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A prince consort is the husband of a monarch who is not a monarch in his own right. In recognition of his status, a prince consort may be given a formal title, such as prince . Most monarchies do not allow the husband of a queen regnant to be titled as a king because it is perceived as a higher title than queen, however, some monarchies use the title of king consort for the role.
In the United Kingdom, the title Prince Consort is unique to Prince Albert, although the term applies as a description to other British princes consort. The title was awarded to him in 1857 by his wife, Queen Victoria. Before Prince Albert, there had only been five English, Scottish or British male consorts, being the husbands of Mary I of England, Queen Anne, and Mary, Queen of Scots, the last of whom was married three times during her long reign. The remaining queens regnant before Victoria sidestepped the question of the proper title for a male consort, Elizabeth I having never married, and Mary II's husband William III having been explicitly made king in his own right. [1]
The titles of the five pre-Victorian male consorts varied widely. Philip of Spain, the husband of Mary I of England, was declared king jure uxoris and given powers equal to his wife while she reigned, but Queen Anne's husband Prince George of Denmark received no British titles other than the Dukedom of Cumberland (his princely title being Danish). Meanwhile, the titles of the three husbands of Mary, Queen of Scots, was never fully resolved. At least one (Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley), was declared king consort, and both he and his predecessor Francis II of France sought recognition as king jure uxoris (under a proffered theory of the "Crown Matrimonial of Scotland"), but the title and powers of the consort were a constant issue during Mary's reign and remained unresolved when Mary was captured and executed. [2] [3]
The only male consort since Prince Albert's death, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, the consort of Elizabeth II, was made a peer of the United Kingdom in advance of his marriage to then-Princess Elizabeth in 1947. After Elizabeth's accession in 1952, there was debate in royal circles and among senior politicians (both in Britain and in other Commonwealth Realms, particularly Canada) about her husband's proper title. Some leaders, including the prime minister of the day, Winston Churchill, suggested reviving Prince Albert's title of Prince Consort. Others put forward other styles, including "Prince of the Realm" and "Prince of the Commonwealth" (the latter of which was suggested by John Diefenbaker, at the time a member of the Canadian Opposition front bench). In 1957, Elizabeth created Philip a prince of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the same title borne by sons of the sovereign. [4] [5]
The distinction between the positions of prince consort and king is important in the British patriarchal hierarchical system. Within this hierarchy, the king holds a higher position in the British social hierarchy than any other, and so more power is attributed to him. When the monarch is female, such as Queen Victoria, who ascended to the throne in 1837, power is attributed to the queen, for she holds the highest position in the absence of a king. [6] Unlike a queen consort, a prince consort is not crowned and anointed alongside his wife at her coronation. [7]
Jacques I became the prince consort of Monaco in 1731 after his wife, Louise Hippolyte, became the sovereign princess. [8]
In 2005, Prince Henrik, the husband of Margrethe II of Denmark, was awarded the title. He had requested the title of "king consort" and style of His Majesty but was denied. [9] In 2016, he announced that upon his retirement, he would revert to the title of prince that he had received upon their marriage in 1967. [10] [11]
The imperial Chinese title of fuma (simplified Chinese :驸马; traditional Chinese :駙馬; pinyin :fùmǎ), and its Manchu equivalent e'fu (simplified Chinese :额驸; traditional Chinese :額駙; pinyin :é'fù), are sometimes translated as "prince consort". This was originally an office of the imperial household, later evolving into the title reserved for husbands of imperial princesses. These princes consort could hold other offices and titles in their own right.
Princes and princesses consort are called "Myauk Thar Daw". Burmese: မြောက်သားတော်). Because the consorts live in "North House". This word mean: "North" for Myauk. House for Ain Thar Daw
A king consort or emperor consort is a rarely used (or disputed) title to describe the husband of a queen regnant. Examples include:
Kingdom of Naples:
Netherlands:
Đại Việt:
Denmark:
Luxembourg:
Māori King Movement:
Majapahit:
Merina Kingdom:
Monaco:
Bhopal State:
Sweden:
Kingdom of Scotland:
Spain:
Silla:
Kingdom of Aragon:
Ecatepec:
Ethiopian Empire:
United Kingdom:
Kingdom of England:
Kingdom of Georgia:
Duchy of Parma:
Portugal:
Kingdom of Pontus:
Ptolemaic Kingdom:
Kingdom of Tahiti:
Tonga:
Hawaiian Kingdom:
A queen consort is the wife of a reigning king, and usually shares her spouse's social rank and status. She holds the feminine equivalent of the king's monarchical titles and may be crowned and anointed, but historically she does not formally share the king's political and military powers, unless on occasion acting as regent.
The House of Windsor is a British royal house, and currently the reigning house of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms. The royal house's name was inspired by the historic Windsor Castle estate. Since it was founded in 1917, there have been five British monarchs of the House of Windsor: George V, Edward VIII, George VI, Elizabeth II, and Charles III. The children and male-line descendants of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip also genealogically belong to the House of Oldenburg since Philip was by birth a member of the Glücksburg branch of that house.
The House of Stuart, originally spelled Stewart, was a royal house of Scotland, England, Ireland and later Great Britain. The family name comes from the office of High Steward of Scotland, which had been held by the family progenitor Walter fitz Alan. The name Stewart and variations had become established as a family name by the time of his grandson Walter Stewart. The first monarch of the Stewart line was Robert II, whose male-line descendants were kings and queens in Scotland from 1371, and of England, Ireland and Great Britain from 1603, until 1714. Mary, Queen of Scots, was brought up in France where she adopted the French spelling of the name Stuart.
Regnal numbers are ordinal numbers used to distinguish among persons with the same name who held the same office. Most importantly, they are used to distinguish monarchs. An ordinal is the number placed after a monarch's regnal name to differentiate between a number of kings, queens or princes reigning the same territory with the same regnal name.
A queen dowager or dowager queen is a title or status generally held by the widow of a king. In the case of the widow of an emperor, the title of empress dowager is used. Its full meaning is clear from the two words from which it is composed: queen indicates someone who served as queen consort, while dowager indicates a woman who continues to hold the title from her deceased husband. A queen mother is a former queen consort, often a dowager queen, who is the mother of the reigning monarch.
Royal Highness is a style used to address or refer to some members of royal families, usually princes or princesses. Kings and their female consorts, as well as queens regnant, are usually styled Majesty.
Prince of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a royal title normally granted to sons and grandsons of reigning and past British monarchs, together with consorts of female monarchs. The title is granted by the reigning monarch, who is the fount of all honours, through the issuing of letters patent as an expression of the royal will.
A queen regnant is a female monarch, equivalent in rank, title and position to a king. She reigns suo jure over a realm known as a kingdom; as opposed to a queen consort, who is married to a reigning king; or a queen regent, who is the guardian of a child monarch and rules pro tempore in the child's stead or instead of her husband who is absent from the realm, be it de jure in sharing power or de facto in ruling alone. A queen regnant is sometimes called a woman king. A princess regnant is a female monarch who reigns suo jure over a principality; an empress regnant is a female monarch who reigns suo jure over an empire.
A coregency is the situation where a monarchical position, normally held by only a single person, is held by two or more. It is to be distinguished from diarchies or duumvirates such as ancient Sparta and Rome along with a regency where the monarch in most cases infant or incapacitated particularly has a senior above him and exercises no power whatsoever apart from legally holding the position of head of state.
From the 1340s to the 19th century, excluding two brief intervals in the 1360s and the 1420s, the kings and queens of England and Ireland also claimed the throne of France. The claim dates from Edward III, who claimed the French throne in 1340 as the sororal nephew of the last direct Capetian, Charles IV. Edward and his heirs fought the Hundred Years' War to enforce this claim, and were briefly successful in the 1420s under Henry V and Henry VI, but the House of Valois, a cadet branch of the Capetian dynasty, was ultimately victorious and retained control of France, except for Calais and the Channel Islands. English and British monarchs continued to prominently call themselves kings of France, and the French fleur-de-lis was included in the royal arms. This continued until 1802, by which time France no longer had any monarch, having become a republic. The Jacobite claimants, however, did not explicitly relinquish the claim.
A substantive title is a title of nobility or royalty acquired either by individual grant or by inheritance. It is to be distinguished from a title shared among cadets, borne as a courtesy title by a peer's relatives, or acquired through marriage.
Suo jure is a Latin phrase, used in English to mean 'in his own right' or 'in her own right'. In most nobility-related contexts, it means 'in her own right', since in those situations the phrase is normally used of women; in practice, especially in England, a man rarely derives any style or title from his wife although this is seen in other countries when a woman is the last heir of her line. It can be used for a male when such male was initially a 'co-lord' with his father or other family member and upon the death of such family member became the sole ruler or holder of the title "in his own right" (alone).
Jure uxoris describes a title of nobility used by a man because his wife holds the office or title suo jure. Similarly, the husband of an heiress could become the legal possessor of her lands. For example, married women in England and Wales were legally incapable of owning real estate until the Married Women's Property Act 1882.
The royal descendants of Queen Victoria and of King Christian IX, monarchs of the United Kingdom (1837–1901) and Denmark (1863–1906) respectively, currently occupy the thrones of Belgium, Denmark, Luxembourg, Norway, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom. At the outbreak of the First World War their grandchildren occupied the thrones of Denmark, Greece, Norway, Germany, Romania, Russia, Spain and the United Kingdom. For this reason Victoria was nicknamed the "grandmother of Europe" and Christian IX the "father-in-law of Europe".
A queen mother is a former queen, often a queen dowager, who is the mother of the reigning monarch. The term has been used in English since the early 1560s. It arises in hereditary monarchies in Europe and is also used to describe a number of similar yet distinct monarchical concepts in non-European cultures around the world. The rank does not go to all mothers of monarchs though. A mother of a ruling monarch may only be referred to as Queen Mother if she was a Queen Consort as opposed to a Princess Consort.
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