How Charlotte became a princess after all thanks to Elizabeth’s intervention

It rolls off the tongue so well: Prince William, Princess Kate, and of course their Princes George and Louis and daughter, Princess Charlotte. It all sounds so obvious, all those prince titles, doesn’t it? But little Charlotte was close to seeing that princess title pass her very young royal nose. Until her great-grandmother, the late Queen Elizabeth, intervened.

Lady Charlotte

Her Royal Highness Princess Charlotte of Wales was born in 2015 and is the second child of the future King and Queen of England, Prince William and Princess Kate. Just like her older brother George, she received the HRH and princess title right at birth, but this was by no means self-evident. The Letters Patent issued by King George V in 1917 stipulated that Charlotte should actually go through life as a ‘Lady’ and not as a princess.

Ancient tradition

How exactly? Well, that’s how it is. The Letters Patent specifies exactly who within the royal family receives royal titles and who does not. For example, it states that all children of the sovereign receive HRH predicates and prince or princess titles. The sovereign’s grandchildren – provided their father is a son of the monarch – are also eligible for the royal titles, as is the eldest son of the eldest son of the Prince of Wales (the heir to the British throne). Although William now bears this title, Prince Charles was still the Prince of Wales at the time. His eldest son was therefore entitled to a princely title (William), and a princely title was also reserved for his eldest son (George).

However, that was not the case for Charlotte. Judging by the Letters Patent, she had no right to be addressed as Her Royal Majesty or Princess – even if she had been born before her brother.

Queen put a stop to it

But we all know that the daughter of the Waleses does not go through life as a lady, but as a princess. According to royal historian Marlene Koenig, the Queen has taken care of that. When Kate was pregnant with her first child, the British Queen issued a Letters Patent ensuring that all children of the then-ducal family would be known as Prince or Princess.

“If Charlotte had been born first under the Letters Patent of 1917, she would have been Lady Charlotte Mountbatten-Windsor,” Koenig says. Express. This was because she was a great-granddaughter in the male line, and only the eldest son of the eldest son of the Prince of Wales was entitled to bear a HRH designation. “So the Queen has solved that little problem.” Ah!

Source: Express | Image: BrunoPress