Subtext and Culture, Young Royals, What's in a name?
I thought I was done, but I have material for one more post. I want to write more about how royal names work, because I've seen a lot of confusion and simple lack of knowledge in the tags, so think of this as more of an informative culture post than an analysis post of the show.
European royals and nobles have styles, names, titles, and houses. In addition, monarchs have regnal names.
A style is how you formally address someone, based on their rank and title. In Sweden, the only styles left are "majesty" and "royal higness", where kings and queens are addressed as "your majesty", and select members of the royal family are addressed as "your royal highness". In Swedish, these styles are often abbreviated as H.M. - Hans/Hennes Majestät and H.K.H. - Hans/Hennes Kungliga Höghet. In English, the abbreviations are HM and HRH.
In the show, you can see this when Simon meets the Queen, and shakily addresses her as "Your Majesty", or when Minou calls up August and says "Her Majesty the Queen has resolved your problems with the school fee".
In less formal, but still polite speech, you would use third person addressing when talking to or about the royals, and there are numerous examples of this in the show:
Anette to Erik: "How nice to see the crown prince again!"
Some aide to Wilhelm: "Could we get a shot of the prince shaking hands with the headmistress?"
Anette: "Wilhelm, sorry, the crown prince, how nice the memorial was!"
August: "The queen has asked me, personally, to take care of him."
Malin: "I just wanted to remind the crown prince that breakfast closes in five minutes."
Names for royals and nobles work just like the rest of us, but with one exception: Royals generally do not use last names, while lesser nobles do. They also tend to have several first names, and while they generally pick names for their children based on trends in society, they stay on the traditional conservative side, and they often pick names from their family history.
The show only tells us one first name for each member of the royal family: Kristina, Ludvig, Erik, and Wilhelm, so we have no idea what other names they might have.
In the real world, the name of the king of Sweden is Carl Gustaf Folke Hubertus, the crown princess' name is Victoria Ingrid Alice Désirée, and her oldest daughter's name is Estelle Silvia Ewa Mary, just to give you some flavour of what it could look like.
Titles are what sets higher nobles apart from us mere commoners, and have their origin in the feudal system of medieval Europe, which was a hierarchical socio-economic-military system where the lord of a land could grant a portion of his land, a fief, to a vassal in exchange for fealty - loyalty, taxes, and military service. Doing so would create a title, it would make the vassal a noble of a lower rank than his lord, because you could only create titles lower than the one you possessed. So, in general, kings could create dukes or lower, dukes could create counts or lower, and counts could create barons. The fief of a duke is called a duchy, a count ruled over a county, and a baron over a barony, although there were more ranks and more titles than that, depending on region and language, but those are the main ones.
Every single squabble or conflict or battle or civil war or war fought in the middle ages was over the titles, because the titles legally conferred ownership of a piece of land, and with it the rights of taxation and the economic value of that land. Over time, kingdoms got more centralized and the hierarchical nature of the system broke down, while the titles became more hereditary, and ownership of the land became less important, which meant that minor nobles lost the power to create vassals and fiefs, while the power to create titles was reserved for the monarchs, and titles created in this era usually only granted people a title for an area or a castle or a manor house that they already owned.
Going into modern times, European countries curbed title creation, but generally kept protections for existing titles and allowing them to be inherited according to whatever inheritance rules applied to each title. But if a title holder dies without a legal heir, the title is lost forever, which means that most modern day noble families want to make sure their title, their history, their legacy can survive long into the future. Also note that one person can hold several titles, and each of those titles can be inherited individually and under different rules.
In Sweden, there are currently 46 comital families (greve/grevinna - count/countess), 131 baronial families (friherre/friherrinna - baron/baroness), and 484 untitled lower noble families. There are no independent ducal families, instead the monarch grants royal children a ceremonial duchy at birth, for one of the 25 historical provinces of Sweden. This means that every single member of the Swedish royal family is a prince or princess of Sweden, and also duke or duchess of some province.
Again, we have no idea what province Wilhelm is the duke of in the show, while for example in the real Sweden, Princess Estelle is the duchess of Östergötland, Prince Carl Philip is duke of Värmland, and Princess Leonore is duchess of Gotland.
A noble house is a noble family or clan that is associated with one or more hereditary titles. Noble houses were founded when someone was ennobled and granted a title, and a noble house can branch and wither and split and form new houses over the ages, and it can gain or lose status as its members gain or lose noble titles and ranks.
In medieval times, these family bonds were very strong, and many major conflicts were a result of different houses fighting over various titles, for example the Wars of the Roses was a 32 year long civil war over the throne of England between the House of York and the House of Lancaster.
A royal house is a noble house that holds a title of king or queen, and for members of the royal family, their house name is what they have instead of a normal last name. We don't know which royal house Wilhelm belongs to in the show, but the current royal house of Sweden is the House of Bernadotte, named after the French rando we imported that I wrote about in the last post. Other houses that have been the royal house of Sweden throughout history include the House of Holstein-Gottorp, the House of Oldenburg, and the House of Vasa.
Finally, a regnal name is a name that a reigning monarch chooses for themselves when they ascend the throne, and it consists of one or more of their first names, and a roman numeral ordinal if there have been previous kings or queens with that name. If you're the first of your name to rule over a kingdom, you can choose to call yourself "the first", or you can choose not to.
In the show, Kristina doesn't appear to have an ordinal, but in real life Sweden there was a Queen Kristina who reigned in the middle of the 1600's. (She was probably a lesbian, caused the death of French philosopher René Descartes, abdicated in favour of her cousin, and moved to Rome and converted to Catholicism. As you do.)
In the real world, the king of Sweden reigns under the name Carl XVI Gustaf, because he's the sixteenth (tenth, actually) Karl to have been king of Sweden, and he also picked his second name because he liked it, or because he wanted to stand out from the fifteen other Karls who preceded him. His regnal name is pronounced Carl den sextonde Gustaf - Carl the sixteenth Gustaf.
Putting all of this together, the styles, the names, the titles, and the houses, and we can finally get the full formal names of various royals. Here are examples from some European royal families to demonstrate what it can look like:
HRH Madeleine Thérèse Amelie Josephine, Princess of Sweden, Duchess of Hälsingland and Gästrikland, of house Bernadotte.
HH Felix Henrik Valdemar Christian, Prince of Denmark, Count of Monpezat, of house Glücksburg.
HRH Ingrid Alexandra, Princess of Norway, of house Glücksburg.
HRH Prince William Arthur Philip Louis, Duke of Cambridge, of house Windsor.
HRH Catharina-Amalia Beatrix Carmen Victoria, Princess of the Netherlands, Princess of Orange, of house Orange-Nassau
HRH Emmanuel Léopold Guillaume François Marie, Prince of Belgium, of house Belgium.
HRH Infanta Sofía de Todos los Santos de Borbón y Ortiz, of house Bourbon.
These names are quite the mouthful, and the full names and styles are only used in very formal settings. Normally, these people are referred to with their highest title, and their chosen first names, i.e. Princess Madeleine, Prince Felix, Princess Ingrid Alexandra, Prince William, Princess Catharina-Amalia, Prince Emmanuel, and Infanta Sofía.
We only have the short name of Wilhelm, i.e. Prince Wilhelm, in the show. We don't have his full name, but if it follows form, he would be HRH Wilhelm <Name> <Name> <Name>, Prince of Sweden, Duke of <Province>, of house <House>.
Note that Wilhelm's father is not a king, he's a prince-consort, since Wilhelm's mother is the reigning monarch. The proper styles for his parents would be Her Majesty Queen Kristina (II?), and His Royal Highness Prince Ludvig.
The only other nobles in the show we have full names for is August and Felice, and August's full name would be August <Name?> Horn, Count (or Baron) of Årnäs. Felice's would be just Felice <Name?> Ehrencrona, because her parents are still alive and still hold whatever title they have.
Commoners marrying into a royal family is no longer forbidden or controversial, and all European royal families have had commoners marrying into them in the past few generations.
Based on precedence, if Wilhelm and Simon were to get back together and marry in the future, and if they get the consent of the Queen and the government, the following would happen:
Simon would be offered to be made a prince of Sweden, and with it gain the style of HRH.
Simon would be offered to be made a duke of some province.
If he accepts, he would lose his last name, and go from Simon Eriksson to HRH Simon, Prince of Sweden, Duke of <Province>, or simply Prince Simon.
If he declines, he would stay as Mr. Simon Eriksson.
When/If Wilhelm ascends the throne, he would chose a regnal name, and get an ordinal depending on the number of Wilhelms before him. If he's the first of his name, he would simply be King Wilhelm.
And if he and Simon are married when he ascends, Simon would not become king, he would become a prince-consort, and keep the title of prince.
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Happy 46th birthday to Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden, Duchess of Västergötland!
Born on 14 July 1977, Victoria Ingrid Alice Désirée is the heir apparent to the Swedish throne, as the eldest child of King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden. If she ascends to the throne, she would be Sweden's fourth queen regnant (after Margaret, Christina and Ulrika Eleonora) and the first since 1720. Her inheritance is secured by Sweden's 1979 Act of Succession, the first law in Western Europe to adopt royal absolute primogeniture.
She was baptised at the Royal Palace Church on 27 September 1977. Her godparents included Crown Prince Harald of Norway (later king of Norway), and Princess Beatrix of the Netherlands (later queen of the Netherlands, 1980–2013).
Victoria was made crown princess on 1 January 1980 by the 1979 amendment to the Act of Succession of 1810 (Successionsordningen). This constitutional amendment introduced absolute primogeniture, meaning that the throne would be inherited by the monarch's eldest child regardless of gender. Prior to this constitutional change, the heir apparent to the throne was her younger brother, Carl Philip. He is now fourth in line to the throne, behind Victoria and her children.
On 24 February 2009, it was confirmed that permission had been granted and that Victoria would marry Daniel Westling in the summer of 2010. The wedding date was set in Stockholm Cathedral for 19 June 2010, the 34th anniversary of her parents' marriage. The couple have two children: Princess Estelle Silvia Ewa Mary, Duchess of Östergötland (11) and Prince Oscar Carl Olof, Duke of Skåne (7)
Often referred to as the "Godmother of Europe", Crown Princess Victoria is the godmother of eighteen children including: Prince Constantine Alexios of Greece and Denmark; Catharina-Amalia, Princess of Orange; Princess Ingrid Alexandra of Norway; Prince Christian of Denmark; Princess Eléonore of Belgium; Princess Katharina of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha; Princess Leonore, Duchess of Gotland; and Prince Alexander, Duke of Södermanland.
Victoria has dyslexia, as do her father King Carl XVI Gustaf and her brother Prince Carl Philip, and prosopagnosia.
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