Brian Hoey - Royalty Revealed: A Majestic Miscellany

W hat is it about the Royal Family that attracts so much attention from people all over the world? Why do we want or need to know how tall the Queen is, whether Kate is taller than Meghan (see Heights), who Archie Mountbatten-Windsors godparents are, how rich Prince Charles is, how many of the Queens children are divorced or who owns Buckingham Palace? The questions are endless as public interest in the British Royal Family is inexhaustible.

Prince Williams marriage to Kate Middleton (the couple now being known as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge) and the subsequent births of their three children, George, Charlotte and Louis, still account for acres of newsprint, while Prince Harrys wedding to the American divorcee Meghan Markle (upon which they became the Duke and Duchess of Sussex) was seen by hundreds of millions of people on television. Their controversial retirement from royal duties and their decision to move to Canada with their young son, Archie, provided headlines and follow-up stories in almost every country in the world. The Sussexes attended their last official royal viii duty in March 2020 at a Commonwealth Day service in Westminster Abbey, where they were relegated to seats in the second row of the congregation, behind the Queen, the Prince of Wales, the Duchess of Cornwall and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

The scandal that was caused by the Duke of Yorks unfortunate friendship with an American billionaire who was convicted of sexual offences and who was subsequently found dead in his prison cell virtually ended the Dukes career and was widely covered on both sides of the Atlantic. On a happier note, the marriage of his daughter, Eugenie, in 2018 received favourable (if slightly muted) coverage in the British media. The Dukes elder daughter, Beatrice, had planned her wedding to Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi for 29 May 2020, but it had to be revised because of the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.

Every detail of whatever the Royals do, wear, eat and drink is avidly consumed; it is a never-ending soap opera with a cast of characters who may be straight out of the top drawer but whose behaviour occasionally matches those in EastEnders or Coronation Street.

When Zara Phillips, daughter of the Princess Royal, appeared with a stud showing through her pierced tongue (and another in her navel), it made headlines for days and the pictures sold all over the world, while speculation about the wealth of the Windsors provides endless stories in newspapers and magazines. And with the advent of mass communication through social media even the Queen now has an encrypted mobile phone and has learnt how to text the stream of information is non-stop.

During the Queens reign, a succession of Royals has emerged to ix capture the publics attention, with each generation developing its own particular newsworthy magic. When Prince Charles married the glamorous Lady Diana Spencer in 1981, she eclipsed him and the rest of the Royal Family almost overnight and became the most famous and photographed woman in the world. Her tragic death in 1997 focused another spotlight on royalty that has yet to be dimmed.

Its all grist to the mill for both the media and the public, and the smallest nugget of information is avidly devoured. The details in the following pages are entirely factual with nothing fictionalised. So, everything you have ever wanted to know about the Royal Family is here along with a few items you may not have even known you wanted to know. x

THE QUEEN

title : Her Most Excellent Majesty Elizabeth the Second, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her Other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith

name : Elizabeth Alexandra Mary

date of birth : 21 April 1926

parents : King George VI and Queen Elizabeth

sister : Princess Margaret Rose (21 August 1930 9 February 2002)

husband : His Royal Highness, Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh

married : 20 November 1947, Westminster Abbey

acceded to the throne : 6 February 1952

children : HRH The Prince of Wales (14 November 1948) Charles Philip Arthur George | HRH The Princess Royal (15 August 1950) Anne Elizabeth Alice Louise | HRH The Duke of York (19 February 1960) Andrew Albert Christian Edward | HRH The Earl of Wessex (10 March 1964) Edward Antony Richard Louis

Queen Elizabeth II is the forty-second Monarch of England but only its sixth Queen Regnant.

Her coronation took place in Westminster Abbey on 2 June 1953.

As Princess Elizabeth, she first rode on the London Underground in 1939 when she was thirteen and did not travel by bus until she was nineteen.

In 1940, at the age of fourteen, she made her first broadcast.

In 1942, when she was sixteen, she took the salute for the first time as Colonel of the Grenadier Guards. In 1944, she was appointed a Counsellor of State. In 1945, she joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service (ATS) as a junior officer, but her father, King George VI, refused to allow her to sleep in the Officers Mess and ordered her to return every night to Windsor Castle.

In 1947, on the morning of her wedding, a minor catastrophe was feared when the brides bouquet could not be found. Eventually all was well when it was discovered in a refrigerator where a well-meaning footman had placed it.

Among her pioneering journeys was her first transatlantic flight to Canada in a BOAC airliner in 1951 in spite of warnings that it might be too dangerous.

HRH THE DUKE OF EDINBURGH

title : His Royal Highness, the Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth and Baron Greenwich

date of birth : 10 June 1921

place of birth : Corfu, Greece

marriage : 20 November 1947, Westminster Abbey

children : Charles, Anne, Andrew, Edward

service rank : Admiral of the Fleet, Royal Navy

honours : Knight of the Garter (KG 1947) | Knight of the Thistle (KT 1952) | Privy Councillor (PC 1951) | Order of Merit (OM 1968) | Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire (GBE 2017) | Grand Master and First and Principal Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order (GCVO 1953)

Prince Philip of Greece, although he claims not to have a single drop of Greek blood in his veins, was born on the dining table of his parents home, Mon Repos, on the Greek island of Corfu.

His father was Prince Andrew of Greece, a son of King George I of The Hellenes, who was, in fact, Danish.

Prince Philips surname, which he never used, was Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksberg.

Prince Philip and the Queen are third cousins as direct descendants of Queen Victoria.

Before he married Princess Elizabeth in 1947, Philip renounced his Greek citizenship and title and changed his religion from Greek Orthodox to Anglican. He also became a Freemason but was never an active member.