Alright, I couldn’t find a more recent picture.

More from Torrance

In an update to my post from two days ago, I noted that Dr David Torrance had put out a research briefing for the House of Commons Library covering much of the same substance as I had. Today, hot off his own heels, he put out an “Insight” on the concept of Royal Warrants. It examines the distinction between Royal Warrants and Letters Patent, which has long been a source of confusion to me. The Insight covers some details about process and format, though any distinction in fundamental purpose is not resolved.

What struck me in both his recent updates were his repeated links to this site: the Corpus of British Administrative Instruments. This is a website by Jason Loch of Venerable Puzzle fame. I can’t work out how recent this is as Loch doesn’t mention the site on his aforementioned blog or on his Twitter feed. The Wayback Machine shows no records at all until today.

CBAI has a lot of overlap in principle with Heraldica, which I mentioned on Sunday, although a little more modern in terms of the coding and presentation. It collates the texts of reems of patents, warrants, ministerial letters and other documents of state and royal authority. The most fascinating part is that it includes photographs of these items as well. My favourite document so far is the patent from 12th April last year appointing Mark Scott as Somerset Herald. It features a delightful illustration by Timothy Noad of Charles III at his coronation.

Following on from the main thrust of yesterday’s article, a look now at the disused duke’s wife and daughters:

The Other Yorks

None of those called “The Yorks” actually use the word York in their names anymore.

Sarah Ferguson married The Prince Andrew in 1986. Their actual marriage did not last long as they separated in 1992 and divorced in 1996. Despite being separated almost thrice as long as they were married they still live together and often behave as if still a couple. As a wife she was “Her Royal Highness The Duchess of York” and subsequently she was “Sarah, Duchess of York” — the latter following the standard formula for how divorced former peeresses are styled, and also how wives of all royal peers are styled in biographical indexes as well as the titles of their Wikipedia articles (e.g. Sophie, Duchess of Edinburgh, whose marriage is still going strong). There have been quite a few contexts, such as their daughters’ engagement announcements, in 2018 and 2019, where Palace communications have still referred to the couple together as “The Duke and Duchess of York”, probably because “His Royal Highness The Duke of York and Sarah, Duchess of York” would have looked a bit strange. Although there wasn’t a direct statement from her, news reports said that when Andrew had ceased use of the Dukedom of York Sarah had also ceased use of the courtesy title Duchess and had reverted to her maiden name. Talks are ongoing on both their Wikipedia pages as to how to present this. It would have been interesting to see what happened if a formal deprivation of the peerages had taken place, I’m not sure there is any precedent for whether the formally depriving a divorced peer of his peerage would automatically remove the courtesy title of his ex-wife as well.

Their daughters Beatrice and Eugenie also bear the title of Princess and the style of Royal Highness as children of a son of a sovereign per the 1917 letters patent. As is custom for second-generation descendants, they originally bore “of York” after their given names. We do not yet have a good custom for what to do when British princesses acquire commoner husbands: formally they are “Her Royal Highness Princess Beatrice, Mrs* Edoardo Mapelli Mozzi” and “Her Royal Highness Princess Eugenie, Mrs Jack Brooksbank”. In practice most references, and the names of their Wikipedia pages, omit anything after their first names. As with their father, this can be a little difficult for disambiguation**, as their have been other princes named Andrew (including his own paternal grandfather) and other princesses called Beatrice and Eugenie. This is also a problem for Princess Alexandra, originally “of Kent”, later “The Honourable Lady Ogilvy”. Even adding “of the United Kingdom” would not solve the problem in most of these cases, so either birth years are given in brackets or the living British one is given primacy over all others on the basis that they are overwhelmingly the most famous among current English-language sources.

Wrap-Up

In other news, His Majesty has recently appeared on another podcast. Not The King’s Music Room this time, but Unearthed with Cate Blanchett, looking at the progress of the Millennium Seed Bank. The Queen, meanwhile, has gotten herself written into the crime novel The Hawk is Dead by Peter James.

FOOTNOTES

*She might have been a Countess, but Edoardo’s comital title from the former Kingdom of Italy has no official recognition now.
**This is less of a problem for Anne, who also has the title Princess Royal.

UPDATE (31st October)

Loch has now put out a new post explaining the launch of the CBAI.