This is the old one, obviously.

A mere thirty-two months into the New Carolean era, a new Great Seal of the Realm has been unveiled. The design is largely the same as the version made for Elizabeth II in 2001 – the obverse shows the monarch enthroned, the reverse shows the royal armorial achievement (as illustrated by Noad).

Noad’s heraldic drawing is well-known by now. The depiction of Charles on the front* has attracted some criticism: The King is, as at his actual coronation, wearing trousers rather than the more traditional stockings, and his shoes appear to jut out too much. Personally, I think they resemble the feet of 2006-era Cybermen. It is also notable that the crown shown on the monarch’s head is the idealised depiction of the Tudor crown, as opposed to the Imperial State Crown or the Crown of St Edward which he wore at the coronation itself.

The inscription around the outer rim is CHARLES III DEI GRATIA BRITANNIARUM REGNORUMQUE SUORIMQUE CETERORUM REX COSORTIONIS POPULARUM PRINCEPS FID DEF.

This is the official Latin equivalent of CHARLES III BY THE GRACE OF GOD OF THE UNITED KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN AND NORTHERN IRELAND AND OF HIS OTHER REALMS AND TERRITORIES KING HEAD OF THE COMMONWEALTH DEFENDER OF THE FAITH, and the formulation is similar to that used by British sovereigns for centuries, though even I, eleven years on from having formally studied Latin, can see that it is not a perfectly literal translation.

Judging by the talk pages for both the English and Latin Wikipedias, it is clear I am not the only one to notice this. Britanniarum Regnorum just means “Kingdom of the Britains”** with no specific reference to Hibernia Septentrionalis.

Oddly it seems that the seals used from 1930 to 1953 actually did specify MAG BR and  HIB, short for Magnae Britanniae and Hiberniae as distinct items, but seals used both before and after do not. Uniti does not appear in any of them. The exact name in English of the polity ruling these isles has, of course, gone through many changes due to the evolution of our constitutional arrangements and is very confusing even to natives, but it is interesting to note that the Latin title doesn’t exactly move in step with the English one.

The use of Consortionis Populorum Princeps to mean Head of the Commonwealth of Nations is also a bit odd – “princeps” is of course whence we derive the words “prince” and “principal”, but it originally meant “chief” or “first in rank”. “Consortio Populorum” (“Partnership of the Peoples”?) is probably used because a more literal translation would probably be something more like “Respublica”, but of course in modern English (or British English at any rate), the words commonwealth and republic have diverged almost entirely to where the former means an organisation headed by a monarch and the latter means precisely not that.

Perhaps it is fitting that this event should take place just as a new Pope emerges – we’ll be seeing a lot of official Latin in use very soon!

*The many news articles I have found relating to this story all seem to be nearly word-for-word the same, and none of them identify the portrait artist.
**This is distinct from “King of the Britons”, which would be “Regnum Brittanorum”