The British Royal Family: Everything you need to know

Hello. I'm Gill at engVid, and today's lesson is all about the British Royal Family. Okay,

so if you probably see items in the news about our royal family, you'll have seen the queen,

Queen Elizabeth; maybe her husband, Prince Philip; but they're a big family, and also

not all countries have a royal family so I've just put this lesson together with a bit of

information to tell you a little bit more about them. Okay, right, so the British Royal

Family are also known as the House of Windsor, because Windsor is their name, which comes

from Windsor. This place here, Windsor Castle is one of their homes. So years ago they decided

to use the name Windsor.

So, some people like the royal family, admire them. They think of them as kind of celebrities,

just like film stars, and sports celebrities. They're reported in the newspapers in a similar

way. You get gossip about them. In some newspapers who like to write a lot of gossip, if they've

heard something, it may not be accurate, but they've heard a story about some member of

the royal family, and they print the story. They might have a photograph to go with it.

So they're always in the news, the royal family, for one reason or another, either a good reason

or a bad reason. Pretty much every day you can hear something about the royal family

or read something in the newspaper. So, some people do like them, and even, you know, think

of them as celebrities, and maybe give too much time and thought to them.

But then at the other extreme, some people dislike them because they're thinking of the

fact that they spend a lot of money, they have all these buildings which are expensive

to look after, people say: "What work do they do?" They don't seem to do any work, so why

should they live such rich lives if they don't do anything? But, of course, a lot of the

royal family do things all the time. They're not working for money always, sometimes they

do that as well, they have jobs some of them with a salary, but some of them, they may

not be working and being paid for it, but they're doing kind of diplomatic work, they're

meeting visitors from other countries, they're being kind of ambassadors, that sort of thing.

So they keep busy, and they're patrons of charities and they go to events, and they

give their support to things and so on. So, a lot of the royal family do keep quite busy

trying to live useful lives, and so I think if they didn't do that there would be a lot

more sort of criticism of them. But because you can't see that they're doing things, working

hard, that stops a lot of people from criticizing and saying we shouldn't have a royal family.

Some people are called Republicans, and they say we should have a president instead of

a queen or a king. We should have a president and a prime minister instead of a queen and

a prime minister. So there are Republicans around and have been for more than a hundred

years, people who wanted to get rid of the royal family, but it hasn't happened yet.

Okay, so the kind of system we have in the UK, it's called a constitutional monarchy.

The "monarchy" part is to do with the royal family, with the queen. The monarch, so the

word "monarch" means king or queen. The "constitutional" part is to do with politics, and the government,

and parliament. So what happens, really, is the government, the MPs, the ministers in

parliament, they make the decisions. The government makes the decisions. And if they have a new

piece of, an act of parliament, a new law, for example, the queen just has to sign it.

If it's been democratically decided already by the politicians that this will become law,

the queen can't just say: "No, I don't like that. I'm not going to sign it." She just

has to sign it because it's gone through a democratic process. So that's why it's a constitutional

monarchy. It's the monarch or king or queen governed by the parliament, by the politicians.

Okay.

So, let's have a look at some of the vocabulary which is fairly simple most of it. So a king

or queen is the monarch, the head of state if you like. Usually any children they have

will be prince or princess, so prince for male, princess of female. There are some other

titles used as well, which are sort of high aristocratic titles. Duke for the male, duchess

for the female. So some of the royal family have these titles as well, as well as prince,

but some of them might be prince and duke, they just have extra titles because of their

position.

Okay, so the current queen, I'm sure you've seen her in pictures and on television, in

films is Queen Elizabeth II. We always use these Roman numerals for the king or queen.

So, not second, 2nd, like that, but we use the Roman numerals. It's just a convention,

a tradition. And she was born in 1926. Okay? And she married Prince Philip, the Duke of

Edinburgh. That's the title he was given when he married her. So he was already called Philip,

that was his name, but then because he married... She was at the time Princess Elizabeth. She

wasn't already queen at that time. She was Princess Elizabeth, so he became Prince Philip,

and he was given this title in addition, the Duke of Edinburgh. So Edinburgh has a connection

with Scotland because the UK is a combination of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern

Ireland, so some titles mention Scotland or Wales usually. Okay. So she married Prince

Philip 1947, a few years before she became queen. Her father died in 1952, so she automatically

became queen because he had two daughters and she was the older daughter. So there were

no sons, so she became queen as soon as he died, 1952.

And then the coronation, the special ceremony when the crown is put on the person's head

was the following year, because coronations are very complicated events, they take a long

time to organize, so they couldn't have a coronation the same year. It's often the following

year. And that was also interesting because it was the first time a coronation in this

country had been on television. It was televised. There were TV cameras there on the day and

it was being broadcast live. And that gave a big boost to the ownership of television

sets because the television technology had just started being developed around this period,

and a lot of people hadn't bought a television yet. But when they knew that the coronation

was going to be on television they either bought their own television to watch it, or

they would... They arranged to go to a neighbour's house or a friend's house to watch it on their

television. So, 1953 the sales of televisions went up dramatically because of the coronation.

Okay. So, and there is still film available that you can see now in black and white of

the coronation. Right, okay, so she became queen and was crowned.

And then just to mention the main buildings that belong or... Well, do they belong to

the royal family? Or they belong to the nation, but the royal family live in them. Buckingham

Palace in London, okay. Winsor Castle in Berkshire, which is to the west of London. That's a very

old building, older than this one. There's a house, a big house in Sandringham, which

is in Norfolk, which is sort of northeast from London, about a hundred miles or so.

And then, again, a Scottish connection, there's a Balmoral, a castle in Scotland. And usually

the royal family go to the different buildings at particular times of year. So in the summer,

for example, in August traditionally the royal family go up to Scotland in August and through

into September. So there's a very long tradition of being in certain places at certain times.

Okay, and then just to show you a little bit of the history going back, the royal family

and the person who is queen, as you... As I mentioned, she was the elder of two daughters

so she inherited the throne as it's called, inherit the throne. The throne is the big

chair that the queen sits on, so she inherited the throne. Inherited from her father, so

it is hereditary. So that's the other word, hereditary. So it a family, and people inherit

the next generation, inherit the throne so it's a continuous line and it's designed,

really, to avoid confusion. If one king or queen dies, there may be people fighting to

take their place, people competing in competition for becoming king or queen, so they don't

want that to happen. So because there have been times in history when that has happened

and it's caused a lot of people killed in battles, and so on.

So, this is just to show how the family has gone back through time. So the queen's father

who died in 1952 was King George VI, so that's 6th there. So, he was king from 1936 until

1952. This person here was actually his older brother, but he wasn't king for very long.

King Edward VIII (8th) he was only king in one year, 1936 because he decided not to be

king, he abdicated. That's the sort of royal word for resigning. He resigned, or he...

He quit. He said: "I quit." Well, he didn't say: "I quit", he said it in a different way,

but... And it's a very long story why he decided he didn't want to be king. I don't have time

for that in this lesson, but there's lots of information on the internet about it. Okay.

So he was automatically king in 1936 because his father, King George V (5th) died and because

Edward was the eldest son, he automatically became king. But then he abdicated and his

next brother became king instead. That was a bit unexpected, but that's what happened.

So, George V then, he was King George V from 1910 to 1936. His father was King Edward VII

(7th) who was king from 1901 to 1910. He didn't have a very long reign because he was already

quite old by the time he became king because his mother, Queen Victoria, she was queen

for a very long time, from 1837 through to 1901, so by the time she died he was already

quite old, which it's a bit similar to the present queen and her son, very similar really.

Okay. So, and then you may be wondering we have Queen Elizabeth II, was there a Queen

Elizabeth I? And there was, but it was quite a long time ago in the 16th century and early

17th century. That was Elizabeth I, and she was the daughter of King Henry VIII who you

may know had six wives, not all at the same time. One at a time he had six wives, so he

is the king who is famous for marrying six times. Okay. Right, so that's the first half

of the lesson, and I have just a bit more information for you in the second part.

Okay, so let's have a look in a bit more detail at the inheritance of the British throne,

so the word "inheritance", the person who inherits the throne usually from their mother

or father who was king or queen before. So, inheritance of the throne, hereditary, and

we talk about the person who is next in line to the throne. You can say: "Who is next in

line to the throne? Who inherits the throne when the present monarch dies?" Okay.

So, usually, as I've said, there are lots of people and they all have a position. I've

put some numbers here to show what number they are in line to the throne. So, you can

see that the first person in line to the throne is Prince Charles, Prince of Wales who is

the son, the eldest son of Queen Elizabeth. So he's first in line. And then there's a

rule of who inherits or who's next after him, and so on. But there are lots of them, so

there's no difficulty - if one person unexpectedly dies, there's always someone else, someone

next down on the list. But back in the 18th century, there was a time when there was a

bit of difficulty finding who to take the throne after one monarch had died. There was

also a problem about different religions, Protestant and Catholic religions. And I think

the king who was possibly the next in line for the throne was Catholic or had Catholic

interests, and people didn't want that. They wanted to stay with the Protestant side of

Christianity, so what did they do? They had to find a more distant relative who happened

to be Protestant, and that distant relative was German and lived in Germany, and spoke

German, and didn't speak English. So, but he was the best option because the most important

thing at the time was to have a king or queen, preferably king who was Protestant. And this

guy, George agreed to come and become king, so he came from Germany to become King George

I, and he couldn't speak English. I don't know if he learnt a bit of English, but I

don't think he tried very hard because they didn't have things like the internet and engVid

in those days, so it must have been quite difficult to learn English. So he became king.

That was when the order of what's called the succession... Is another word, "succession",

meaning one person follows another person. It was not very, you know... There weren't

enough people to fill the vacancy, if you like. The job vacancy. So, it's not like that

nowadays because the present queen has had four children, her eldest son has had two

children, and his eldest son has had two children, so there are lots and lots of people, others

as well, the other three children of the queen have had children, so all of them are at some

position in line to the throne.

So just to go through the names, here: Princes Charles is also called Prince of Wales, that's

to make a connection with Wales as one of the UK countries because UK is United Kingdom,

so it's four different countries united. Okay? So, Prince Charles traditionally, going back

many hundreds of years, the eldest son of the king or queen is called the Prince of

Wales. And you know from that title that that person is heir to the throne. So, he's the

heir to the throne. So, that's why first in line here and he was born in 1948. Okay? Then

her next child was a girl, Princess Anne who also has the title Princess Royal born in

1950. She is actually 12th in line. You might think: "Well, why...? Why isn't she a bit

further up?" but there was... The law at the time was that the sons had more... A higher

position than daughters, and that law has changed more recently. I'll tell you a little

bit more about that towards the end of the lesson. So that's why she is only 12th in

line to the throne, whereas her next younger brother, Andrew, is 6th in line. So there

was some sort of lack of equality between sons and daughters in the past, which there

isn't anymore. But because it was the law at the time they were born, it's not being

applied retrospectively; they have to stay with that position now. Okay. So, Princess

Anne.

Next one, Prince Andrew, born 1960. And he has this extra title, another Duke, Duke of

York. And York is a city up in the north of England. Okay. And then finally the fourth

son was Prince Edward, and he also has a title. Earl is another aristocratic title, a bit

like Duke. He's the Earl of Wessex, and Wessex is an area in the west of England, okay, which

covers more than one county. It's like Devon, and Cornwall, and so on. So, Earl of Wessex,

born 1964, and he is 9th in line to the throne. Okay.

So, with Prince Charles having children they then become... Are in line for the throne

ahead of Charles' other brothers and sisters. So, Prince Charles, his eldest son is Prince

William. His title is the Duke of Cambridge, so another duke. Cambridge is a city just

north of London, a university city. He was born in 1982, and he's second in line for

the throne. Okay? And his younger brother is Prince Harry whose title is also Prince

Henry of Wales, so Wales comes into it again. Harry and Henry, that's the same name, really.

People called Henry... The informal name for Henry is Harry, and everybody thinks of him

as Prince Harry, not Henry. Okay. He was born in 1984 and he is 5th in line to the throne.

Okay.

So then Prince William who is already the grandson of the present queen has had two

children. Prince George of Cambridge, so he has the Cambridge title because his father

has the Cambridge title. Prince George of Cambridge was born 2013, so that's... He's

a little boy, but he's third in line for the throne. Okay? And then they had a daughter,

Princess Charlotte of Cambridge. Again, she was born in 2015 and because of the change

in the law this new law of equality was in 2013, so by the time Princess Charlotte was

born in 2015, two years later, that then means that she becomes 4th in line to the throne

after her older brother under the new law so she is the first person, a little girl,

to be affected by this new law, which as a very small baby she became 4th in line to

the throne. Okay. So...

And then, of course, you probably remember Prince Charles was married to Diana who died

in 1997 in a car crash in Paris, which was a big shock. And Prince William is married

to Catherine and she is called the Duchess of Cambridge to match his title.

Okay, so I hope that's given you a bit of an idea about the more detailed... A more

detailed picture of the British royal family and who they all are. There are lots of other

relatives, too, but there isn't time to go into them. These are the main ones who you

might see in newspapers, and magazines, or on television, and so on.

So I hope that's been a bit of interesting history and present day, what's called current

affairs. So if you'd like to go to the website, www.engvid.com, there's a quiz there to test

your knowledge on this lesson, and I hope to see you again soon. Okay. Bye for now.