header-logo header-logo

Commoners & kings

14 December 2018 / Michael L Nash
Issue: 7821 / Categories: Features
printer mail-detail

​Michael Nash explores how far the customs & conventions of the Royal Family have evolved

Two weddings and two royal biographies* this year seem to have lifted the Royal Family into yet another circle of democratisation, a movement which began in the last third of the nineteenth century. But the question remains: does the public want the Royal Family to be like the rest of us? Surely their whole raison d’etre is to be different, to be other, to be ‘on another planet’?

In modern times the question has not gone beyond marriages to the aristocracy, something begun by Queen Victoria in 1871 and confirmed by George V in his various Letters Patent in 1917. The marriage of Princess Louise to the Marquess of Lorne in 1871 was the first non-royal marriage since Stuart times, if one excludes various mésalliances of the Hanoverian princes. It was popular though, simply because the princess was not marrying yet another German. The princess was given away by her own mother, the queen, her father being dead. Queen Victoria was

If you are not a subscriber, subscribe now to read this content
If you are already a subscriber sign in
...or Register for two weeks' free access to subscriber content

MOVERS & SHAKERS

DWF—19 appointments

DWF—19 appointments

Belfast team bolstered by three senior hires and 16 further appointments

Cadwalader—Andro Atlaga

Cadwalader—Andro Atlaga

Firm strengthens leveraged finance team with London partner hire

Knights—Ella Dodgson & Rebecca Laffan

Knights—Ella Dodgson & Rebecca Laffan

Double hire marks launch of family team in Leeds

NEWS
Bea Rossetto of the National Pro Bono Centre makes the case for ‘General Practice Pro Bono’—using core legal skills to deliver life-changing support, without the need for niche expertise—in this week's NLJ
In this week's NLJ, Steven Ball of Red Lion Chambers unpacks how advances in forensic science finally unmasked Ryland Headley, jailed in 2025 for the 1967 rape and murder of 75-year-old Louisa Dunne. Preserved swabs and palm prints lay dormant for decades until DNA-17 profiling produced a billion-to-one match
Artificial intelligence may be revolutionising the law, but its misuse could wreck cases and careers, warns Clare Arthurs of Penningtons Manches Cooper in this week's NLJ
The Supreme Court issued a landmark judgment in July that overturned the convictions of Tom Hayes and Carlo Palombo, once poster boys of the Libor and Euribor scandal. In NLJ this week, Neil Swift of Peters & Peters considers what the ruling means for financial law enforcement
Writing in NLJ this week, Victoria Rylatt and Robyn Laye of Anthony Gold Solicitors examine recent international relocation cases where allegations of domestic abuse shaped outcomes
back-to-top-scroll