Category Archives: Royal Family

Starmer’s Sunday Surprise

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I wonder how long it took to get those signs printed.

International affairs continue to move at a dizzying pace. Far from being able to write comprehensive essays about events, it’s as much as I can do to keep up with the photographs being uploaded.

Shortly after meeting President Trump individually, Starmer, Macron, Zelenskyy and many other heads of government met at Lancaster House for an emergency summit on the Russia-Ukraine war. This was sometimes described in the press as a European leaders meeting, but that was not strictly true as it also included Justin Trudeau, a North American.

Back in D.C., Ambassador Mandelson has already caused a minor diplomatic row by airing a view on the Trump-Zelenskyy negotiations which contradicted British government policy.

The Downing Street Flickr account uploaded many photographs of Starmer’s bilateral meeting with Trump as well as of the conference he hosted. The White House also released photographs of the former and the European Commission of the latter. This presented a challenge for me when organising the files on Wikimedia Commons. For the scenes at the White House I decided to use “Trump-Starmer bilateral” for the American photographs and “Starmer-Trump bilateral” for the British ones. For the summit I put (UK pic) and (EC pic) in brackets. Further complicating matters is that London, Brussells and D.C. all sit in different time zones so that the meta-data on different cameras are inconsistent.

Following the meeting, Zelenskyy flew to the Sandringham estate for a meeting with His Majesty. Today Trudeau did the same. The choice of Sandringham for this part was confusing for three reasons:

  1. Sandringham is a privately-owned property, yet clearly matters of state were being conducted.
  2. The King’s main London residence at Clarence House is only a minute’s walk from where the summit took place, whereas the journey to Sandringham is over a hundred miles.
  3. Sandringham is normally only used by the royal family from Christmas to early February, not into March.

Sadly, no government photographs of the royal meetings were taken, only commercial ones. Although this could be considered a private rather than an official visit (and certainly not a state one) I was a little disappointed that the Ukrainian president was not appointed an honorary GCB.

The presence of the Prime Minister of Canada at an otherwise-European conference may seem a little strange, but of course Canada is a nation directly adjacent at the opposite end of the main adversary, as well as bordering the United States. Among the proximate causes of this summit is that the latter, long considered the keystone of any global military policy, may now me as much an antagonist as Russia is.

Given the great affection in which Canada is held by the British public, as well as the long-standing cultural and constitutional links between the United Kingdom and its former dominion, many viewers expressed disappointment that Starmer, whether in his meeting with Trump or at the subsequent summit, did not explicitly push back against Trump’s threats of both economic and actual warfare against Canada, which they interpreted as indifference to attack on a senior Commonwealth partner. That our shared monarch did not comment on the matter either was also of grave concern.

The King, of course, can only make an official statement on such a politically-charged issue on the formal advice of his Canadian government. It is yet to be confirmed if any such advice was given at today’s meeting. I can only hope that when such a statement is made, it comes with the correct coat of arms to hammer the point home!

Then again, it is also worth remembering that we are only a week from Commonwealth Day, and with it the annual Commonwealth Message. As the position of Head of the Commonwealth is one which has no formal powers even in reserve, it is one from which His Majesty can speak without ministerial advice. While a dedicated diatribe in such an instance would be inappropriate, a coded reference or two would not go amiss.

A Look at Some Letterheads

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In the past five days President Trump has in rapid succession hosted bilateral meetings at the White House with Emmanuel Macron, Sir Keir Starmer and Volodymyr Zelenskyy. I have not watched any of these events in full in order to write a proper political analysis – frankly, the small snippets I did see were already enough to leave me rocking in a corner – so am instead simply focusing on some aspects of government heraldry.

During a meeting in the oval office, Starmer gave Trump a letter from Charles III inviting him on a second state visit to the United Kingdom. The letter was marked “Private and Confidential”, yet presenting it in this way meant nearly all the words were caught on camera. I have copied out the text below (keeping the line breaks and punctuation the same) with equals signs representing the words that got obscured:

Dear Donald,

I just wanted to write and thank you for receiving====
in Washington so soon after your Inauguration. Given the====
breadth of challenges across the world, I can only think that====
of our two countries has a vital role to play in promoting and====
the values which matter so much to us all.

I remember with great fondness your visits to the United Kingdom
during your previous Presidency, and recall our nascent plan for you to
visit Dumfries House, in Scotland, as the global pandemic began and all
bets – and flights! – were off… I can only say that it would be a great
pleasure to extend that invitation once again, in the hope that you might at
some stage be visiting Turnberry and a detour to a relatively near
neighbour might not cause you too much inconvenience. An alternative
might perhaps be for you to visit Balmoral, if you are calling in at Menie.
There us much on both Estates which I think you might find interesting
and enjoy – particularly as my Foundation at Dumfries House provides
hospitality skills-training for young people who often end up as staff in
your own establishments!

Quite apart from this presenting an opportunity to discuss a wide
range of issues of mutual interest, it would also offer a valuable chance to
plan a historic second State Visit to the United Kingdom. As you will
====, this is unprecedented by a U.S. President. That is why I would find
it helpful for us to be able to discuss, together, a range of options for

location and programme content. In so doing, working together, I know
we will further enhance the special relationship between our two countries,
of which we are both so proud.

Yours Most Sincerely

Charles R

The letter is described as emanating from Buckingham Palace, and is topped by the familiar red outline of the British royal arms, still the old version with St Edward’s Crown.

On a related note, Starmer recently announced that, owing to the escalation of international military tensions, his government would be redirecting funds from international aid to defence. Anneliese Dodds, Minister of State for Development, resigned from the government in protest. The Prime Minister’s response to her resignation is published on Gov.UK as a PDF. His letterhead is the lesser version of the arms, again still using St Edward’s Crown.

One place (or rather a great many places) where the Tudor crown can now be seen in use is in the arms of Queen Camilla, as used by companies to which her royal warrant was granted late last year. The first example I’ve actually seen (through other heraldists pointing it out online, rather than in person) is Heaven Skincare, which proudly displays the warrant in the navigation bar of its website. Deborah Mitchell, the owner, Tweeted a photograph of the coat of arms on her branded packaging earlier today.

More Upcoming State Visits

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A week ago it was announced that Their Majesties would undertake state visits Italy and the Vatican in April this year, though not many details are yet available. Last night it was reported by The Daily Mirror that next year would see a royal tour of Canada and a state visit to the United States, though naturally at this stage even less is known about these and the article itself is mainly waffle.

Interestingly these visits will be to the two republics where Britain is represented by peers – the Lord Llewellyn of Steep (Conservative) in Rome and the newly-appointed Lord Mandelson (Labour) in Washington.

Any discussion of royal travel this year and last (and likely next as well) has to take account of the monarch’s ongoing cancer treatment, around which long-haul journeys have to be carefully timed. In at least one instance, the health factor may be double-sided as Pope Francis was today hospitalised with bronchitis. The state visit to Italy will be hosted by Sergio Mattarella, President for a decade as of this month. The state visit to the United States will likely be hosted by President Trump, whose affection for the royal family is widely-viewed as an important tool for diplomatic leverage. It is not clear who will host the Canadian tour, as Canada could well be changing Prime Minister more than once between now and next year.

The Italian visit is the only one for which anything substantive has already taken place, as His Majesty preceded the trip with an Italian-themed dinner party at Highgrove. I would be interested to see if Princess Beatrice’s husband Count Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi, who is of Italian descent, has any involvement.

The North American tour next year is purely in the speculative stages at this point, but that may be an advantage in that it gives more time for preparation. That Canada and the United States will be visited back-to-back could prove very interesting in the euphemistic sense given the currently-volatile state of relations between these two countries.

Unless something else is arranged in between, Canada would be the second Commonwealth Realm other than Britain that Charles III has visited since his accession (a planned trip to New Zealand last year having been abandoned). The last time the reigning monarch visited Canada was in 2010, and the last time Charles & Camilla personally visited (as Duke & Duchess of Cornwall) was in 2022.

Elizabeth II made six visits to the United States during her reign – in 1957, 1959, 1976, 1983, 1991 and 2007. On the latter four occasions she was representing Britain, but in 1959 she went in her capacity as Queen of Canada, with 1957 being a dual mandate. Notably she never represented any of her other realms abroad in this manner.

The 1976 visit is the most obvious precedent as it came just after the Bicentenary of the Declaration of Independence and was consciously planned as part of the commemorations. Next year will be the Semiquincentenary, and a royal visit will likely have similar intentions (albeit this time some weeks ahead of the actual anniversary date).

Notes from Nepal

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The Duke & Duchess of Edinburgh recently conducted a visit to Nepal to attend (among other events) the annual attestation parade for British Gurkhas. The tour doesn’t seem to have been covered much in the press and there are no long videos (just a couple of short reels) so most of what I can piece together is from the royal family’s own report and the photographs from the usual agencies.

As one should expect, the royal couple’s car can be seen flying the Duke’s banner of arms – the royal arms differenced by a label of three points Argent charged on the centre point with a Tudor rose Proper.

Despite her not coming on this tour, the Princess Royal’s banner (on whose label the centre point bears a heart and the outer points a cross Gules) can also be seen hanging behind a bagpiper’s shoulder. The Getty caption does not specify but based on the tartan I would guess the soldiers here pictured must be of the Queen’s Gurkha Signals, of whom Anne is Associated Colonel-in-Chief.

The Duke & Duchess arrived in Nepal separately and in this video she can be seen with a Land Rover Discovery from which the generic ermined-bordered banner is flown.

While on the topic of different variations of the royal arms, it might be worthwhile to return to matter I’ve covered before – the use of the British royal arms on communications from Buckingham Palace.

On the royal website itself these communications (variously categories as statements, messages or announcements) tend to be purely textual, with the only insignia being that built into the website’s background. In recent years the Palace has gotten into the habit of Tweeting these messages as images, with the arms painted faintly in the background. This can be a little strange when His Majesty is addressing other Realms, presumably in his capacities as monarch of those countries. I have collated a list of some examples in the past few years:

UPDATE (15th February)

See this concept discussed by Elijah Z Granet in relation to a statement about the anniversary of the Canadian flag.

Getting Some Reception

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Today Buckingham Palace hosted a reception for recently-elected members of the House of Commons and recently-appointed members of the House of Lords. They included, of course, the Reform leader Nigel Farage – a fact which was the cause of the majority of press coverage from the event. He can be seen in photographs with his deputy Richard Tice conversing with the Duke & Duchess of Edinburgh. What they actually discussed is mostly unknown.

What makes Farage’s presence in particular so significant is that any kind of public appearance alongside the royal family can be taken as an important mark of legitimacy for politicians and similar figures – a recognition that they have gained some ground in the political mainstream. Farage, both as leader of Reform and as leader of UKIP, has long had conflicting impulses regarding such recognition, claiming to resent his exclusion from the perks of “the establishment” while also leaning hard on his status as an outsider.

The tradition of inviting MPs and peers to Buckingham Palace is not new, and prior to Brexit it was also custom to invite British members of the European Parliament, in which capacity Farage attended in 2007.

These events became a subject of controversy after the 2009 election, which saw two seats won by the British National Party. The party leader Nick Griffin ultimately had his invitation to a 2010 garden party withdrawn after he used it for political advertising. The party’s other MEP, Andrew Brons, still attended.

Farage himself has long been keen to maintain political distance from the BNP and similar organisations, though inevitably some have slipped through the cracks.

Something Forgotten in the State of Denmark

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A stir was caused in the heraldist community a few days ago when it emerged that His Majesty King Frederik X had made some changes to his coat of arms. This actually happened on 20th December but somehow the news did not spread until the new year.

As with the British royal arms, the Danish royal arms are arms of dominion representing both the incumbent monarch in person and the Danish realm as a corporate entity.

The crown, mantling, pavillion, supporters and sundry other elements of the full achievement have remained the same, but there has been a noticeable remarshalling of the escutcheon itself – with the quarterings moved around.

The quarters of the old version were:

  • First and fourth – Or three lions passant in pale Azure crowned and armed Or langued Gules nine hearts Gules – for continental Denmark.
  • Second – Or two lions passant in pale Azure armed Or langued Gules – for the former province of Schleswig.
  • Third – Azure party per fess in base per pale in chief three crowns Or (for the Kalmar Union) in dexter base a ram passant Argent armed and unguled Or (for the Faroe Islands), in sinister base a polar bear rampant Argent (for Greenland).

The shield as a whole is surmounted by a cross Or fimbriated Gules (referencing the Danish flag) on which in turn is placed an inescutcheon Or two bars Gules (for the former Duchy of Oldenburg).

In the new version, the Schleswig arms are moved down from the second quarter to the fourth, with the repetition of continental Denmark being deleted.The Faroe ram is then moved to the second quarter and the Kalmar crowns are deleted as well, leaving the Greenland bear with the third quarter to itself. The cross is also now made pattée, meaning it is flared at the ends.

The new arrangement is considerably simpler on the eye then the old one, with a more equitable distribution of space to each important element. The change is reminiscent of that which happened to Britain’s royal arms in 1801 when, on the coming into force of the unification of the Kingdom of Ireland with the Kingdom of Great Britain, George III’s arms were changed to have England, Scotland and Ireland quartered in the manner which remains to this day while Hanover (not part of the political union) was moved to an inescutcheon and the historic claim to the recently-eliminated French throne was abandoned.

In the Danish case there has been no recent constitutional change to prompt the remarshalling of Greenland, Faroe and the metropole, while the deletion of reference to the Kalmar Union is particularly long-delayed as the union itself ended in 1523. The Oldenburg inescutcheon could have been changed as well since – having inherited the crown through his mother – Frederik is not agnatically a member of that dynasty but rather is of the House of Monpezat. This is represented in the arms of some of the younger sons descended from Margrethe II, but not those directly in line to the throne.

Second Look at Royal Variety

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Three weeks after its recording, the Royal Variety Performance for 2024 has been broadcast. I have also found on the charity’s website some publicity stills from the event along with the official brochure.

The brochure contains a great deal of heraldic illustration, much of which is clearly of Sodacan origin. The artistic schizophrenia is evident even from the front cover, which prominently displays a full-colour Sodacan version of the royal arms with the Tudor crown while also having in the header a monochrome outline (similar to that on royal.uk) of the St Edward crown version as part of the Royal Variety Performance logo. Throughout the brochure the latter is included as part of the page header while the former is repeated many times as a main-body illustration. More curious is that in the borders of several pages another obvious Wikimedia graphic is seen – the coat of arms of the Prince of Wales. Quite why that one was used I am not sure, especially as Charles stopped using it upon his accession and it has yet to be conclusively shown that William now does so. The outline version also appears as the background pattern to some of the pages themselves. To make things even more confusion two more expressions of the royal arms appear in the brochure – in the letterhead of a message from Buckingham Palace on page 7 in the royal warrant part of the advertisement for Mikhail Pietranek Interior Furnishing and Design on page 65.

A quick glance at the brochures for past installments of the performance makes clear – even just from the front covers – that this armorial smorgasbord has been in effect for some time.

As far as the performance itself is concerned, I do not intend to write a detailed review. The one part I deem relevant to the ongoing themes of this blog is the section on the Lord Lloyd-Webber’s famous musical drama Starlight Express:

After the play’s own professional actors had done their carefully-choreographed routine, the night’s host Alan Carr came on for a comedy coda of sorts, wearing a much simpler steam engine costume and clearly much less steady on his feet. Lloyd-Webber himself was on stage at this point. Carr’s entrance was accompanied by the original Thomas & Friends theme tune. I found this amusing for two reasons:

  1. That theme debuted when the series began forty years ago, but then was replaced in Hit Entertainment’s retool of the franchise twenty years ago. Even though the theme has been out of use now for as long as it was in, it still achieves far greater cross-generational recognition than do any of its successors.
  2. Britt Allcroft’s 1984 production was not the first attempt at adapting Awdry’s books for television – Lloyd Webber had approached the vicar a whole decade earlier with his own pitch and had produced a pilot episode for Granada by 1976, but the studio declined to put it into production. This disappointment was the reason he made Starlight Express in the first place!

 

Realms and Revelations

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When writing and reviewing textbooks, encyclopedia entries and anything else to be considered authoritative, it is important to be able to cite one’s sources of information. You may learn and know things from what you’ve heard and seen in person (or, in my case, on Zoom meetings) but this is almost worthless if it cannot be verified by the rest of the public – or at least the academic community.

For matters which relate to government and politics, Parliamentary questions and statements are very useful in this regard as they are recorded in Hansard. Of course, such statements are only made at all if MPs and peers are minded to discuss those topics. For the lay citizen, an alternative can be found in Freedom of Information requests, the principal avenue for which is the website WhatDoTheyKnow.

I recently tried my hand at resolving three questions through this method, with varying degrees of success:

Scottish Arms of the Royal Family

I have blogged many times before about the uncertainty of the armorial status of Queen Camilla, Prince William and various other royals in Scotland since the end of Elizabeth II’s reign. The obvious body to ask was the Lyon Court. WDTK lists the Court as a body which is not subject to the FOI act but which they believe ought to be. I have of course, interacted virtually with some Scottish officers of arms before, but that was in a much less formal context. It appears that I am the first person to attempt to contact the Court through this avenue. As expected, my request was refused. I found Kevin Greig’s use of the term “research” a little ill-fitting in this particular instance, though understandable if dictated by consistency with more general policy. He suggested that Scotland’s People would be the more appropriate place to look. The most surprising part of his response was the final sentence, implying that the Court only controls the sovereign’s undifferenced arms and that those of the other royals, including the Scottish versions, are held by the College in London.

Membership Quotas on Orders of Chivalry

After the death of Dame Maggie Smith got me thinking about the topic, I sent the question to the Cabinet Office, as they are the government department responsible for the management of the larger honours list. They got back to me a month later to say that while they maintain statistics on the numbers of new appointments to each order each time, they have none relating to the cumulative totals. They suggested that the Central Chancery of the Orders of Knighthood might know, but their data were probably also incomplete and that in any case they are not subject to the FOI Act either.

The King’s Honours in His Other Realms

This request also concerned the honours system, or rather systems, for I noted that many “British” honours (such as the Royal Victorian Order, or the Order of St Michael & St George) are also awarded in other countries with Charles III as monarch. I wanted to know whether his awards given to e.g. Canadians and Papuans were formally granted in his capacity as monarch of those countries or as monarch of this one – including what royal style and insignia were used on the relevant letters patent.

I initially sent this one to the Cabinet Office as well. They didn’t hold the necessary information here either, recommending that I instead ask the Crown Office in Chancery (within the Ministry of Justice) and if that failed then the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office. I asked both simultaneously to save time. The Crown Office held none of the information at all, but the FCDO was able to supply most of what I wanted. Crucially, they confirmed the the sovereign honours the other realms’ subjects in his relevant local capacity not his British one. They also clarified that these appointments are done by warrant rather than by patent and that the documents don’t display coats of arms but do include the seals of the orders of chivalry themselves.

It was a long trek but it was nice to eventually get something out of all of these requests. I will consider chasing up the Chancery at a later date.

The Sovereign’s Crown and the Southern Cross

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The King & Queen in Sydney (NSW Gov, CC BY 4.0). The King’s mouth is unfortunately hanging open in this shot, which combined with the opaque glasses makes for a bit of a Hubert Farnsworth look.

The King & Queen have just spent the past nine days on a tour of Australia and Samoa. Bizarrely, the Palace’s press release called this an “Autumn Tour” even though in the destination countries it was spring. The tour was originally supposed to have included New Zealand as well, but His Majesty’s cancer diagnosis earlier this year forced the itinerary to be severely reduced.

Charles wore three distinct metaphorical “hats” during the course of the tour: First as King of Australia conducting domestic business, second as King of Great Britain & Northern Ireland conducting a bilateral state visit, and third as Head of the Commonwealth presiding over the biennial Heads of Government Meeting.

Photographs of the sovereign couple at these events are unfortunately few and far between. Australian governments both federal and state lack official Flickr accounts with clear licensing indications as their British counterparts have, and the paltry few hosted on their websites are also of uncertain origin – at time of posting a handful have been accepted on Wikimedia Commons but these all look so suspiciously similar to those on Getty and Alamy that I wouldn’t be surprised if they ended up getting deleted shortly afterwards. There seem to be no free-licence photographs of the state visit to Samoa at all. Number 10 and the FCDO both have albums from the CHOGM, but only one picture of the lot actually shows Charles and none at all show Camilla.

I do not know the full details of the travel arrangements, but what I can gather is that Their Majesties and a small entourage took a commercial flight from Heathrow to Singapore, whence they were picked up by the Royal Australian Air Force and taken to Sydney Kingsford Smith Airport in New South Wales.

The tour marked the first in-the-fabric appearance of the Australian royal banner of arms (known officially as “The King’s Flag for Australia”), which was seen flying from the cockpit window and then later from several road and watercraft. The Australian banner follows Canada’s example by reverting to showing the national arms undifferenced, in contrast to the practice followed during Elizabeth II’s reign of defacing the banner with her own personal cypher. The King approved the present version on 30th August.

The current coat of arms of Australia was formalised in 1912. The shield is a composite in “quarterly of six” format, representing the six constituent states of the federation. The states of South Australia and Western Australia did not yet have full coats of arms at the time but all had heraldic badges (which are also shown on their respective civil flags) so these were used instead. The whole is surrounded by a bordure ermine.

The whole federal armorial achievement is normally depicted with the crest on a torse hovering some distance above the shield – omitting helm, mantling or coronet – but the Imperial Crown appears as a charge on the badges of Victoria and Queensland, notably at different sizes.

As in Britain (though unlike Canada) the depiction of the crown in Australian royal symbols has changed from St Edward’s Crown to the Tudor Crown, though this has not yet entirely filtered through to all the state arms and flags themselves. I dimly remember – but can no longer find the proof – that the flag as approved on the government’s website in August still showed St Edward’s Crown, and that the graphic on Wikimedia Commons did likewise until photographs of the real flag caused an update.

The King at several points on the tour wore the sovereign’s badge of the Order of Australia along with a hefty line of other honours I will need time to identify. The Governor-General gave him honorary commissions at the top ranks of all three branches of the Australian armed forces. This is is a little perplexing from a legal perspective: One would have thought that the reigning monarch would hold these ranks substantively ex officio and would not need to be appointed to them by his own deputy.

The Queen is another story: For months now I have been looking out for signs of Camilla being granted the use of her own banner of arms – being the royal arms of the sovereign impaling those of her father Bruce Shand. This was finally seen to be the case during the Australian tour, flying from the bonnet of her car on a few occasions when she travelled without her husband. The videos did not show the flag long enough (and the stills tended to have it covered by the watermark) but from what little I can determine of the artistic subtleties of its design I reckon it is actually a printout of the vector file on the Commons. The car itself was a black Audi (I think a Q8) and the regular numberplates were obscured with plates bearing an image of the Tudor Crown. That image looks to have been taken from Wikimedia too, though I can’t find the exact image. The glaring problem here, of course, is that this banner shows Shand impaled by the British royal arms rather than the Australian, resulting in a mismatch with her husband. There is a burning irony that after all this time, the one occasion Camilla can be seen using a personalised banner of arms as Britain’s royal consort is the one occasion in which it was not appropriate to do so.

This unfortunately seems to be far for the course with royal tours – with the notable exception of Canada (probably because that country has its own heraldic authority), banners of royal arms in the other Commonwealth Realms seem to only be made for the reigning sovereign himself, with the rest of the royal family defaulting to their British blazons instead of coming up with a local variant. This may be marginally more convenient from a logistical and fiscal perspective, but it can be constitutionally misleading as it implies that they are representing a foreign state instead of that country’s own crown. If creating a personal one for each prince or princess is too onerous, it at least would be relatively easy to create a generic ermine-bordered version which they could all use when in the country. Admittedly that might not work in Australia where the sovereign’s own shield and banner have an ermine bordure already. For the royal wives, it might even make more sense to use banners of their paternal arms unimpaled so that they needn’t change based on location at all.

During the visit, His Majesty attended a service at St Thomas’s Anglican Church in North Sydney, made addresses to both the state Parliament of New South Wales and the national Parliament of Australia (sadly not from the throne in either case) and undertook a review of the fleet. God Save The King was played by a brass band while Charles inspected the troops and also by a solo amateur flautist during his walkabout but I can’t find any clip of it actually being sung at any point, in contrast to Advance Australia Fair which was sung by a children’s choir at Parliament House. That the monarch made no remark about his late friend Barry Humphries (a.k.a Dame Edna Everage) was also a little surprising.

When the royal party landed in Samoa they switched back to their British identities and the British royal banner was flown from the cockpit window alongside the Samoan flag, although the aeroplane itself was still very obviously branded as Australian.

While in Samoa Charles was invested with two honorific titles – Tui Taumeasina (King of Taumeasina) and Toa’iga o Tumua (Paramount Chief). The Queen was seen using a hand-fan with her royal cypher printed on it, which was given to her by Stewart Parvin in February. Both switched for much of the visit to bespoke white outfits in the local style.

Charles attended the CHOGM in his capacity as Head of the Commonwealth. Elizabeth II adopted a personal flag to represent herself in this capacity with no reference to any particular country. Her son so far appears not to have done so, which is a pity.

The official royal YouTube channel has uploaded some videos from these events. Not only are they continuing to use the outline of the British royal arms as the channel logo, they have also taken to including a new drawing of the arms in the thumbnails of individual videos. This, again, is a little problematic when the contents of the videos relate to other realms. I am left to wonder what recognisable symbol could be used here to avoid this problem. The livery badge of the House of Windsor might work, but even that technically has the British banner of arms included in it. The only solution that would truly work is, I suppose the CIIIR cypher on its own, without even a crown above it. Indeed, that could work for other family members’ flags and banners too.

A Comment-Worthy Development

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Ahead of Their Majesties’ visit to Samoa, the Royal Family’s official YouTube channel released a short video from a reception of Samoan delegates at Buckingham Palace. It’s a short video and oddly-trimmed at both ends, as is often the case for this channel, but that’s not the thing that struck me. What struck me is that, for the first time in at least a decade (at least as far as I remember), the video has the comment section enabled.

Looking back at a random selection of other videos on the channel, this seems to be a universal change. Given the sort of comments that normally come up in replies to royal Tweets, this decision – if indeed it was consciously made – seems a rather courageous one to say the least.

Another thing I noticed was the change of channel logo – until recently the logo was a photograph from behind their Majesties’ robed backs, looking out from the Buckingham Palace balcony after the coronation. This is still the logo for the Twitter account. Now it has been replaced by a white outline of the royal arms on a blue background. It looks to be the same drawing as used on both the top bar and the background of the royal family website (distinct from the blue-tinted Sodacan illustration appearing in the footer), but with a tincture change. The image is in raster rather than vector form with rather low resolution which fuzzes the fine line details, and the blue square has white outlines on the top and right edges which are still partly visible when cropped into a circle. The overall look is not especially polished, one has to say.