Queen Mother

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The title Queen Mother is a title reserved for a widowed queen consort whose son/daughter from that union is the reigning monarch.

Contents

Origin and Similar Terms

The wife of a king is a queen consort. The widow of a king is a queen dowager (or dowager queen). If the dowager queen is the mother of the next monarch, she is also the queen mother, in those countries that use the tradition.

Where a king was married more than once and a previous wife is still living, only the most recent wife is Queen Dowager (and only if she is still married to him at his death); any others are simply styled "Queen [Personal Name]." If one of the other queens is the mother of the reigning monarch, that person is not normally titled Queen Mother because she is not Queen Dowager - but there may be circumstances to allow a subjective exception.

For example, Victoria, Duchess of Kent, reputedly thought she was Queen Mother when her daughter acceeded to the throne as Queen Victoria. But the Duke of Kent had never been king, so she had never been queen - thus, she was not Queen Mother but she was the Queen's mother. Princess Elena of Romania (see below) was an exception to this rule.

Likewise, Princess Muna al-Hussein (the former Antoinette Avril Gardiner, b. 1941, England), as mother of King Abdullah II of Jordan is the King's mother - but she is not Queen Mother, because she was not given the title Queen while she was married to King Hussein. (She was his second wife.)

There is no masculine equivalent to the term. If Albert, Prince Consort had survived Queen Victoria, instead of the other way around, he would not have been called "Prince Father" or a like title with respect to his reigning son Edward VII; he could not, of course, have been called 'Queen Mother'.

The grandmother, great-grandmother, etc., of a reigning monarch who was Queen Mother in reference to an earlier monarch in the same line is a "Queen Mother Dowager," though this circumstance rarely occurs. An example is Queen Mary, widow of King George V, who was Queen Mother with respect to her sons Edward VIII and George VI, and survived to be the living grandmother of the reigning Queen Elizabeth II from 1952 to 1953.

Recent British Queens Mother

The following queens became queens mother, though not all chose to use that style.

  • Queen Mary (1867?1953) — widow of George V and mother of kings Edward VIII and George VI. Queen Mary never used the title 'Queen Mother,' choosing instead to be known as "Queen Mary" and that style was used to describe her in the Court Circular. But she was a Queen Mother just the same, and when her granddaughter acceeded to the throne as Elizabeth II became monarch in 1952, she became a Queen Mother Dowager.
  • Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother (1900-2002) — the widow of George VI and mother of Queen Elizabeth II. Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother was so enormously popular she was often referred to as the Queen Mum, and the term "Queen Mother" remains associated with her after her death.

For further discussion, see English Queens Mother.

Other Queens Mother

The title 'Queen Mother' has been widely used. Other well-known Queens Mother include:

Exceptional cases and mistaken identity

  • Elena of Greece ? wife, from 1921–1928, of the future Carol II of Romania, and mother of King Michael of Romania. In circumstances that read like a soap opera, Michael first ruled from 1927–1930, before his father was king (and again after his father abdicated), and gave his mother the title. Thus, she became Queen Mother without having been Queen first. She subsequently divorced playboy Carol in 1928, before he became king in 1930.
  • Similarly, Maharani Gayatri Devi of Jaipur was the third wife of her husband, the monarch, but not the mother of his successor, a son by the king's first wife. She however has been accorded the title of Rajmata, or Queen Mother anyway.
  • Queen Noor of Jordan is sometimes mistakenly referred to as the Queen Mother of Jordan. But while she is the widow of King Hussein and was his fourth wife, the current king, Abdullah II, is not her son; he's her step-son. His mother is Princess Muna al-Hussein (mentioned above).

Joke or Veiled Announcement?

Template:Pov-section Diana, Princess of Wales reportedly once suggested to journalist Andrew Morton (author of Diana: Her True Story) that when her son, Prince William of Wales became king, she would be known as King Mother. (Source: Andrew Morton, interviewed by Gay Byrne on the Late Late Show on [[Radio Telef�s �ireann|RT�]].) Of course, no such title exists.

Some people do occasionally misunderstand the title "Queen Mother" as a variation on the designation "Queen's Mother," and thus presume the mother of a king would be called "King Mother" - but it seems highly unlikely that a member of the Royal Family, even one by marriage, would make such a mistake.

It is possible she was just playing a joke on Morton, but it is equally possible that she deliberately misspoke and said "King Mother" when her intended meaning was "King's mother." In other words, she may have been telling Morton, in a veiled way, that she had already decided to divorce her husband. Thus, she knew she would never be Queen and so knew she would not be "Queen Mother" but, instead, would be the "King's mother." If her intent was to give Morton such a subtle hint, he apparently missed it.

Otherwise, if Charles and Diana had remained married, she would have become queen when he acceded to the throne and, if she survived her husband, would then have become Queen Mother. Or if he died without becoming king, her title would have metamorphosed at his death from "HRH the Princess of Wales" to "HRH the Dowager Princess of Wales" (i.e., the widow's style) - and so she would have remained after her son's accession, unless she were given a new title (such as a peerage).

As they did divorce, however, her title and style had already changed, from "HRH the Princess of Wales" to "Diana, Princess of Wales". Observe that British constitutional law uniquely distinguishes between royal and non-royal princesses. Only a sovereign, the children of a sovereign, the children of a sovereign's sons, and their respective wives (but not husbands) are royal in Britain. Royal rank acquired through marriage is lost through dissolution.


References

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