In most of our lifetimes we will also utter “The King and Queen of England” since Charles is already 76. British seem to treasure this tradition, where as we Americans definitely got rid of a Jefferson stature somewhere recently.
struck me as unfamiliar.
Nope, it’s been quite familiar to even someone several hundred years ago.
> Nope, it’s been quite familiar to even someone several hundred years ago.
I'm not sure what point you're making here. I'm not claiming England has never had a King before, I'm pointing out that I'm used to seeing "Her Majesty the Queen" rather than "His Majesty the King" all over.
I daydreams of becoming an indie game developer and publishing under the name Her Majesty's Pencil Service
That name was inspired by the very real HMSO: Her Majesty's Stationary Office(!): a name that struck me as absurdly pretentious for something really mundane.
> * But 2,000 years ago the Europeans were were not "civilised" in the sense that we think of.*
That really depends on what's your definition of "Europeans" and "civilized". The Catholic church exists for around 2 thousand years,is still alive and well, has its capital in Italy, and has defined western society for centuries.
> America is a baby compared to them, the history and memory are very different.
Yes, my house is older than the United States. We found pieces of journals talking about the General Bonaparte. It's pretty common to find stuff from several centuries ago in old buildings.
Queen Elizabeth's mother was also "Queen Elizabeth" as wife of the king, until her daughter took the throne and she became the "Queen Mother" to distinguish which Queen Elizabeth.
(This is not the same as her mother being Queen Elizabeth I, which was the tudor queen from the 1500s, wife-of-king queens don't take up a number).
It's a weird bit of asymmetry to the husband-of-queen title being decided on an adhoc basis, having been a prince of denmark, prince-consort of the united kingdom and prince of the united kingdom respectively.
It's a weird bit of asymmetry to the husband-of-queen title being decided on an adhoc basis...
The asymmetry derives from an asymmetry in the titles themselves: the title "King" outranks the title "Queen", rather than those titles being of equal rank. You can't have someone other than the monarch outranking the monarch, so the husband of the reigning Queen can't be a King.
I know it's getting into technicalities, but "consort" modifies "queen", like "pro" modifies "airpods". The opposite is a queen regnant. Both are queens.
So while you're right that she is styled Her Majesty the Queen Consort, she is the same kind of queen that Queen Charlotte was. I think you're right that people are avoiding the phrase "Queen Camilla" at the moment but I think it will come into use.
prepare to shift your paradigm then. It's anachronistic because there hasn't been a King for such a long time due to QEII's epic reign so it's not part of our vocabulary, but nevertheless, Britain is getting Kings in the 21st Century, because Charles will likely be followed by William and then Louis. Might be the 22nd century before we get a Queen again!
Not just QEII - Elizabeth was the longest reigning British monarch, but that record was previously held by Victoria. So the last 185 years were book-ended by two epic Queens, with a few short Kings between them.
I mean obviously Queen feels more normalized because there's only been a King for 0.002% of my life. But I do think Kings being the minority for the last two centuries adds its own impact too.
