English and British Royal Marriages

[Lady Ann]

Might sound like a dumb question but I always read how Lady Diana Spencer was the first English Woman to Wed and Hier to the throne in 300 years was not the Queen Mother and English Woman. Does any one know what is ment by this? Thanks in advance ....

[jcbcode99]

The Queen Mother (Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, daughter of the 14th Earl of Strathmore) was Scottish, not English.

[Lady Ann]

Oh that makes more sense then, I did not think that she actually did not marry the hier to the throne in the frist place either, but 300 years seems like a long time....

[PrinceOfCanada]

The Queen Mum did not marry the heir to the throne. She married his brother.

Prior to that, almost all Royal marriages--and especially those to heirs--were contracted with other Royals, which basically meant importing Princesses from the Continent.

[EmpressRouge]

Even the late Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester (nee Lady Alice Montagu-Douglas-Scott) was Scottish. Princess Marina, being born Greek royalty, commented that her sisters-in-law were "common Scotch girls."

[Nitefeatherz]

Marrying royal to royal always seemed like genetic suicide to me...you can't have a restricted gene pool like that because eventually if you marry royalty to royalty you never add new blood and EVERYONE is related to everyone else which leads to more genetically related problems...you get the idea. Granted they didn't know as much about science and genetics as we do today but still.

[Angeline]

Was Diana's suitability partly because she was finally England's rose? Subtly Royal in her distant past, tall, fair, beautiful and young enough to breed a few successfully? And then there was Camilla ..

[Jo of Palatine]

Originally Posted by EmpressRouge

Even the late Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester (nee Lady Alice Montagu-Douglas-Scott) was Scottish. Princess Marina, being born Greek royalty, commented that her sisters-in-law were "common Scotch girls."

Which is grossly unfair for if historically Scotland and England had had the same development as Germany, then the daughters of Dukes and Earls would be considered the daughter sof souverains just like the daughters of the rulers of the little principalities, counties, dukedoms of Germany were.

For example the princess of Oettingen who was the maternal grandmother of empress Maria-Theresia and of Sophie Charlotte, Friedrich II.'s queen of Prussia came from a small principality in Bavaria which consisted of a "capital" with 2000 people and the surrounding area of maybe 15 square kilometers, where a lot of other nobles had their estates, too. I bet the estates of English and Scottish Lords were about as large but because politics took their independence from them, they were not considered to be souverains but peers.

So it is a bit unfair to make statements like that.

[Skydragon]

Originally Posted by EmpressRouge

Even the late Princess Alice, Duchess of Gloucester (nee Lady Alice Montagu-Douglas-Scott) was Scottish. Princess Marina, being born Greek royalty, commented that her sisters-in-law were "common Scotch girls."

How ignorant, it would be 'common Scots girls', Scotch as we all know was and is a drink!

[Jo of Palatine]

Originally Posted by Skydragon

How ignorant, it would be 'common Scots girls', Scotch as we all know was and is a drink!

Hmmm, maybe HM The Queen Mother started out on Scotch on the rocks before switching to Gin-Tonic....

[EmpressRouge]

Originally Posted by Skydragon

How ignorant, it would be 'common Scots girls', Scotch as we all know was and is a drink!

I'm not sure exactly how the quote went, but it was something to that effect. It was in an older version of the Wikipedia article about Princess Marina.

[PrinceOfCanada]

And actually it's perfectly reasonable to refer to them as Scotch. When we refer to the drink, 'Scotch' is a shortened form; 'Scotch Whisky' is what it's called. Scotch is an adjective, meaning the same as 'Scottish'.

[Jo of Palatine]

Originally Posted by PrinceOfCanada

And actually it's perfectly reasonable to refer to them as Scotch. When we refer to the drink, 'Scotch' is a shortened form; 'Scotch Whisky' is what it's called. Scotch is an adjective, meaning the same as 'Scottish'.

You sure about that? All Scots that I ever knew (quite some) would agree with Sky - who is at least part-Scot herself.

[iowabelle]

I wonder how "Scottish" the Queen Mum really was.

There are some sources that say she was really born in England (Hertfordshire?) and there was a considerable amount of intermarriage between the Scottish and English aristocracy.

Have I created a firestorm?

[PrinceOfCanada]

Quite sure, but with a caveat: most Scottish people would bristle if a non-Scots person referred to them as Scotch. This comes from my grandmother, who is from Edinburgh.

[Jo of Palatine]

Originally Posted by PrinceOfCanada

Quite sure, but with a caveat: most Scottish people would bristle if a non-Scots person referred to them as Scotch. This comes from my grandmother, who is from Edinburgh.

In any case it was a terribly unpolite thing to say when the "fount of all honours" agreed to the matches, thus declaring them "equal" and foreign titles are notoriously un-recognized in the UK. Which one can understand on hearing such an arrogant comment. As if Marina herself was responsible for her ancestors' marriages, so could claim their glory!

[PrinceOfCanada]

Well yes of course it was impolite. I don't think that is being argued here.

[HMTLove23]

if she was the 1st woman to marry into the royal family in 300 years.

who was the last one??????

[COUNTESS]

I believe you could say it was Anne Hyde, who married James II. She was his first wife. Of course, you could also say Anne Boelyn, albeit a second wife, then Jane Seymour, Kathrine Howard or Katherine Paar. All English and married to a king.

[Ella Kay]

Anne Hyde, wife of James II? Charles II was king when they married, and Anne was an English commoner.