I heard the Monarchy of England is of German decent. Is that True ?

Question

Are the British royals actually Saxon's ?

Answer 1

Yes, the royal family is made of Guelphs, a race of Germans. They descended from Guelphs starting with George I. That 's why fro so many years the royal family was loathed because of strong patriotism to themselves and not to the German rulers.

Answer 2

Though there is always a strong contingent on here growling about the Royal Family's German descent, they don't stop to think that many of the monarch's consorts were not English or German. James I was Scottish (as well as Tudor descent), his queen was Anne of Denmark. The Hanoverians were ultimately of Stuart descent. Queen Victoria wanted more new blood in the family, and her children married all over Europe and Russia. In more recent times, Queen Alexandra was Danish, as is Prince Philip (admittedly with some German, his house was only elected to the Greek throne). The Queen Mum was Scottish. The Royal Family today is far more British than it has been in quite some time, and the Queen's grandchildren will continue that trend.

Answer 3

Partially - her great-great-grandfather, Prince Albert, was of German birth.

The question about the Germanness of British royalty is quite common here. While there is German blood in the British royal line, there is also Serbian, Spanish, Greek, French, and a couple dozen other nationalities in there. The European royal families intermarried over the course of so many centuries that it's impossible to assign any "real" nationality to any members. Historically, the British royal family is no more or less German than it is Danish, Swedish, French, or even British for that matter.

Answer 4

You must be looking at reader-responses to articles in Edinburgh's daily newspaper, "The Scotsman", wherein disgruntled Scots almost daily carp about that "wee German woman." In all seriousness, the Hanovers, from the German principality of Hanover, ascended to the English throne after the Stuart dynasty played out without any legitimate Protestant heirs, although they weren't short of either Roman Catholic or illegitimate ones. Indeed, the first two Hanover heirs to the English throne spoke German far more often than they did English; George I didn't understand English at all.

Fast forward to the 19th century whereupon Queen Victoria, the last of the Hanovers, married a distant cousin, Albert of Saxe-Coberg Gotha, yet another German principality, in 1840. During the middle of World War I (in 1917), the Saxe-Coberg Gotha dynasty became the very English-sounding Windsors.

In the meantime, Victoria's nine children and 40 grandchildren married into almost all the European royal families around at the end of the nineteenth-century. Victoria's great-great grandchildren include present-day monarchs Carl XVI Gustaf, of Sweden, Margrethe II, of Denmark, Peter II, of Yugoslavia, and King Juan Carlos, of Spain. But more importantly, at least for the British Royals, one of Queen Victoria's descendants was a Greek prince in exile named Phillip. Before he married his fifth cousin, Princess Elizabeth, he gave up his Greek title and took the surname Mountbatten (which is an English adaptation of the German-sounding Battenberg).

Of course, the English themselves are a combination of the original Celts that inhabited the island of Britain, the Angles and Saxons that invaded the country about the 5th century, and the conquering Norman French, who a couple of generations before they sat foot on a Dover beach in October 1066 were of Viking ancestry. By the way, the Scots may have the last laugh since Diana Spencer, a descendant of Charles [Stuart] II and one of his mistresses, Lucy Walter (who was Welsh), married Prince Charles. Of course, the Queen Mum was from a Scottish aristocratic family.

Answer 5

When Queen Victoria married Prince Albert, she married into the German family of Saxe Coburg Gotha which became the name of the Royal family until World War1 when the then King George V changed the name to Windsor, the present name of of the Royal House of Windsor. All of Victoria's children spoke German including her son who became King Edward the VII and her daughter was married to the German Kaiser. The Batteneberg family all related to the British Royals, also changed their German name to Mountbatten .
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Answer 6

To Philm: It's true a lot of Royal families are related closer then most families. But then everyone is also. You can take any five people from a room say in a doctor's office waiting and find that 2 of them are distantly related.
Royal families actually embrace new blood not the same. They make the people they marry equal to them with new Titles.
The British Royal family has German roots due to Queen Victoria, her surname should have been Saxe-Coburg-Gotha but it was changed to Winsor. Like everyone in the world we are a little bit of every ethnicity, one not being better then the other.

Answer 7

Yes,although the current crop,thanks to the Scottish Queen Elizabeth,the Queen Mother,the English Diana and Sarah and Sophie are more English than in the past. The Windsors were originally Saxe-Coburg Gothas;Queen Victoria from the Royal House of Hanover,was responsible for the strong German ancestry of the current Royals.Queen Victoria thought it very important to keep strong ties with "the German element," the German Royals;she herself married a German prince and saw to it that many of her children married German Royals.
Prince Phillip,Duke of Edinburgh is Danish-German;his Mountbatten family were once Battenbergs,changed from
Shleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-
Gluksburg.
Both sides of the family anglicized their names during World War I,because of anti-German sentiment,and perhaps also out of disappointment with their German kin,some of who were complicit and aided the Kaiser.
When Bertie,who became King George VI, married Lady Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, April 16,1923,the Royal Family became a little more English.All of the current Queen's children have married people of English ancestry(Diana,Sarah,Sophie,
Camilla,Mark Phillips and Tim Lawrence).

Answer 8

yes the family's real name is Saxe-Coburg. They were Germans a few generations back but changed their name as Germans were not popular in Britain during the course of the two world wars.

Answer 9

I don't know if its German. It happened during the Norman conquest, so they were from Normandy. At the Battle of Hastings in 1066, William the conqueror's Norman forces killed King Harold??? and eventually took the throne. Whast happened to his lineage and the old lineage is up in the air after that for me.

Answer 10

All of the European royal families are related. Sad bunch of gits, aren't they? It's that whole "royal blood" baloney. They would inter-marry because they could only marry someone of royal blood and if there wasn't a suitable suitor in their country they'd get one from the royal family of a neighboring country. The Kaiser, the King, The Cesar, The Czar, etc etc. All related.