The Prince Edward seems to have made a habit of collecting new titles on his birthdays. For the occasion of his wedding in 1999 he was ennobled as Earl of Wessex and Viscount Severn. These both refer to places in England, in contrast with the normal convention for royal peerages. On his fifty-fifth birthday he gained a surprise Scottish title – Earl of Forfar – and then for his fifty-ninth he gained another, long-awaited and far more prestigious one – Duke of Edinburgh. Now that his primary title refers to a Scottish place – and the capital at that – it would seem a little strange for him not to join Scotland’s highest order of chivalry.

It was not exactly surprising, then, to learn that on his sixtieth birthday he had been appointed an Extra Knight of the Order of the Thistle. In this category he joins his nephew the Duke of Rothesay and his sisters the Queen and the Princess Royal. We can expect that soon his banner of arms will be hung alongside theirs at the High Kirk in his namesake city.

The King also announced three new appointments among the ordinary membership of the order – the Baroness Black of Strome, the Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws and Sir Godfrey “Geoff” Palmer – all of whom, curiously, have academic careers. This brings the order up to its full complement of sixteen members (excluding royals). It is unusual for all the appointments to be made today as traditionally they are announced on 18th June.

Finally, a concurrent press release confirmed that the duke had been appointed to a second term as Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, a post which he last held in 2014-15. In the Scottish order of precedence he will rank immediately below the sovereign himself, rather than his natural precedence as a brother thereof.