20 Royal Baby Names That Hid Centuries Of Scandal And Power

Richard III’s two young nephews, Edward and Richard, stood between him and the throne when their uncle claimed it in 1483. The boys were declared illegitimate before he took the throne, then vanished from the Tower of London that year. Tudor chroniclers alleged, without any documentary evidence, that Richard had murdered the boys. Richard was killed at Bosworth Field in 1485, ending the Plantagenet dynasty, but the mystery of his nephews’ fate remains unsolved.

Queen Victoria named one of her sons Prince Arthur in 1850. Henry VII had given the same name to his eldest son in 1486, drawing on the legend of King Arthur and Camelot. You’d think Victoria was doing the same. However, christening records suggest that Victoria selected the name to honor the Duke of Wellington. He was Arthur’s godfather, and the two happened to share a May 1 birthday. Camelot had nothing to do with it.

Victoria, not a common name in Britain before 1837, reigned for 63 years and 7 months, a period of industrial and imperial expansion, and is simply known as Queen Victoria. She had been baptized Alexandrina Victoria, after her godfather, Tsar Alexander I of Russia, but on becoming monarch, she stopped using the name Alexandrina.

Henry III, in naming his son (the future Edward I) after the canonized king Edward the Confessor, hoped to borrow his saintly reputation for his son, and seven monarchs followed who also bore the same name. However, in December 1936, Edward VIII abdicated the throne due to the growing constitutional and government crisis over his desire to marry American divorcée Wallis Simpson.

After King Henry I died in 1135, his daughter Matilda and her cousin Stephen fought over who had the right to rule England. Their civil war became known as The Anarchy and lasted nearly two decades. In 1141, she took London and ruled as the Domina Anglorum, or Lady of the English, but unfriendly crowds chased her out before her coronation, and she never had the crown, although her son would be Henry II.

Philip II of Spain was, by virtue of his marriage to Mary I, co-monarch of England from 1554 to 1558. He was never crowned at Westminster Abbey, strictly limited by Parliament, and his power ended when his marriage did. Centuries later, another Philip, a prince of Greece and Denmark born in 1921, married the future Queen Elizabeth II in 1947.

The royal history of William in England begins with William the Conqueror, who took the English throne in 1066. His son William II had a much stranger ending. In 1100, William II died in the New Forest after being shot by Walter Tirel while hunting. Later chroniclers speculated that his brother, the future Henry I, had conspired in the killing, but this is unproven. Centuries later, William III came to England to co-rule with Mary II following the Glorious Revolution of 1688.

Henry II built an empire (the Angevin Empire) and laid the foundations of English common law; Henry V won at Agincourt in 1415; Henry VIII, desperate for a male heir to stabilize the line of succession and for a legal annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, broke with Rome in 1534 and founded the Church of England.

Two queens with the same name forever altered the fates of two different countries. Isabella of France, nicknamed the She-Wolf, helped lead the invasion that deposed her husband, Edward II, in 1327. More than a century later, Isabella I of Castile ruled alongside Ferdinand II of Aragon and backed Columbus’s 1492 expedition.

Princess Charlotte of Wales was next in line to inherit the throne after her father, the future George IV. So when she died in childbirth in 1817 at just 21, the royal family suddenly faced a succession problem. Her grandmother was Queen Charlotte, who married George III in 1761, sponsored eight-year-old Mozart, and helped to establish Kew Gardens.

Elizabeth is a name with a heavy and significant past for the English: Elizabeth of York’s 1486 marriage to Henry VII helped unite the houses of York and Lancaster; England was victorious against the Spanish Armada and the English Renaissance flourished during the reign of Elizabeth I; and in 1952, Elizabeth II took the throne and brought this rich name into a new century.

The Catherines never asked permission. After the death of her husband, Henry V, Catherine of Valois secretly married Owen Tudor, a Welsh courtier in her household; their descendants eventually founded the Tudor dynasty. During the Battle of Flodden, while Henry VIII campaigned in France, Catherine of Aragon ruled England as regent. Catherine the Great expanded and modernized the Russian Empire from 1762 to 1796.

In 1701, Parliament wanted to make sure the English crown remained Protestant. Under the terms of the Act of Settlement, Electress Sophia of Hanover was heiress presumptive, bypassing more than fifty closer Catholic claimants to secure a Protestant succession. However, she died on June 8, 1714, just under two months before the death of Queen Anne. She never became queen, and the crown went to her son, George I.

Princess Beatrice, Queen Victoria’s youngest child and personal secretary, transcribed her mother’s journals at Victoria’s request, then destroyed most of the original volumes. The Royal Archives, fortunately, do have her transcriptions of Victoria’s journals, so they are far from ashes.

Eleanor of Aquitaine was queen consort of France and, from 1154, England, and was mother of two kings of England, Richard I and John. Another royal Eleanor, Eleanor of Castile, was the wife of Edward I. After she died in 1290, Edward had the Eleanor Crosses built at the places where her funeral procession rested during its journey.

Six Scottish monarchs had borne the name James, so when James VI of Scotland became James I upon succeeding to the English throne in 1603, he became king of both England and Scotland, although they remained separate kingdoms. His grandson James II was later overthrown in the Glorious Revolution of 1688, amid opposition to his Catholicism and approach to royal power.

Charles I was executed for high treason in 1649 after losing the English Civil War, leaving England without a king for eleven years. In 1660, his son Charles II returned and restored the monarchy. Although Charles became a British royal name through the Stuarts, the name goes back in history to Charlemagne, or Charles the Great, who was crowned as emperor in 800.

Saint Margaret of Scotland was canonized in 1250; Margaret of Anjou led the Lancastrians in the Wars of the Roses as queen consort to Henry VI, and centuries later, the name belonged to Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon, and the younger sister of Queen Elizabeth II.

Christian became the House of Oldenburg’s signature Danish royal name with Christian I back in 1448. Christian X reigned during the Nazi occupation of Denmark and became a visible symbol of Danish sovereignty by continuing to ride through Copenhagen on horseback with little protection. Contrary to popular belief, he never actually wore a yellow Star of David in solidarity with Danish Jews, nor were they ever ordered to wear one. His daily rides were real enough without the legend.

Mary had been used by European royalty for centuries, but in England, the name became inseparable from Mary I. When she became queen in 1553, she was the first woman to rule England in her own right after successfully defeating an attempt to put Lady Jane Grey on the throne. A committed Catholic, Mary reversed many of the Protestant reforms introduced under her father, Henry VIII, and her brother, Edward VI. During her reign, around 280 Protestants were burned for heresy, persecutions that later helped earn her the enduring nickname “Bloody Mary.” For better or worse, that’s one royal nickname that has seriously outlived the queen who inspired it.

This content was created with the help of AI.