antony Armstrong-Jones.

Their wedding became the first televised royal wedding, reaching around three hundred million viewers worldwide, a number that would be dwarfed a couple of decades later by the wedding of Charles and Diana, which drew an estimated seven hundred and fifty million viewers. When Margaret and Armstrong-Jones divorced, amidst rumors of infidelity on both sides, she had the first dissolution of a royal marriage since Henry VIII.

In 1941, two of Queen Elizabeth’s first cousins were secretly committed to a mental hospital. Around twenty years later, their mother let the publisher Burke’s Peerage believe that the girls were dead. It wasn’t until a 1987 expose that the truth came to light—one of the women was still alive, and her sister had died just a year prior. All five of the girls suffered from a genetic disorder that affected their cognitive development, leading to public speculation that the royal family was covering up an unwanted part of their family tree.

In 1999, Prince Edward, the Queen’s youngest son, got married and chose the formal title the Earl of Wessex, which is a bit unusual since the region of Wessex no longer officially exists. It’s been said that Edward chose the name because he’s a fan of the movie “Shakespeare in Love.”

Then there’s Anne, Princess Royal. Like many royals, she’s an equestrian enthusiast. Her father once said, “If it doesn’t fart or eat hay, she’s not interested.” Anne had a bit less luck with dogs. When her English bull terrier bit two young boys, the Princess was ordered to pay a fine and restitution to the boys’ families, becoming the first senior member of the royal family to be convicted of a criminal offense.

You probably know that Prince William is second in line for the throne, but who’s last in line? There are strict rules on who can be crowned, and while it seems it’s been a while since anyone cared to dig this deep, back in 2001, two genealogists determined that Karin Vogel, a distant descendant of Sophia of Hanover, held the title of “last in line.” She was four thousand nine hundred and seventy-third in line, meaning we probably won’t see a Queen Karin any time soon.

There are some interesting characters a few thousand places up in the line of succession, too. James Lascelles is the second son of the 7th Earl of Harewood and sits around 60th in line for the throne. Lascelles is a musician and once toured with Frank Zappa.

Then there’s Prince Harry. A source reported that the Prince was sometimes referred to by a nondescript name, while his wife, Meghan Markle, had been given a similar codename. Those choices weren’t entirely arbitrary; the initials echo their titles, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

The Queen’s codename is designed to be even less intriguing: she’s reportedly referred to as Sharon, or just S. The lives of William, Harry, Kate, and Meghan have been documented extensively. But did you know that Meghan handwrote the wedding invitations for Robin Thicke and Paula Patton? It was part of her pre-fame side hustle as a freelance calligraphy artist.

The future Duchess of Sussex could fly under the radar a bit in her youth, but nothing could be further from the truth for her nephew, Prince George. The likely future King was named one of Barbara Walters’s most fascinating people of the year in 2013 when he was less than a year old.

Here’s the scoop on Prince Harry: according to royal experts who analyzed his early texts with Meghan Markle, the Duke of Sussex’s favorite emoji is the ghost emoji. Slightly less inscrutable is the gift Harry once reportedly chose for his grandmother: a shower cap emblazoned with a humorous phrase. Intentionally quirky gifts are apparently something of a Windsor tradition, and the Queen was said to love her gift.

For an American, the monarchy can be a bit difficult to understand. They cost British taxpayers a significant amount each year, and what they offer in return is hard to define. While a consultancy estimated that the monarchy contributed to the UK economy through enhanced tourism and other revenue-earning activities, those numbers are hard to pin down. Critics contend that tourists would still flock to royal points of interest even if the royals themselves were not present.

According to a poll, a significant percentage of Britons consider themselves monarchists and would like to see the royal family continue. Given the current line of succession, with Princes Charles, William, and George possibly representing decades of future monarchs, could Queen Elizabeth be the very last Queen of the United Kingdom?

A poll found that a plurality of young people would prefer the country to become a republic and leave the monarchy behind. I guess you’ll just have to subscribe to our channel and watch our follow-up video in the year 2100 to find out.

Our next video is all about the true stories behind artistic masterpieces. If you know of an interesting story for a great painting or sculpture, drop it in the comments for a chance to be featured in that video. Thanks for watching!

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