Part II
Am posting three blog entries today, the film review on Uncle Frank was written third and has nothing to do with the others. The Crown review was written first and this one was written second. But I don't think it matters which one you read first, so I'm not going to fuss. I add this bit of information just in case something turns out to be out of order.
Happy Thanksgiving!
At dinner the other night, when discussing Season 4 of The Crown, my Japanese spouse commented in passing that he has trouble distinguishing (or caring about) the different ranks of the peerage, and that sent me to google "peerage" after dinner, since I don't have a real grasp of the differences myself. Next thing I know, a week has gone by and I'm still at it. Not full time. I'm not totally mad, but a good part of each day. For a time I got distracted by all sorts of trivia, how Victoria wasn’t perhaps not the prissy tight-ass I thought she was, but a great lover of life who fell madly in love with a her cousin Albert, had nine children with him, and then went nearly frantic when he up and died on her at the age of 42. But then went on to have erotic, but probably platonic, relations with two more men later in life. See Judy Dench play Victoria in Mrs. Brown, for one of those stories. And check out the story of her lover? called “the Munshi”, for the other.
I decided at one point in my life that 42 was the perfect age for a man - old enough to have worked out the foolishness of youth, but still young and vigorous enough to be able to get the most out of life. For Victoria to have lost her lover/husband at 42 strikes me as an act of pure cruelty on the part of a divinity, I should think, if I’m going to blame the gods, and not the abstract notion of fate, for such a turn of events.
And speaking of being f***ed by the fickle finger of fate, as I was in the last blog entry, I spent a day or more tracking the life of Victoria and Albert’s youngest grandchild, Prince Charles Edward, Duke of Albany. Because Victoria and Albert were both of the house of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Victoria tapped Charles Edward at the age of fourteen to go to Germany and become the Duke of Saxe-Coburg. Imagine sending a boy still wet behind the ears off to a hostile country where he doesn’t speak the language and where he is destined to be an outsider, to military school where he would be expected to prove his manhood by marching in the ice and snow, under the tutelage of his much older cousin, the pompous twit who became Kaiser Wilhelm II. Enough to drive anyone mad. Caught up in the English/German mutual hostility of the First World War, Charles Edward went off the deep end. The English cut off his English titles because he was now German, the Germans took away his German title in 1918 when Germany became a Republic. Freaked him out. Fearful, like many Germans, of a Russian takeover, he joined forces with Hitler and became convinced, bad as Hitler was, he had more to offer the Germans than any alternative, democracy being a virtual unknown phenomenon. Americans who followed Trump are in no position to throw stones at that glass house, but what a legacy to give to your children.
It’s easy to blame Prince Charles for being annoyed at his wife, Diana, for stealing his thunder, and at having to wait so long to be king. And Charles Edward for not being able to see that supporting a leader that was euthanizing the mentally ill and ultimately the cause of the greatest misery in modern times. But how does one find the courage to step out of the role the gods (or grandmother Queen Victoria) determines you must play?
Love this game of historical trivia.
And at the risk of being a party pooper and dwelling on the obvious, I don't want to suggest that I'm a fan of monarchy and gossiping about royals. I'm not. I slept in a bedroom in Nova Scotia as a kid with a picture of Queen Victoria on the wall, and I know how what I'm about to do in dwelling even for a moment on the peerage suggests I too can get suckered in by the human folly of dressing their little girls up as princesses and fantasizing about being the focus of sycophants. Trust me. That's not it. I am as familiar with the seven years of famine Ireland suffered under Victoria and the entire history of the British subjugation of India as I am with the fact that Hitler and Goering loved dogs and children. This is a parlor game I'm engaging in, not a sign of affection. A distraction not unlike a jigsaw puzzle in the time of plague.
With that let me turn to what I'm calling my "high school term paper."
I doubt what follows will capture that many eyeballs, but just in case you happen to be curious, I’m posting my notes, and inviting friends to correct me where I might have gone astray of the facts, or put a slant on something that rubs you the wrong way. Please do chime in with comments:
Dukes and Viscounts and Earls, and all that...
As a New Englander raised with a consciousness of my English-Canadian roots and as a native speaker of English, I feel a closer connection to Britain than any nation outside my own, with Germany coming in as Number Two because I was raised by a German-born mother and grandmother. So when asked by my Japanese husband to explain what it is about The Crown that has such a power to draw me in, I went directly to the British class system and peerage - the hierarchy of folk from ruling monarch to least powerful commoner that gives even Americans their basic understanding of a class structure. So let me start there, by using the British class structure as a foundation and tossing in German and other European terms for purposes of contrast.
It’s more a high school book report on the British nobility, than a serious study. As I say, I prepared for my Japanese husband ignoring the fact that he almost certainly will tune out within the first three to five minutes of my presentation. I press on all the same. We’re in Covid lockdown. What can I say?
Another name for the House of Lords is the House of Peers and “the peerage” is a synonym for “the nobility,” those who rank below royalty but above commoners. It is open to anybody with a title.
If you see yourself as something other than a common man or woman, you are one of the following, moving from top to bottom in a British sort of way:
Emperor - a title derived from the Roman Emperor (Imperator) Augustus and his successors, a man who is, except in the days when the Christian pope took prominence, was subject to no other earthly authority. An emperor holds sway over an empire, a unit comprised of multiple kingdoms. He contrasts with a king who holds sway over a single kingdom. Not really a British thing. It was proposed that George III take the title, but he thought being king was quite enough, thank you. Victoria was OK with being Empress of India, but she didn’t actually use it elsewhere.
Empress - there are three types of empresses:
Empress Regnant, equivalent to an Emperor, if she rules in her own right;
Empress Consort, if she acquires the title by means of marriage to an Emperor
Empress Dowager, if she is the mother of an Emperor
Only one emperor exists at present, the Emperor of Japan, a man without actual political authority. Japan does not currently allow for a female to take the imperial throne.
Historically, emperors may be elected, as was the case in the days of the Holy Roman Empire, or they may be seen to derive their authority as direct descendants of the Roman Empire, by means of a process known as translatio imperii. Once in power, though, an emperor tends pass on the job to his heirs.
The German equivalent was the Kaiser, a word derived from Caesar. There were only ever three of them:
Wilhelm I (1871–1888);
Friedrich III (9 March-15 June 1888), who ruled for 99 days;
Wilhelm II (1888–1918), during whose reign the monarchy in Germany ended near the end of World War I
The Russian equivalent was the Tsar, sometimes written Czar, also derived from Caesar, in power until 1917, when Tsar Nicholas and his family were slaughtered by the Bolsheviks.
Britain became an empire when Victoria declared herself Empress of India in 1876 and stopped being an actual empire in 1947 when India and Pakistan were given independence, making George VI and his wife Elizabeth the last British Emperor and Empress; their daughter, the current Queen Elizabeth, never used the title Empress, although the “British Empire” persisted de facto until Hong Kong was returned to China in 1997 and the term was replaced by “British Commonwealth,” a body of sixteen nations of equal status. Historically, however, it was also in use between 960 A.D. when Athelstan declared himself emperor, and 1066 when authority was assumed by the Norman invaders.
Basileus - βασιλεύς - (plural: basileis) the Greek equivalent of king or emperor, in use in the Byzantine Empire. The feminine forms are basileia (βασίλεια), basilis (βασιλίς), basilissa (βασίλισσα), or the archaic basilinna (βασιλίννα), meaning "queen" or "empress." As with an emperor, authority was seen to derive by means of translatio imperii from ancient times, in this case the Byzantine Empire.
King - also King Regnant (reigning king)
There are currently three kings who are reigning as absolute monarchs: in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and Eswatini; and twelve kings who are heads of sovereign states: Norway, Sweden, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, Jordan, Morocco, Thailand, Bhutan, Cambodia, Tonga and Lesotho.
The word is derived from the Germanic kuningas, as are the words for king in other Germanic languages. Other titles around the world which translate as “king” include: Archon, Basileus, Lugal, Kabaka. Mepe, Malik, Melekh, Mwami, Negus, Oba, Raja, Rex, Rí, Shah and Tagavor.
Queen - as with Empress, there are three types of queens
Queen Regnant, when ruling in her own right. There is only one at present: Queen Elizabeth II of the British Commonwealth.
Queen Consort, the wife of a “king regnant,” a reigning king
Dowager Queen, also known as the Queen Mother, the widow of a king.
While the wife of a king make take the ceremonial title of “Queen Consort,” the husband of a queen regnant may not take “king” as a ceremonial title. Both Queen Victoria’s and the current Queen Elizabeth’s husbands were given the title, “Prince Consort.”
Prince
A prince, in Britain, may refer to a “royal prince,” a dynastic cadet, the son of a king or queen, or their direct heirs, or to a “prince consort,” such as Prince Philip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth II. The title may also refer to a “sovereign prince,” the reigning monarch of a principality, a territory smaller than a kingdom, as is the case in Liechtenstein and Monaco. This distinction is captured in the two words in German and Dutch which translate into “prince” in English: “Prinz/prins,” a royal prince, and Fürst/Vorst, a sovereign prince. Heir to the throne, Prince Charles, and Prince Albert of Monaco are rendered in German and Dutch as Prinz/prins Charles and Fürst/Vorst Albert. The Scandinavian and the Slavic languages make the same distinction. It’s worth noting that in some cases a Fürst can outrank a duke and in other cases it’s the other way around. In Britain, a prince always outranks a duke. It’s also worth mentioning that “prince” and “Fürst” are not totally parallel concepts, since the term Fürst, in German, can be used in the sense of “monarch,” i.e., to refer to a king, as well.
To make matters more complicated, princes (like Prince Charles) can also be dukes (Prince Charles = Duke of Cambridge) and members of the nobility can hold several noble ranks simultaneously. Prince Charles’ son, William, is simultaneously Prince William, the Duke of Cambridge, the Earl of Strathearn and Baron Carrickfergus. Normally one uses the highest rank as title and the others are treated as honorary titles.
In the Middle East, the equivalent of a principality is an emirate, the ruling monarch of which is called an emir. Additionally, from the 16th century onward, kings in France created principalities rules by princes outside the normal succession to a monarchy and with no link to a royal family.
Princess
The daughter of a king or queen or the wife of a prince. (And note the parallel titles of Fürstin, etc., the equivalent in other languages for princess.)
Duke
A duke, in Britain and in Continental Europe, may be an actual male ruler of a duchy or sovereign of another small state or territory or he may hold the title only ceremonially. His status, known as a dukedom, is the highest ranking noble status, second only to that of a king, and just above the next rank down, that of a marquess. A royal duke is considered a monarch.
A dukedom is an inherited title, passed from father to son. It is a title commonly given to princes when they marry, but may be given to them at any time. Each dukedom is created for a particular individual, who takes his name from the territory the original duke of the line was granted with the first bequeathing of the title. At the death of a duke without an heir, the title may be transferred to a relative or it may become extinct. Today, the titles are honorary only (they don’t come with land), and are limited in number. There are currently five royal dukedoms in use; sixteen remain available.
At the time of Elizabeth II’s coronation, there were only 28 non-royal dukedoms left. And that number is now down to 24. Victoria created the last one in 1889, so non-royal dukedoms are on their way out.
Outside of Britain, as well, as democracy has spread to more and more countries, modern states have eliminated the title, although dukedoms may still be found in Austria, Bohemia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Greece, Italy (including the Papal States), Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.
The word is derived from the Latin dux/ducis (Greek δούξ), meaning “leader.” Romance languages use some variant of duc or duca. Germanic languages, as well as other Eastern European languages use Herzog or some variant (Old English heretoga; derived from heri ‘army’ + ziohan ‘to lead; Swedish: hertig) and the Slavic languages use voivoda or some variant. These terms create the image of a warrior king and his generals, modified by being brought into the salon, but “leaders” all the same.
A duchy, when not part of a larger kingdom but an independent territory in its own right, may be called a “Grand Duchy” - Luxembourg is an example and governed by “Grand Duke”
Duchess
A duchess is the wife or widow or daughter of a duke, or a woman holding the rank of duke in her own right.
Marquess/Margrave
A marquess (pronounced “mar-kwiss”), marquis in French, Markgraf in German, is the governor of a border country, known as a “march,” (“marche” in French, “Mark” in German) or marquessate or margraviate, just as a count is the governor of a county. The medieval term was margrave. ,A marquess/margrave outranks a count because a border county is more essential to the defence of a kingdom, and a marquess was therefore likely to be wealthier and have more troops at his disposal. “Mark” appears in the name of the country of Denmark (Danish: Danmark) as well as in Norway’s border county with Finland, “Finnmark” and in the county (not a border county this time) Telemark, also in Norway. Italian: marchese, Spanish: marqués, Portuguese: marquês
Marquess is also the term used to translate Turkish “uç beyi ”, Persian “marzban” as well as the nobility of several East Asian countries. [side note: the origin of the word for the almond treat “marzipan” is highly contested. Some claim it originates from the Persian “marzban.” Only the great Spaghetti Monster knows why.]
Margravine/Marchioness
The wife or widow of a margrave/marquess.
Earl/Count
“Earl” is English, and the Old English eorl is cognate with the Scandinavian jarl, which is usually translated “chieftain.” The continental equivalent is count. An earl, or count, ranks below a marquess and above a viscount. Hughes, Geoffrey (26 March 1998), in Swearing: A Social History of Foul Language, Oaths and Profanity in English, Penguin Books, puts forth the explanation that when the Normans invaded in 1066 and brought the French language with them, the Anglo-Saxons decided to stick with the Germanic term eorl because the French term count was phonetically too close to the word cunt.
An “earldom” can be either the rank or title of an earl, or the territory under his governance, although the title eventually became disassociated with territory.
Countess
The wife or widow of a count or an earl. There is no female match for earl. Countesses become countesses by marrying a count/earl, although in Scotland, the title can be inherited.
A count/earl or a countess is addressed as “Your Excellency.”
Viscount
Pronounced “vigh-count,” i.e., the ‘s’ is not pronounced. The next rank down from Count, a “vice-count” is a non-hereditary position. A “shire” was the Anglo-Saxon designation equivalent to the Norman “county,” and the Anglo-Saxon “shire-reev” (from which the word “sheriff” is derived) is more or less equivalent to the French “vicomte.” The office is known as a “viscountcy.” There are currently about 270 viscountcies in Britain today.
The title is often conferred upon the children of counts/earls as a “courtesy title.” The children of a viscount are known as The Honourable [Forename] [Surname], with the exception of the eldest child of a Scottish viscount, whose eldest child may be styled as "The Honourable Master of [X]".
A viscount in Portugal is a visconde and in Spain, a vizconde. In Germanic languages (and others in Eastern Europe) there is another rank considered on par with viscount, that of a “burgrave” (German: Burggraf, i.e., “castle count”) Swedish burggrefve, then burggreve; Polish: burgrabia; Czech: purkrabi (an office abolished in 1848). The territory he ruled over was known as a burgraviate - German Burggrafschaft, Latin praefectura.
Viscountess/Burgravine (German Burggräfin)
The wife or widow of a viscount, or a holder of that title in her own right.
Advocatus
In France, but not in Britain, an advocatus ranked between the rank of compte/vicomte, governor (and his assistant) of a county and a baron, governor of a barony. Equivalents existed in Germany (Vogt), the Netherlands, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Poland, Finland, Lithuania, and Romania. Origin of the word in most European languages for “lawyer.”
Baron
The fifth, and lowest ranked member of the British peerage, after duke, marquess, earl, and viscount. A title limited to primogeniture (inherited by the firstborn son only) in Britain, but passed on to all sons in the rest of Europe.
Also “Freiherr” in German, friherre in Swedish, Norwegian and Danish, vapaaherra in Finnish. Titles are still used in some circles socially, but the nobility has been disbanded officially and their descendants have no status or effect in law.
The title of a baron is a barony. When imported from France after the Norman invasion, not originally a noble rank, but merely used to identify those in service to the king. By the 20th century, when Britain introduced the notion of “non-hereditary life peers,” barons were members of the peerage, and addressed as “Noble Lord.”
Baroness
The female equivalent of a baron.
Knight
Originally a warrior of distinction on a horse, hence the association with terms such chivalry, cavalier (and in other European languages: caballero, chevalier, Ritter, Ridder).Today, a title of distinction conferred by a monarch for notable achievement. A title of merit, in other words, and not inherited or heritable. A knighted person is addressed as “Sir” or “Dame” plus given name, or full name (and not as “sir/dame” plus family name only.) The status is known as a knighthood/damehood.
Dame
The female equivalent of a knight.
Baronet
A baronet is a modern title, invented as a money-generating device, and the title is normally purchased. Baronets (the status is known as a baronetcy) are legally commoners in Britain, and not entitled to sit in the House of Lords.
The title of baronet, it turns out, is not the only title that can be purchased. Check out this possibility, if you’re the type to boast about your degree from the University of Phoenix or Liberty University or Trump University and if you don’t mind being laughed out of town by real nobles.
Baronetess
There are four baronetcies held by women in their own right. Otherwise a baronetess is the wife of a baronet.
Lord/Lady
General non-rank-specific title given to persons in Britain of “high birth”: earls, marquesses, viscounts, barons and baroness and the younger sons of a duke, and their female equivalents, as well as other persons of authority such as judges.
France
France has as many noble titles today as it did at the time of the French Revolution, about 4000 so-called “noble families,” and between 50,000 and 100,000 so-called “nobles,” although as in other democratic countries, they have no legal status. They are allowed to carry on as if their rank mattered to the common person and not just to snobs and other social climbers.
France once had a number of titles down at the bottom, in the categories below baron, sometimes referred to as “gentry” or as “petty nobility.” Those include:
Chevalier: an otherwise untitled nobleman who belonged to an order of chivalry;
Écuyer: "Squire" and literally: "shield bearer"): lowest specific rank in the nobility, to which the vast majority of untitled nobles were entitled; also called valet or noble homme in certain regions.
Gentilhomme: lowest non-specific rank indicating nobility.
Seigneur ("Lord of the manor" and literally: "lord"): term for the untitled owner of a feudal property; strictly, neither a title nor a rank, it indicated that a landlord's property had certain noble rights attached, although properly it did not indicate the owner was noble, especially after the 17th century.
And last, and most assuredly least,
Bâtard: recognized bastard son of a gentleman or nobleman. A bastard could not usually inherit a title (if any claimants of legitimate birth existed) but could be employed in their father's retinue.
Others
Europe’s iron curtain countries abolished all titles of nobility starting with the October Revolution, and many countries have followed suit: Mexico, Greece and Austria have abolished both the conferral of titles and their use as well. Other countries, such as Germany and Italy still allow one to inherit titles, but they give those with them no special legal status. Finland and Norway, too, allow you to keep your title, but without any attached privileges. France has a law
Germany has you incorporate your title into your family name. Finland, Norway and t
Various republics, including former Iron Curtain countries, Greece, Mexico, and Austria have expressly abolished the conferral and use of titles of nobility for their citizens. This is distinct from countries which have not abolished the right to inherit titles, but which do not grant legal recognition or protection to them, such as Germany and Italy, although Germany recognizes their use as part of the legal surname. Still other countries and authorities allow their use, but forbid attachment of any privilege to go along with it.
In the United States, establishment of a nobility is prohibited by the Title of Nobility Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
Japan
When the Tokugawa Shogunate, which had ruled Japan since 1600, was overthrown in 1868 and the Emperor Meiji was restored to the throne, the old nobility, the Kuge (公家), was restored as well and merged with the daimyo (大名), the feudal lords, to create a new aristocracy consisting of 427 families. They were replaced in 1869 by a Japanese peerage, known as the kazoku (華族), which remained in place until the 1947 Constitution of Japan abolished the kazoku and ended the use of all titles of nobility or rank outside the immediate Imperial Family.
Under the Peerage Act of 7 July 1884, pushed through by Home Minister and future first Prime Minister Itō Hirobumi after visiting Europe, the Meiji government expanded the hereditary peerage with the award of kazoku status to persons regarded as having performed distinguished public services to the nation. The government also divided the kazoku into five ranks explicitly based on the British peerage, but with titles deriving from the ancient Chinese nobility:
Those ranks were:
Prince, the equivalent of a Duke (公爵, kōshaku)
Count, the equivalent of an Earl (伯爵, hakushaku)
Although the titles are no longer, many descendants of the kazoku families continue to occupy prominent roles in Japanese society and industry to the present day, without any special legal status.
Korea
Korea too had a traditional monarchy and an accompanying aristocracy until the time of the Japanese Occupation, which ran from 1910 until the defeat of the Japanese in World War II in 1945. South Korean independence enabled the installation of a Constitution that adopted a republic system in which the concept of nobility was abolished, both formally and in practice.
China
The Republican Revolution of 1911 ended the official imperial system that had existed for centuries in China. Although some noble families maintained their titles and social status for a time, the wars and the political and economic upheavals, and particularly the introduction of a communist ideology forced their decline. Today, the nobility as a class has virtually disappeared.
References include, but are not limited to, the following:
https://nobilitytitles.net/nobility-articles/the-hierarchy-of-european-nobility.html
http://www.lysator.liu.se/nordic/mirror2/titlefaq.htm
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