Titles and the USA

[Suzzanah]

Apparently at the Groupon add on the internet you may for ten or twelve dollars purchase a title. Even as an American this just enrages me. Through the years titles have been bought, sold and gifted by people as if it were a game. Birthright remains for descendants of royals yet many carry no real titles. Titles are for duties, land and service. The knights often spend lives in service for little compensation. Great deeds and service get you titles. Seven acts of service to the crown are required and it is more than that. It is about a titled person recognizing your work and helping you be recognized. Gifts of service are difficult to see, especially across an ocean. More royals should do more to recognize the work of others. Many work for years and have no recognition to show for it. Members of the family have even met their demise alone with no heirs overseas. This cannot happen anymore. I challenge every royal grumbling about their low status and poverty to send in their ten dollars and buy the paper that grants them membership. Then maybe someone else can do the real work for a while.

 

[Denville]

What does this mean?

 

[Harald]

What does this mean?

The OP is talking about this site.

Ignoramuses being duped into buying worthless, fake titles. What's new?

 

[Mbruno]

I don't know exactly what kind of titles are being advertised for sale in the group you mentioned, but there are basically two different situations nowadays in Europe:

1. Countries that were formerly monarchies and are now republics in which titles of nobility are in general no longer legally recognized and no new titles are conferred. Depending on the country, titles may have been simply abolished and it is actually illegal to use them, or they can still be used, sometimes as part of one's family name, but they are no longer regulated by the state.
2. Countries that are still monarchies and where titles of nobility (or equivalent) are still legally recognized and regulated by different legal instruments, e.g. primary legislation (acts of Parliament); royal decrees; letters patent; or royal warrants. In those countries, which include e.g. Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom, titles are either granted by grace of a Sovereign, or inherited from the previous holder, or acquired by birth, according to the rules of succession to titles laid out in the legal instruments that regulate them. Such titles cannot be (privately or publicly) sold or purchased then.

In addition to royal titles and titles of nobility (in countries that are monarchies), most countries, including republics, also award orders of merit in different grades. Such awards are typically personal and non-transferable (i.e. non-hereditary). In some monarchies, e.g. the United Kingdom, appointments to certain orders or to certain grades within orders also confer kinighthood/damehood, while other grades do not. In all cases, however, those "titles" cannot be sold or purchased either as, again, they can only be conferred by grace of a Sovereign.

So, most likely, if you saw an ad somewhere offering a title for sale, it is either a fake title or some kind of fraud.

 

[Heavs]

I remember sites where you could buy a tiny plot of land and be given a "title" for it. It's exactly the same as the name a star registry sites. It's "valid" in their database and nowhere else.

Scotland has a title that belongs to the landowner of a large, historical estate "Laird" which is how some of the "buy a title" websites sprung up. And that is technically bought or transferred when the estate is sold but not to anyone who buys a foot plot on it.

Incidentally it's how the "Pippa Middleton might finally get a title" headlines sprang up. Her husband's parents become Laird and Lady of Glen Affric when they bought that estate about 15 years ago and if it remains in the family, the title will pass to whichever of their three children inherits that estate.

Royals do a lot to recognise the service of others but they don't had out hereditary titles (much) any more.

 

[Jacknch]

Closed for Moderator Review