The Blackadder Order of Precedence

Posted on Dec 30, 2024 by Robin Stanley Taylor

The New Year Honours for 2025 have been released, and they include the appointment of former QI host Stephen Fry as a knight bachelor.

I thought fit to compile a tracker for where each major actor in the Blackadder franchise now stands within the British honours system:

Sir Tony Robinson (Baldrick)

Knight Bachelor, 15th June 2013 (Queen’s Birthday), for public and political service.

Sir Stephen Fry (Melchett)

Knight Bachelor, 30th December 2024 (New Year), for services to Mental Health Awareness, the Environment and Charity.

Richard Curtis (Writer)

Commander of the Order of the British Empire, I can’t find the date or cause.

Howard Goodall (Composer)

Commander of the Order of the British Empire, 31st December 2010 (New Year), for services to music education.

Hugh Laurie (George)

Commander of the Order of the British Empire, 30th December 2017 (New Year), for services to drama.

Miriam Margolyes (Maria Escalosa/Whiteadder/Victoria)

Officer of the Order of the British Empire, 31st December 2001 (New Year), for services to drama.

Robbie Coltrane (Johnson)

Officer of the Order of the British Empire, 31st December 2005 (New Year), for services to drama.

Brian Blessed (Richard IV)

Officer of the Order of the British Empire, 10th June 2016 (Queen’s Birthday), for services to the arts and charity.

Ben Elton (Writer)

Member of the Order of Australia, 11th June 2023 (King’s Birthday), for significant service to the entertainment industry as a comedian, actor, writer and director.

Tom Baker (Redbeard)

Member of the Order of the British Empire, 30th December 2024 (New Year), for services to television.

So far Tim McInerny (Percy/Darling) and Miranda Richardson (Queenie/Amy) are still without anything from the fons honorum. Rik Mayall (Flasheart), Patsy Byrne (Nursie) and Peter Cook (Richard III) all went to the grave unadorned.

Second Look at Royal Variety

Posted on Dec 17, 2024 by Robin Stanley Taylor

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:

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.
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!

An addendum to the Qatari state visit

Video

A week after the event, the royal YouTube channel has uploaded a seventeen-minute video of the state banquet given at Buckingham Palace. The footage itself is the same as found on commercial news channels, but what catches my attention is the little animation at the end – the title card shows the line drawing of the royal arms that appears on the header of royal.uk, including St Edward’s Crown. I am a little perplexed that this is still being used for these purposes given that a new illustration with the Tudor crown now appears for the channel’s logo. This little animation does not appear at the ends of earlier videos, making it an innovation that only debuted after the artwork itself had already become obsolete.

Our Lady, Our Prince

Posted on Dec 8, 2024 by Robin Stanley Taylor

A magnificent ceremony was held last night in Paris to commemorate the re-opening of Notre-Dame Cathedral after years of restoration works. Many world leaders attended and, as usual, this gave the opportunity for political networking.

The American delegation was rather strange – the First Lady Jill Biden and her daughter Ashley were in attendance but the 46th President himself was not. The 45th & 47th President Donald Trump did attend however. He was without family for the occasion, making the event feel like the setup for a very strange episode of Wife Swap.

Trump is in the strange position of being a past and future but not current head of state, though it would be hard to tell from his interactions on this visit and his coverage in international press more generally you could be forgiven for assuming that Joe Biden had already long since left the stage. A similar phenomenon occurs during every post-electoral transition period in the United States, but the striking difference in personalities between incoming and outgoing leaders this time around leaves the latter seeming an even lamer duck than usual.

I am not entirely sure which order of precedence was being followed for this event – hosted by the Catholic Church in France rather than the French government – Mr Trump was seated directly beside M. Macron while Dr Biden was two spaces further along. Other national representatives filled the next section, including the President of Ukraine.

Macron, Trump and Zilensky had a much-covered trilateral meeting before the service. The President Re-elect then went to the British ambassador’s residence for a bilateral meeting with the Prince of Wales. The press reel from their discussion does not include much of the dialogue itself, but does include the amusing moment when the two men sit in awkward silence while waiting for the film crew to shamble in after them – complete with camera wobble and heavy footfall.

It has been difficult to find free photographs of the event – neither the British nor American governments appear to have taken any, Wikimedia Commons currently has eighteen pictures licensed by the Italian President’s office and the Ukrainian President’s licensed a further eight. I hope more will emerge in time to come.

Notes on the Qatari state visit

Posted on Dec 4, 2024 by Robin Stanley Taylor

Today and yesterday the United Kingdom hosted Sheikh & Sheikha Tamin & Jawaher bin Hamad Al Thani, Emir & Consort of the State of Qatar.

The visit included a speech by the Emir to the British Parliament and a state banquet at Buckingham Palace – likely the last for some years as the building is soon to be closed for a major renovation project. He also gave a speech at Mansion House and received a tour of Westminster Abbey.

As is typical, the visit involved an exchange of honours. The King appointed the Emir as an Honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath. This is consistent with his father who was given the same honour in 2010, but it feels like a category error as normally royal heads of state are made Stranger Knights of the Order of the Garter while the Bath is given to elected presidents – the most recent being last year with Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea, who coincidentally is also back in the news today. The Emir in his red sash stuck out a little next to all the British royals wearing blue ones.

Charles had already been awarded the Collar of the Qatari Order of Merit in 1986. Yesterday he was presented with the Sword of the Founder Sheikh Jassim bin Mohammed bin Thani.

The recent state visit also saw growth in the Royal Family Order of Charles III: The Queen having appeared as the founder member at the Japanese state visit earlier this year, the order is now also seen sported by the Princess Royal, as well as the Duchesses of Edinburgh and Gloucester.

I notice a discrepancy in the spelling of the visitor’s title – the royal and parliamentary sources say “Amir” but the newspapers and Wikipedia say “Emir”. Getty is inconsistent, even sometimes within the same photograph caption.

First Look at Royal Variety

Posted on Nov 23, 2024 by Robin Stanley Taylor

It won’t actually be broadcast for a few weeks, but 2024’s iteration of the Royal Variety Performance was recorded last night at the Royal Albert Hall. His Majesty was in attendance for the first time in his reign, having last attended (virtually) in the somewhat abnormal edition arranged for 2020. The Queen was supposed to attend with him (having also done so in 2013 and 2016) but dropped out at the last minute due to the relapse of a recent chest infection (which also stopped her attending the annual Festival of Remembrance at the same venue).

No photographs or film of the performances themselves have yet been seen, but publicity shots of the cast and attendees are available through commercial photographers, and they show the logo of the Royal Variety Performance printed on the wallpaper of the backdrop. It very obviously uses Sodacan’s illustration of Elizabeth II’s royal arms with St Edward’s Crown instead of the Tudor one. The charity’s website is much the same – the background has a monochrome outline of the full heraldic achievement similar to that on royal.uk and a smaller representation of the same appears in the footer. When you hover the cursor over it, the outline changes to a full-colour copy of Sodacan’s graphic. I wonder how long that will take to update?

Ironically the royal box inside the hall features a textile version of the royal arms with the Tudor crown, which was evidently erected there before Elizabeth II’s accession and left there throughout her reign without update until it eventually came back into style. All fashions are cyclical, one supposes, even if this particular rotation took a very, very, long time to complete.

Bluemantle? No, Blumenthal!

Posted on Nov 20, 2024 by Robin Stanley Taylor

Just over a month ago there was an exciting announcement in the world of heraldry – The Heraldry Society was launching its own blog. This is important because most of the output of the society – and of heraldic societies more generally – tends to be in the form of lectures and academic papers. If these are available online at all (and not behind a paywall) they tend to become so on a very slow timescale. While there are also plenty of heraldry blogs and some of them are updated regularly, these tend to be the work of enthusiastic amateurs looking in from outside rather than vice versa. This looks as if it will move at a somewhat faster pace while also giving authoritative insights.

So far there have been three articles published on the blog and it does not yet appear that a theme has been settled on. The first is an interview with Professor Gillian Black, the Carrick Pursuivant of Arms. The second is by Jean-Eudes Pierra talking about the history of bees in heraldry and the third is by celebrity chef Heston Blumenthal recounting the process by which his coat of arms was granted. Happily this one also includes photographs of his letters patent in quality high enough to be legible. Blumenthal’s shield was one of my earliest illustrations for Wikimedia Commons, being published in the summer of 2018.

Realms and Revelations

Posted on Nov 18, 2024 by Robin Stanley Taylor

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 Queen’s Flags Elsewhere

Posted on Nov 7, 2024 by Robin Stanley Taylor

Following the sighting of Her Majesty’s impaled British royal banner on a limousine in Australia, I’ve had a go at mocking up what her arms should look like in each of the realms where she is queen consort. These all consist of the arms of Bruce Shand as illustrated by Fry1989 impaled by the arms of dominion of each realm as illustrated by various other artists. In all cases I have done some minor colour correction so the shades of the tinctures are consistent and rearranged the components a little to fit a square rather than a shield shape.

Antigua & Barbuda

The national arms are Barry wavy of six Argent and Azure a sugar mill on a grassy ground Proper on a chief wavy Sable a rising sun radiant Or. The Shand arms are Azure a boar’s head erased behind the ears Argent armed and langued Or on a chief engrailed Argent between two mullets Gules a cross crosslet fitchy Sable.

Australia

The national arms are Quarterly of six 1st Argent a cross Gules charged with a lion passant guardant between on each limb a mullet of eight points Or 2nd Azure five mullets one of eight two of seven one of six and one of five points Argent ensigned with an Imperial Crown Proper 3rd Argent a Maltese cross Azure surmounted by a like Imperial Crown 4th Or on a Perch wreathed Vert and Gules an Australian Piping Shrike displayed also Proper 5th Or a Swan naiant to the sinister Sable 6th Argent a Lion passant Gules the whole within a bordure Ermine.

Bahamas

The national arms are Upon a representation of the Santa Maria on a base barry wavy of four Azure and Argent on a chief Azure demi-sun Or.

I noticed as I went along that depictions of the Santa Maria appeared in quite a few of the Carribean blazons, although the style of depiction varies a bit.

Belize

The national arms are Party per pall inverted 1st Argent a paddle and a squaring axe Proper in saltire 2nd Or a saw and beating axe Proper in saltire 3rd per fess Bleu celeste and barry wavy Or Vert Azure above the last a sailing ship Proper.

There is some inconsistency between depictions as to the tinctures used in the barry wavy, with some other versions simply having naturalistic water.

Canada

The national arms are Tierced in fess the first and second divisions containing quarterly 1st Gules three lions passant guardant in pale Or 2nd Or a lion rampant within a double tressure flory-counter-flory Gules 3rd Azure a harp Or stringed Argent 4th Azure three fleurs-de-lis Or and the third division being Argent three maple leaves conjoined on one stem Proper.

Since Canada is the only other realm to have its own heraldic authority, this is probably the one most likely to actually be officially used.

Grenada

The national arms are Quarterly 1st & 4th Gules a lion passant guardant Or 2nd & 3rd Vert a crescent and a lily Or over all a cross Or and in nombril point a picture of the Santa Maria Proper.

It was quite difficult to fit the Santa Maria into the nombril point of the cross without either making the image too small or the cross too thick.

Jamaica

The national arms are Argent on a cross gules five pineapples slipped Or. This is the shortest blazon of them all.

The illustration is also the simplest, and thus this was the first one I did. From a distance it could potentially look like a defaced England flag.

New Zealand

The national arms are Quarterly Azure and Gules on a pale Argent three lymphads Sable 1st four mullets in cross of the last each surmounted by a mullet of the second 2nd a fleece 3rd a garb 4th two mining hammers in saltire all Or.

New Zealand’s arms may technically be an example of faux-quartering.

Papua New Guinea

Papua New Guinea’s national emblem is not a coat of arms as such, so I’ve had to improvise a little here by just putting the whole thing on a “bedsheet” the tincture of the background is up for debate. I ultimately went with Azure as that is used for the Governor-General’s flag.

Saint Kitts & Nevis

This realm does have a coat of arms but I can’t actually find a blazon for it.

This coat of arms has a lot of the same charges as does Saint Lucia’s, but the boat depicted is seemingly not the Santa Maria as in other examples.

The chief above the chevron makes for a rather crowded field with the sails difficult to fit in the base.

Saint Lucia

The national arms are Azure two sticks of cut bamboo in cross surmounted of an African stool of authority Or between in dexter chief and sinister base a rose Argent charged with another Gules both barbed and seeded Proper and in sinister chief and dexter base a fleur-de-lis Gold.

Saint Vincent & the Grenadines

Again, I can’t find a blazon for the arms and I would struggle to come up with one.

This one is a rare example of pictorial heraldry on this page, looking more like a painting than a series of armorial symbols. The flames have come out looking a little crude.

Solomon

The national arms are Or a saltire Vert charged with two spears in saltire points in base and a bow and two arrows charged with a native shield in fess point between two turtles all Proper and on a chief Azure an eagle sejant on a branch between two frigate birds all Proper.

Tuvalu

The national arms are Per fess Azure and Or in chief upon grass issuant a representation of an Ellice Maneapa or meeting house all Proper and in base four barrulets wavy Azure a bordure Or charged with banana leaves and mitre sea shells placed alternately Proper together.

The Sovereign’s Crown and the Southern Cross

Posted on Oct 27, 2024 by Robin Stanley Taylor

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.