- Mountbatten
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Coat of arms of the chief of family
Shield of the House of Mountbatten (coat of arms of Prince Henry of Battenberg)Mountbatten is the family name originally adopted by a branch of the Battenberg family due to rising anti-German sentiment among the British public during World War I. On 14 July 1917 Prince Louis of Battenberg ("Prince Louis I") assumed the surname Mountbatten (having rejected an alternative translation, "Battenhill")[1][verification needed] for himself and his descendants, and was created Marquess of Milford Haven.[2] The name is an Anglicisation of the German Battenberg, a small town in Hesse. The title of count of Battenberg, later prince of Battenberg, was granted to a morganatic branch of the House of Hesse-Darmstadt in the mid 19th century.
Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, the consort of now-Queen Elizabeth II, adopted the surname of Mountbatten from his mother's family in 1947, although he is a member of the House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg by patrilineal descent.
Contents
Current holder of the marquessate
The current head of the Mountbatten family is George Mountbatten, 4th Marquess of Milford Haven, Prince Louis I's great-grandson, who was born in London on 6 June 1961.[3] He has a son named Henry, born in 1991.[4]
Notable Mountbattens
The sons of Princess Beatrice and Louis's brother, Prince Henry of Battenberg — Prince Alexander and Prince Leopold — also took the new surname, with Alexander being made Marquess of Carisbrooke.[5]
Prince Henry of Battenberg's eldest daughter, Carisbrooke's sister, Queen Ena of Spain, never assumed the English form, however.[6]
The best-known of Prince Louis I's descendants were his youngest son, Admiral Lord Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, and the former's grandson, son of Louis's daughter Princess Alice of Battenberg: Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who is now husband of Queen Elizabeth II.[7] Another daughter to Louis I, sister to Princess Alice and to the Earl Mountbatten of Burma, and aunt to the Duke of Edinburgh, was Queen Louise of Sweden.[citation needed]
Prior to his marriage in 1882 Prince Louis I had an affair with the actress Lillie Langtry. According to his grandson the Earl Mountbatten of Burma, Louis was the father of Langtry's only child, Jeanne Marie Langtry, born some months later.[8] However, other sources indicate another putative father.
The Royal Mountbattens
In 1952, on the accession of Queen Elizabeth II, there was a belief that certain members of the Mountbatten family wished to change the name of the Windsor dynasty to Mountbatten. Queen Mary (the new Queen's grandmother) expressed her aversion to this idea to the then Prime Minister Winston Churchill.[citation needed]
Queen Mary's objection was partly based on the fact that Prince Philip was in fact a Prince of Greece and Denmark by birth, the son of Prince Andrew of Greece, and only descended from the Battenberg family through his mother, Princess Alice of Battenberg.[9] He was a member of the sovereign, originally ducal, House of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, which had attained royal status in Denmark (1863), Greece (1863), and Norway (1905). Prince Philip had only taken the more "English-sounding" surname of Mountbatten, a translation of his mother's original German name, when joining the Royal Navy, on the advice of his ambitious uncle, Earl Mountbatten.[10] Queen Mary was also of the generation which considered a morganatic surname—the Battenberg family is a morganatic branch of the House of Hesse-Darmstadt—to carry some stigma, and therefore did not want it to be the name of the British Royal House. Her attitude may have been influenced by her own origins; although Queen Mary's mother was a British royal princess, her father, Francis, Duke of Teck, was the child of a morganatic marriage, and for most of his life carried only the honorific Serene Highness. As such, he was considered somewhat declassé by strict royalists, something that may have rankled Queen Mary to some degree.[citation needed]
Winston Churchill raised the matter in Parliament where it was decided that the name of the Royal House would remain Windsor, as decreed in perpetuity by Queen Mary's husband, King George V.[citation needed] The principle of strict patrilineality was applied in the succession of Queen Victoria, of the House of Hanover, whose offspring were of the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, or Wettin, after their father, Prince Albert. In such a hypothetical case, the proper name of the House of Windsor would become Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg at the succession of Queen Elizabeth II by one of her descendants.
However, under an ambiguously worded Order in Council issued in 1960, the name Mountbatten-Windsor is apparently the personal surname of some of the descendants of Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip. It differs from the official name of the British Royal Family or Royal House, which remains Windsor.[11][not in citation given]
The change of surname obviously does not apply to members of the royal family not descended from Prince Philip—the Dukes of Gloucester and Kent, for example.
The Order specifically applies to those descendants of the Queen and Prince Philip not holding Royal styles and titles but in practice it is used by all, as exemplified at the marriages of the Prince of Wales and the Princess Royal, when both used Mountbatten-Windsor in their entries in the marriage registers.[12][unreliable source?]
See also
- Battenberg family
- Mountbatten-Windsor
- Mountbatten class hovercraft
- Mountbatten Medal
- The Mountbatten School And Language College
- Mountbatten Internship Programme
References
- ^ Hough, p.317[verification needed]
- ^ Duffy, Michael. "Who's Who: Prince Louis of Battenberg." 6 Mar. 2004.Prince Louis of Battenberg Biography. First World War.com. Retrieved on 16 July 2007
- ^ Lundy, Darryl. “thePeerage.com.” 15 May 2006. George Ivar Louis Mountbatten, 4th Marquess of Milford. Retrieved on 16 July 2007.
- ^ Lundy, Darryl. “thePeerage.com.” 10 May 2003. Henry Mountbatten, Earl of Medina. Retrieved on 16 July 2007.
- ^ Mills, T.F. “Land Forces of Britain.” 25 Sept. 2004. H.R.H. Prince Alexander, Marquess of Carisbrooke. regiments.org. Retrieved on 16 July 2007.
- ^ Mills, T.F. “Land Forces of Britain.” 1 July 2003. H.M. Ena Queen of Spain. regiments.org. Retrieved on 16 July 2007.
- ^ “H.R.H. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.” Members of the Royal Family. The Royal Family. Retrieved on 16 July 2007.
- ^ Daily Telegraph, 27 September 1978; Evening News, 23 October 1978
- ^ “50 Facts about the Duke of Edinburgh.” The Queen’s Golden Jubilee. The Royal Family. Retrieved on 16 July 2007.
- ^ Buyers, Christopher. Mills, T.F. “Land Forces of Britain.” 2 Mar. 2006. H.R.H. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. regiments.com. Retrieved on 16 July 2007.
- ^ “Kings and Queens of the United Kingdom.” The House of Windsor. The Royal Family. Retrieved on 16 July 2007.
- ^ "In Memory Of Diana Frances (Princess of Wales) Mountbatten-Windsor." Online Tribute. The Eternal Portal. Retrieved on 18 July 2007.
External links
Categories:- House of Battenberg
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