By Neil Macaulay Santa Monica
I see much reference lately to Queen Elizabeth I and Queen Elizabeth II in the media recently due to movies about them, I think. The references often do not say which country she was queen of.
They were queens of different countries. Firstly of England and secondly of the United Kingdom.
The United Kingdom was formed in 1603 from the Kingdom of Scotland, the Kingdom of England, the Principality of Wales and Ireland. They were united under a single monarch, King James VI of Scotland. It was agreed that since there had never been a King James of England it would make no sense to call him King James VI of Great Britain and so he became King James I of Great Britain. On the same principle there has never been a queen Elizabeth of Scotland and so the present queen is Queen Elizabeth I of Great Britain.
This was a great controversy in 1952 when she became queen. Many Scots were insulted by the arrogant English calling her Queen Elizabeth II when she quite plainly was not. Great fun was had in Scotland blowing up mail boxes with “E II R” on them.
From a Scottish point of view, the rightful royal family was the Stuarts (Bonnie Prince Charlie) but the English refused to have him on the throne even though he was most directly in line. But he was a Catholic and the English wanted a Protestant and so they wandered along the family tree till they found a very obscure member in Europe. They took princes from Holland and Saxe-Coburg Gotha in Germany and stuck them on the throne. That gave them a line of German speaking King Georges, the third of whom was mad and lost the American Colonies. The name of the British royal family was Battenberg until WWI when it was an embarrassment to be too German and was changed to Windsor. As a result of the continual use of foreign princes, it was not until Princess Elizabeth (later QEI of G.B.) was born that an heir to the throne in the house of Windsor had as much as 50 percent British blood (because her mother was Scottish).
So the present queen of GB is erroneously titled. She is not queen of England since there is no such Kingdom and only a fraction of her blood is English.
I don’t suppose they mentioned that in the movies.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 19, 2007. Read the original PDF.