Is the british royal family actually german, not english?

[Garner R]

The swedish royal family is actually of french descent.
The british royal families real last name is saxe-coburg-gotha, the name shared between the half german queen Victoria and her husband (and cousin) the german albert.
hmm... strange right?
the head of sweden is french
the head of england of german descent.

[Aidant]

So according to you, the man who links our current monarchy with Germany is someone who died nearly 150 years ago. Someone's however many times great grandfather does not mean you are that nationality. Prince Albert is the last link with Germany and is nowhere near tangible enough to label the monarchy as German. With this logic, you could label millions of Americans as being of a different nationality, purely because their ancestors came from somewhere else 150 years ago.

[Diana Tais]

If we go to the 'real' last name of the British Royal Family, it wouldn't be either windsor or Saxe-Coburgh-Gotha, it would be Mountbatten - Prince Philip's surname (that is, if we forget the Royal Act).

British Royal Family does indeed have a lot of German blood, but you must not forget that after Queen Anne passed away, the son of the Electress of Hanover (that is, a German) was called to rule. And most from the long list of Georges, and later Queen Victoria, chose to marry German Princessess/Prince as well.

British Royal Family also has quite a lot of Danish and Greek blood in their veins, and of course, drops of British blood too.

Nevertheless, I don't think it really matters what 'blood' they have: after all, Prince Philip was a Greek, but he fought for his adoptive country in the WW2 not even slightly worse then any of the other British soldiers.

I think members of the British Royal Family, at least the older generation, are tought from the early childhood to prepare to serve Britain for the whole life. Just look at the most magnificent examples of the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh, Princess Alexandra, the late Princess Alice, or the Duchess of Gloucester: they all were/are every inch true British Royals, regardless of their countries of origin.


EDIT: N1, Prince Philip was Prince of Greece and Denmark, not Prince of Greece and Sweden, prior to his marriage to Princess Elizabeth. He relinquished all his foreign titles before marriage.

[aida]

Just remember that the Queen Mum was mostly Scottish (and had some American ancestry!), and although Prince Philip brought a hefty dose of German back into the line, Princess Diana was pretty thoroughly English, so that Prince William may be the most English King they've had in centuries.

[Naturist Pete]

They have German blood in them, and Greek, and.......

[BROOOOOKLYN]

Throughout the history of Europe, a monarch's ethnicity has seldom coincided with the country over which they ruled. Kings would marry off their sons and daughters to form alliances or increase holdings, and as such there was quite a bit of border crossing so to say.

With the so much inter-connectivity amongst the ruling families of Europe, where you grew up, what ethnic line you derived from and where you held title were often very different.

Of course the English Royal family is thouroughly British, they are without doubt of German stock. Prince Philip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth was actually a prince of Greece and Sweden himself. He too though is of thorough German stock.

Germany was only unified as a country in the 19th century, and before that was a loose confederacy of principalities and and as such generated a plethora of royal stock. Plus the rise of the House of Hapsburg also helped to progenerate German stock in many royal houses.

Fact of the matter is though, all the royalty of Europe is related to some degree from the all the intermarrying, and there are several genetic diseases that are prevalent among them because of the limited gene pool. Really, when you get down to it, none of them are really of any nationality. They have greater allegiance to their class.

[Celia H]

Not so strange - the European royals are an inbred lot - hence some of the conditions from which a large proportion of them have suffered.

Victoria and Albert - who bred like rabbits, but were not so nice looking - provided nubile young brides for the unlovely satyrs of the palaces of Europe - with the result that George V, Victoria's grandson, was the cousin of Kaiser Wilhelm II, and also of Tsar Nicholas (although George and Nickie, as he was known, looked more like twin brothers.)

Prince Philip, of course, was part of the Greek royal family, which was also German-Danish. Not a drop of Greek blood in their veins. Mountbatten, his family name, was originally Battenberg.

And Bonnie Prince Charlie was more French-Polish than British.

Queen and country? But which country???