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1917 was a big year in royal history. As World War I raged and anti-German sentiment exploded, King George V hastily changed the name of the royal house from the decidedly Teutonic House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to the House of Windsor.
His Majesty then backtracked on offering political asylum to his first cousin the Tsar of Russia after he was overthrown in a revolution (a situation which did not turn out particularly well for the Romanovs).
Lastly, George got out his fountain pen and swiftly undid nearly 200 years of royal tradition and thus restricted who could be titled as an HRH (His or Her Royal Highness).
Those changes that George put into place more than a century ago are still in effect today, but this year those three pesky letters have caused the Queen no end of trouble.
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The tricky issue of who should and should not be allowed to style themselves as an HRH came into focus when the Queen took the unprecedented step and determined that Harry and Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, should no longer be allowed to use theirs (they also lost the ability to brand themselves as Sussex Royal post-their split).
A quick royal lesson: The ability to style oneself as an HRH is given at the discretion of the monarch, generally to their children and grandchildren though there are exceptions. Princess Anne’s children do not hold any titles or the styling as per her choice. While Prince Edward’s children do, their mother Sophie Countess of Wessex recently revealed they will most likely not use them in adulthood.
While Harry and Meghan still very much retained their titles, the loss of their ability to use their HRHs would surely have carried a particular sting, especially given it echoed the decision in 1996 that his mother Diana, Princess of Wales would no longer be able to have hers after her divorce from Prince Charles. According to Diana’s former butler Paul Burrell, a young Prince William told his mother when she was upset over the loss, “Don’t worry, Mummy. I will give it back to you one day when I am king”.
While some viewed the Queen’s move regarding the Sussexes’ HRHs as punitive, the reality was that this was Her Majesty’s decision was most likely driven by a need to create a very clear distinction between the royal house and the couple’s future commercial ventures. Basically, so the royal family could never be accused of earning a quid off their royal status.
Except there is one great big contradiction here in the form of a currently unemployed, 60-year-old duke who’s a dab hand at negotiating Kazakhstani contracts.
Within days of Andrew settling into a gilt chair in November last year in a calamitous attempt to explain away his former friendship with Jeffrey Esptein, a convicted sex offender, he announced he was stepping from public life for “the foreseeable future”.
Essentially, Andrew was being relegated to toff purgatory, left to while away the hours in his Royal Lodge, his 30-room house.
Originally published as Queen’s ‘petty’ Meghan and Harry move
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