Also from Blackadder: Prince George (to be George IV), trying to rally his men: "I mean, for god's sake, we're British aren't we?" Blackadder: [as an aside, after the Prince is out of earshot] "You're not, you're German."
Actually Victoria’s father-a Hanoverian-was therefore also German as well as English. So Victoria was fully German, not half. Her uncle Ernest came to be king of Hanover which split the personal union that William IV (Victoria‘s other uncle) held. But Hanover went on to be conquered by Prussia in 1866. It probably didn’t bother Victoria much since while the king of Hanover was by then her cousin, the king of Prussia was her daughter’s father-in-law.
@@ugetsu2093It didn't bother her then, but after she died three of her grandchildren had a massive row that lasted four years and killed several million people.
Is it possible that Queen Victoria wrote her private diary in English because her mother's English was not great and her mother had control over almost every part of her life?
@dariuswong9764 obviously doing that wouldn't prevent her from reading it entirely, but it'd make it harder. If she had to bring in a translator, then there's at least one servant that knows she's going through that much effort to read her child's diary AND that same servant has read all of the princess's juicy gossip. It's a reasonable theory whether or not it's true
As my wife pointed out, the imposition of French was because they were conquerors. Getting German kings was because we needed (the view at the time, obviously) someone who wasn't Catholic.
The biggest reason for the difference is that the Norman invasion didn't just replace the king, it replaced the whole ruling class To quote Wikipedia: "A direct consequence of the invasion was the almost total elimination of the old English aristocracy and the loss of English control over the Catholic Church in England. William systematically dispossessed English landowners and conferred their property on his continental followers."
@@intermariayep, not to mention the sheer number of elite casualties at Hastings. We had the last laugh, most the elite women remarried to Normans and raised their kids so by the 1100/1200s French wasnt the common language among aristocrats anymore. Same thing happened in Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Italy. Norman knights really got around, but after a generation of settling they usually assimilated in.
@@intermaria that was always my understanding. Indeed I heard somewhere that sometimes in English meat has the French name (beef, pork, poultry), while the animal itself has the Old English name (cow, ox, pig, chicken); because the French nobility ate the meat, but the Anglo-Saxon peasants looked after the animals. I also read that the Welsh version of my name (Alun) is indigenous to Britain, but the English version (Alan) is a re-introduction from Norman and Breton nobles via the French Alain. This last factoid may, of course, only be interesting to me.
The fact that ALL European (Brits included) royalty are related to each other and almost all spoke French &/or German &/or English (+ Spanish etc., if that was your nationality) because it allowed for intercommunication, and better marriage prospects ... _and_ access to court politics. (Actually, the higher your 'rank' and greater your wealth, the more you could get away with 1 language, maybe 2 - because your spouse would be more likely to accommodate _you_ . Those hoping to 'marry up' or 'marry well' were more likely to have more languages.) Example - 'The Father-in-Law of Europe,' King Christian IX of Denmark, had 6 children all of whom married very well. They were taught English by their Governess, but it wasn't until they were introduced to 'society' that they realised there was a problem - they all spoke with a distinct Irish accent, as their Governess was Irish! The King hired tutors, and the accent was remedied (lol one of my favourite stories.) His 6, Danish born, English speaking children became: - Frederik VIII, King of Denmark - Alexandra, Queen of the United Kingdom - George I, King of the Hellenes - Maria Feodorovna, Empress of Russia - Thyra, Crown Princess of Hanover - Prince Valdemar Among his current descendants are: - King Frederik X, - King Philippe of Belgium, - King Harald V of Norway, - Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg, - King Charles III of the United Kingdom, - King Felipe VI of Spain. You may as well ask why European royals don't speak Danish!
Danish is the closest language to the Norse used by Vikings. Given how far the Vikings travelled through Europe, its curious that Danish is often relegated to 4th or 5th language status.
@@michellebyrom6551 nonsense. Icelandic is the closest language to Old Norse. In fact they're nearly the same thing, only with different pronunciation. An Icelander can easily read and understand Old Norse while a Dane can make educated guesses at the most. And after Icelandic Faroese is the second closest. After that maybe Danish, but it could just as well be Norwegian or Swedish, I'm not sure about that.
William brought an army with him and gave the Norman aristocracy land in England. So it wasn't just one single foreign family taking the crown, but many Norman's taking over key positions all other the country
And all the Anglo-Norman nobles had lands in Normandy too. That encouraged them to keep speaking French. It wasn't until King John lost Normandy in the 13th century and the nobility had to choose kingdoms that the ones left in England started speaking English.
@@thomaskalinowski8851we see lower nobility, your typical knights and barons, switching to English around the 1100s as they had often been raised by Anglo Saxon women who remarried after 1066
Queen Victoria was born in Britain, because her father wanted to make sure the potential heir to the throne was borne there. He had been living in Germany with his wife and stepchildren, because of cheaper living costs.
Why would they have to worry about living costs at all? Wouldn't they already own an estate in Germany (or whatever country that's part of present-day Germany)?
A big part of the difference is that in the middle ages the King was the state and the absolute ruler, by the 18th century the state of England was more than a monarch and the role of the king became far more than that, a king must reflect a state rather than a state reflecting a king
not exactly, the King's power was restricted in England by parliament quite early in the Middle ages. William the Conqueror brought along a huge army of French-speaking nobles who had no interest in accommodating the locals. Many of them had family and property back in France. so the entire government became Frenchified
Medieval kings in Western Europe were heavily dependent on support from the most powerful nobles (think dukes or counts). Kings needed their vassals to provide levy (soldiers and tax money). They were also not allowed to raise an army in peacetime (no wars or internal rebellions).
One question I've always had (about royals from a bit earlier) is, how is it that Catherine of Aragon was betrothed to Arthur Tudor since she was about three years old, but in all the time before she actually was sent to England no one bothered to teach her English? Like she and her husband-to-be literally could only communicate in Latin. She must have learned very quickly after that though.
I doubt that they were doing much communicating. She was just breeding stock which it why she, and others, were got rid of when they didn't fulfill their 'duty' to provide a couple of male heirs.
It does seem like an oversight, but it seems like that happened to a lot of royal princesses at the time. No one bothered to teach them the language they would be expected to teach.
Before the 1750s it was customary for a foreign princess marrying a king to bring her old retinue from her own nation. So Spanish princesses who ended up as wives of Austrian archdukes and French kings brought their Spanish favorites with them. Or Italian princesses who ended up as wives of French kings brought their Italian favorites. Thus the foreign queen didn’t bother to learn the language of their king husband because they brought a whole group with them who could translate easily.
She... was aware that the *entire* indigenous population of Britain is actually descended from two *German* tribes - the Angles and the Saxons - and that English is literally descended from an Early Old German dialect, yes...? 😅
@@brídeann I've mostly seen it used as reference to Germans and, by Asia, historically against Europeans in general. I don't think it would make much sense in reference to Catholics, unless OP's grandma was misusing it. Neither Germans nor the British Royal Family have historically been very Catholic... at all 😅
"Germany"'s main export product throughout the 16th to late 19th century was nubile aristocrats, which makes sense considering the vast amounts of more or less sovereign principalities across the Holy Roman Empire.
You could have continued on beyond Queen Victoria to the Royal Family’s later connections to Germany between the 1920’s to 1950’s namely their Nazi sympathisers. Edward VIII’s story is well known but not that of some other Royals. One of Victoria’s grandsons, Prince Charles Edward sided with Germany at the beginning of WWI. He had inherited the Dukedom of Sax Coburg Gotha some years earlier when still in his teens. After the war he joined the nascent Nazi party and rose through its ranks in the inter war years and held a senior position during WWII. Two of Prince Phillip’s sisters married Nazi officers.
+ The last German Emperor Wilhelm II. was also one of Queen Victoria's grandsons. Apparently he had a complicated relationship with the British side of his family, especially with his British mother, who was very intellectual and progressive but not progressive enough to accept his disabled arm. Unfortunately he didn't inherit his parents' intelligence, coped with it by having an inflated ego and became super militaristic. After WW1 he fled to the Netherlands and later hoped that the Nazis would make him Emperor again until he died in 1941.
The obsession with language is pretty funny when monarchs have been learning multiple languages from early childhood for centuries, it seems to be part of their basic education. Latin has been ingrained in the country since the Roman invasion. The English monarchy has gone through so many crazy twists and turns. But I always look at it that if we didn't recruit a German (protestant) king then the chances are there wouldn't be a monarchy today as they would have been Catholic and had too much power when the revolutions were happening, like in France. The whole of society would be different.
I think that Britain may had just became a republic if the Hanoverian succession didn’t occur. The previous Stuart monarchs were becoming more marginalized/losing direct political power after Cromwell’s time in power.
German was not VR 1st language. She was born to an English father and 4th son of the King of GB. Her 1st language was in fact English and she grew up in the UK
I think it might be out of some sort of effect where if we say the royals aren't English, it absolves the English working class of their guilt over the things the monarchy has gotten away with doing at the expense of ordinary people in the former British colonies, that the people of the British Isles didn't protest against and benefit from even now.
@@katanah3195yeah, but the monarchy wasn't a powerful institution during the heyday of imperialism. Not arguing that the crimes of colonialism didn't happen, but by the time the Hanoverians came to the throne, they were effectively figureheads anyway. So we can't really blame it on the royals.
The monarchy doesn't have any real power so the Commonwealth country doesn't bother removing them. Also the law of the Commonwealth was created alongside the monarchy so if they removed them they need to change the law too. In addition to that it cost money and resources and there's little return since Commonwealth country are independent.
Or you didn't stop and you still have your ancestral grumps as your king, nothing wrong in that 😅 we are all a worldwide family living in our own houses with stronger mutual bonds and security assurances.
I wonder what people in Papua New Guinea think of the royal family. I’ve never heard anybody use the phrase “Queen of Papua New Guinea” or “King of Papua New Guinea.”
Albert and Victoria most likely spoke German to each other. And Albert's English most probably had a heavy German accent. King Charles III surprised the Germans on his visit to Germany last year by holding a speech in perfect, fluent German. His pronunciation was sometimes slightly off, but otherwise. That said, historically nearly all European royalty has it's roots in some way or form in German royalty. They're all related to each other.
Charles III might have learned from his father. Prince Philip was fluent in German. I saw an interview of him speaking German. He had the speech patern of a native speaker, who resides in a non-german speaking country. Still perfect grammar, but pauses to find the right german word.
@@andreabartels3176Years ago I read an interview by a former German POW who had spent the war time in Britain and had decided to remain in the country after the war. He worked as a gardener at one of the royal family's properties until his retirement. He said that Prince Philip would regularly come around and have a good chat with him in German. It seems, Philip was glad to have someone to talk to who was as fluent in German as he was.
I see people make a similar argument about the Romanian Royal Family. Our first two kings were born and raised in Germany but they’re all very much Romanian after that. I guess they have weird accents now because of the exile but culturally they are Romanian
Yeah it’s always irritated me that the British royal family is often seen as German, considering we only ever had two true German kings (KG1 and KG2). After that though, every single king has been born and raised in Britain and spoken English. It’s a silly misconception.
I think it's also the marrying of German princesses. I've watched a video a while ago detailing the degrees of heritage from certain countries for British monarchs and it took quite a while for German to loose its major status
@@Dave_Sisson "Greek" Kings were Danish/ German mostly. There wasn't one ethnic Greek married into that family, besides a very unfortunate lady whose (King) husband died from a monkey bite.
On the one hand I dislike calling them German because it implies that like a few people in your bloodline being from another country makes you unable to truly be British but on the other hand calling them German highlights how an obviously British thing isn't something that just appeared born from the land itself but came from the interaction between many countries and cultures.
You are overlooking that educated, royal Germans would speak French, even to themselves. Frederick the Great thought of himself as a philosopher of the French Enlightenment. On her deathbed, Queen Caroline, wife of George II, urged him to marry again. He replied, "Non, j'aurai des maitresses!"
So if you're debating how British are the royal family of Great Britain, how about considering the 14 other countries that have Charles III as their king? Several of them have never even been visited by their king, nor have any of the royals spent much time there.
@peggygraham6129 no, not the nations of the commonwealth as a whole (of which the British monarch is the formal head, and many of which are republics). The 14 nations-Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and 11 others I can't be bothered to list because it's too early in the morning- that have the British monarch (separately) as their monarch. AKA the Commonwealth Realms. Not the same as 'member of the Commonwealth', which is a different thing, and like I said, many are republics, and there's 4 (Lesotho, Swaziland, Malaysia and Tonga) who have their own monarchs.
William the Conqueror was able to impose the French language by military means. None of the German-born royals had that option. And I would guess that prior to being allowed to take the throne they had to make a lot concessions to the British aristocracy.
Partly because there wasn't really a Germany back then, but hundreds of smaller states. For instance, until 1837 the King of the UK was also Elector of Hannover, a pretty decent sized chunk of North West Germany. But their laws said ewww no girls. So Victoria lost that throne to her great uncle? en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_the_Holy_Roman_Empire,_1789_en.png The yellow part at the top of the map. Much larger than many other areas. England was by far their largest territory. So no realistic backup, especially with the bureaucracy and complexity of the Holy Roman Empire (it later broke up and merged a bit, but no longer with Austria and then became Germany in the 1870-1890s?)
The simple reason is that when William conquered England he brought his own Norman aristocracy with him, replacing all of the Anglo-Saxon ruling class with his own French-speaking Norman aristocracy, so naturally they all spoke in French.
@@treeaboo The simple reason is that William imposed them via his superior military force. Otherwise they would have been killed by the Lords they were seeking to replace.
I really like how you mentioned that George I. indeed could speak English and was just rather shy when using it. There's this ongoing rumor about him that he only spoke German and that that's how the post of prime minister was created (bc allegedly Walpole used the King's alledged imability to speak and understand English to gain more power), but in reality, George I. spoke 5 languages and was able to communicate with his ministers in English or - quite common for European nobility in the 18th century - in French.
This happened the other way around as well: Victoria's second daughter Alice marries the Grand Duke of Hesse, Louis IV. resulting in their children, Alexandra, the last Empress of Russia and her brother, Ernst Ludwig, the last Grand Duke of Hesse (Germany) to only write to one another in English, because that was literally their mother tongue.
Maybe, because the people of great Britain still are more than a bit sceptical about anything German... ... To put it lightly. When reading the charts moment sections on the Internet, you'd think that it's still the 1940s...
I do find it strange how people will refer to the _current_ royal family as being German, when every single British monarch for nearly the last 300 years has been born in Britain. Not to mention, George I was the great-grandson of James VI/I. So it takes three generations for the line of a Scottish king to turn German, but ten generations of being born in Britain isn't enough to make the German line turn British?
@@DanBeech-ht7sw no British monarch has married a German since Queen Victoria though. Edward VII's wife Queen Alexandra was Danish, George V's wife Queen Mary was British, Edward VIII's wife Wallis Simpson American, George VI's wife Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother was British (specifically, Scottish), and Elizabeth II's husband was Greek, albeit of mostly Danish ancestry, with a bit of British, Russian and German thrown in (and became a British citizen on his marriage). And both of Charles III's wives were/are British.
@@jonathanwebster7091 Edward VII 's wife was half German. Actually, full German, both her parents were born in Germany. George V's wife was half Austrian. Surname Von Hohenstein.
@@DanBeech-ht7sw oh dear. We're talking about blood quantum and percentages. Which means diddly squat in Britain. Queen Mary was born and raised in Britain. Which therefore makes her British.
People are keen to present the British monarchs as foreign because if they can sell that idea to the general public, it would be a lot easier to sell republicanism. Which is fine if you hold with that idea, but it's a nakedly political argument and should be seen as such rather than as "Canned edgy comment #142B."
Prince Phillip was fluent in German with pretty much no accent. So I guess the answer is in 2021. But the question stems from the xenophobia of the British public. Even the Queen Mother called him the Hun.
The French situation happened because it was a conquest by thousands of French-speaking Normans, who in turn had been Old-Norse-speaking Vikings less than 150 years prior to 1066. Thus those thousands of conquerors became a group powerful enough to propagate itself and impose French on the rest of English society. One German coming over and becoming king could not do that, ever. So he had to learn English as the whole of the court spoke English. He didn’t bring his own German court and impose it on the British.
I’m happy you mentioned that it’s mostly likely the court would be communicating in French, back in the 18th century. My friends often ask how did they speak and understand each other in the different courts when there was so many ambassadors, foreigners, travellers, international traders going around the centres of power? And I often answer, like Latin in the Catholic Church, French was the Court Language from the 16th to 19th centuries. When people couldn’t speak a certain language, they would go to speak French. Every aristocrat or bourgeois would know some to very good French back then, they’d be taught from an early age and it’d be a sign of wealth, meant that you could hire a French governess or a tutor for your children. French was the language of culture, elegance, prestige, especially after the reign of Louis XIV. And it was not only in England, it would stretch from Portugal to Russia, from Sweden to Greece. And it also influenced how several languages are spoken today. Many adopted French pronunciation to words they already had just so they could sound more French, and it ended up becoming the general way to speak in many cases.
King Edward 8, "The Traitor King" would get drunk and lapse into German at parties at Gloria Vanderbilt's house, after failing to give the British Empire to Hitler.
@@MyFiddlePlayer He committed treason, gave top secret defense info to his Austrian pals, and Churchill found out. Gave him the option of a public trial and execution for treason, or abdication. It's in "The Traitor King" and several other books by now. Edward 8 was a Nazi spy. Even AFTER the war ended, and news of the atrocities came out, David said, "Hitler wasn't such a bad chap." His wife, Wallis Simpson was just as bad, ranting about how that awful Mr. Lincoln had locked up her grandfather for treason. Because SHE wanted slaves, and thought the wrong side won the Civil War. It's in her autobiography.
I think the main difference is French men TOOK England in the medieval period (French, Norman same thing) but with George it was the English parliament that GAVE the title to germans. Like with the glorious revolution, while ceremonial head changed, parliament was in charge of the government
I believe that I have read that George III's older brother (the heir apparent) was sent to Germany to be educated, but he died before George II, and George III became king instead.
George III was the eldest son. You might be confused with Frederick, Prince of Wales, George II's eldest son, and George III's father, who was born in Hanover, and brought up speaking German, but started learning English when his grandfather (George I) became king of Great Britain and Ireland. He was desperate to come to England, but his father insisted he stayed in Hanover until his majority. This led to resentment and Frederick made sure all his children were brought up in Britain and thought of themselves as British.
It was George III's father, Frederick, Prince of Wales. He was born in Germany (although he was by all accounts a bit of an anglophile) and really, *really* didn't get on with either of his parents. He had also been left in Hanover to represent his grandfather there when the latter became King of Great Britain in 1714, and it's been speculated that that effected his relationship with his parents. Frederick's younger brother, William, Duke of Cumberland, (he of Battle of Culloden fame/infamy) who was born and raised in Britain when his parents moved to Britain after their grandfather became King, was much more liked by his parents. And such was the extent that his parents disliked their elder son, they considered splitting the family possessions, with Frederick getting Britain, William getting Hanover.
The british royal family is as foreign to britain as just about any royal family in europe is to thier respective countries. I think the reason people think of the royal family as german is because of ignorance . Most people dont know that this happened all the time in history . In our current nationalism filled society , we feel and assume that the head of the nation should be native to the land itself and when people learn about the german heritage of the royal family , it really strikes out to them . Idk , thats just my theory .
this, nationalism in it's (semi) modern form not that old. also shows in this missconception of him being german. george i was from hannover, he wasn't german. even the HRE didn't really feature a german identity, germany is a pretty new thing
@@thisorthat629 id disagree on the detail of no german identity existing prior to germany. The HRE definitely did feature some german identity, given that the Holy Roman Emperor was always crowned the King of the Germans first, and from 1512 onwards its name receives the addendum "of the German Nation", which shows there is at least some understanding of being german. I agree, that being german is generally not super relevant of an identity for most people in terms of who rules them or what state they belong to until german nationalism kicks into gear post napoleon, but the idea of being german does exist. Depending on the timeframe regional identities may be more relevant to people. There is also a difference between cultural identity and the state citizenship stated in your passport. The first can exist without the latter, which is more obvious, when talking about minorities, for example the kurds, the bretons, the catalans, the Sami people, or the Sorbs do exist as a cultural identity, while no Kurdistan etc exists.
@@TheLennbart I didn't say not at all, but "didn't really". rarely history is black or white, there was some type of "german" identity. which was still very different from modern germany. but it was a 1%er thing, regular people didn't see themselves as germans, neither did a lot of nobles. on the HRE emperor's title, the german didn't neccessarily refer a german identity (tho the HRE was used to build a german identity, and then further twisted by nazis/far right, see barbarossa mthos. sadly it's still taught in some german history textbooks, and not even put within recent context...), but germanics specifically teutons. you can see this in the latin title. the HRE itself presting itself partly as an successor of ancient roman empire. on your last paragraph, kinda good point but not in the way you may think. think of "germany" or more specfically thr HRE, as a ton of minorities, some closer, some more removed, black forest people, hannover, schwabingen, cologne, westphalia, franconians, hamburg, ... but without most parts of modern concept of nations. which citizenship is part of. HRE, and especially it's relationship with modern germany, is complicated. off topic, but talking about HRE with a pepe pfp isn't exactly a green flag iykwim
I wonder if the top-down imposing of a different language would have gone differently for the Georgians, had the English Throne retained a firmer grip on power, like the continental monarchies 🤔 Also, did Prince Albert learn English before going to England, as a possible consort to QV? Or did he learn the language after getting married?
Maybe also noteworthy that when the Normans conquered Britain they practically replaced all of the preexisting Nobility with new guys, whereas with the Germans, they just got to have the man at the top
Regardless of the language this layer of society spoke they were always so detached from ordinary people it didn't really matter too much. They were always the weirdos at the top of the tree either as rulers or in later times as figureheads/well paid promoters of the UK. They could speak Cockney or Klingon for all I care I will still want them gone.
They haven't stopped speaking German yet, Charles III is semi-fluent in German, but apparently does not use it very often. His father, Prince Philip, spoke German like a native and his mother was a native German speaker, Charles' mother, Queen Elizabeth, spoke almost no German, but was fluent in French. The heir apparent, Prince William, apparently speaks passable German.
Well educated people speak more than one language. The Royal Family's roots are in Germany and France, so why would they not speak those languages? I do, as well as Hebrew, Yiddish and I am learning Japanese.
Victoria and Albert did like to converse in German I recall? There was a mild fetish for Germany in the early Victorian period, much like the Scottish one, both led by Victoria and Albert. One has to remember this was only a few decades after the Napoleonic wars and France was not popular and united Germany was seen as a political and cultural force that would keep the French in check in Europe. Of course that would change by the end of the century!
I grew up in Australia, and most people I've known have always seen the royal family as a foreign power. But thankfully, they haven't actually been powerful at all, except as fodder for trashy magazines.
As far as I’m aware they still speak German fluently as well as French. Just not on a day to day basis. They also follow some German customs, especially at Christmas. People of other cultures in the UK speak their own languages and follow their own customs but everyone seems to begrudge the Royal Family acknowledging their own heritage.
Precisely! The Royals did not try to turn the UK into little Germany, though plenty of immigrants from other countries would be glad to turn it into little __________. We see that here in Japan (especially among the Indian immigrants).
Yeah, the "see the royals as a foreign power thing" is something that always annoyed me. I've met people who try and use "oh but the king is German" to try and co opt colonialist narratives, and cast the English as an oppressed, colonised people to assuage their guilt about the horrible things the empire did. Especially becuase there very much was oppression of the English, it was just class based, and doing a class analysis of history is too pinko for some people.
A friend of mine still refers to the entire British aristocracy as Normans, but aside from a lot of intermarriage this is far closer to the truth than the German thing. Btw, George I would confer with his Prime Minister- Walpole- in Latin…
I’ve heard of instances of Latin being used as a Lingua Franca around this time - at least once in one of Anthony Trollope’s parliamentary. Series of novels and can’t remember the other ref.
OTOH, the first monarch after 1714 who didn't marry a German was Edward VII, whose wife was Danish. There wasn't a British consort until Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, who died in 2002. Of course consorts are traditionally foreign, but before the Georgians they didn't come from the same area generation after generation. Constantly marrying Germans, many of whom spoke little English, for 200 years must have contributed to the perception that they were essentially a German family.
Actually Edward Vll did marry a German. The "danish" princess was from a German family that had just been imposed on Denmark. They remained German until Margaret ll married a French dude
It wasn't that "consorts are traditionally foreign," rather the caste rules of the Holy Roman Empire said that the son and heir of a ruling family must marry the daughter of another ruling family. Non-royal aristocrats were off limits. Marrying one "morganatically" took the children out of the line of succession. The Elector of Hanover was a Prince of the HRE and a subject of the Emperor. There was only one ruling family in Great Britain and Ireland, whereas there were more than two dozen in Germany. The British royals kept to that rule for more than 100 years after the end of the HRE, until George V changed the family name to Windsor. After that his 2nd son (later to become George VI) could marry the daughter of a Scottish Earl.
@@faithlesshound5621 morganatic marriage was never a thing in Britain (unlike on the continent), and there was never a legal bar on monarchs or princes marrying non-royals or even non-aristocrats-it was just massively socially frowned upon. Hence why Edward IV could marry Elizabeth Woodville (the daughter of an Earl), same with his grandson Henry VIII and his second, third, fifth and sixth wives, all who were non-royals, also James II; whose first wife and mother of Mary II and Queen Anne was also merely the daughter of an Earl. Mary Queen of Scots' second husband and the father of James VI & I, Lord Darnley; was merely the son of an Earl (though himself of royal descent), and her third husband Lord Bothwell was himself an Earl, not a royal. The wives of Robert I (the Bruce), Robert II, Robert III, and James I weren't royals either. Going forward, the wives of both of George III's younger brothers, Henry and William, were both non-royals -Henry married Anne Luttrell, who was the daughter of an Earl, William married Maria Walpole, who was the (illegitimate) daughter of the younger son of an Earl. Indeed, it's been speculated that the latter's marriage, and George III's outrage and shock at such a choice of bride is what prompted the passing of the Royal Marriages Act of 1772, which meant that those in the line of succession (until 2013) had to seek the monarch's permission to marry (it's now only the top 6 in the line of succession). That was-and is- the only legal bar to marriage for royals in the UK. Also before George V and during the reign of Victoria there were other minor royals who (legally) married non-royals-her fourth daughter Louise married the son of a Marquess, and the husband of her youngest daughter, Henry of Battenburg, was the morganatic son of a royal, but was not of royal rank himself at the time of his marriage.
After seeing this, I couldn't help but have always been thinking that my parents actually secretly raising me in order to prepare me doing some sort of service in palace 😂 I've been exposed to learn both French (13 years old) and German (17 years old) 😅 while growing up.
Victoria, her husband & children all spoke German as well as English. How many of today’s royals are proficient in a second language? The real problem is the lack of language proficiency when it goes with the title. The Prince of Wales should be fluent in Welsh, the Lord of the Isles should be fluent in Gaelic. With privileges goes responsibilities.
Charles specifically did learn Welsh for this reason. Idk how fluent he is now but he did make at least a token effort. No idea if William has ever bothered though
They know multiple languages, but I guess your point is specifically languages of the UK. That part I don't know. If he did learn some Welsh, I'm happy to hear that.
The late Queen spoke French fluently and probably German. She also spoke Scottish Gaelic. King Charles is fluent in German and speaks French pretty well, has kept up the Welsh, speaks a bit of Gaelic. He says his Arabic is very bad, but apparently he's been taking lessons again.
@JDraper but the English people themselves are descended from the Angles, Frisians, Jutes, and Saxons which all originally came from Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands back in the year 449ce.
@@man_eating_monkeyDefinitely and very much not. Celts and Germanics are two groups equal in terms of "grouping hierarchy", as in they're both Indo-European and both include many nations. Celts dominated Europe before Italics and Germanics did. In fact Celts, Italics, Germanics and Slavs are the four most prominent ethnic groups in the history of Europe.
But Old English is already developing into a separate language from Old German around that time. By the time of the Norman Conquest they've been distinct languages for quite some time.
My guess to that question at the end is kind of meant to delegitimize their power within the UK and possibly be used for grounds to abolish the monarchy? With William the royals with certainly be very English again, like properly. Thanks Diana!
I think the difference is to the Normans that the Normans brought a lot of low ranking nobles with them to rule. The German aspect of British royal family is just one family coming in, not hundreds of them. I found as an expat, living somewhere with other English people made it harder to learn the native language because I was practicing English all day with other expats in the same area and the local people spoke excellent English in shops etc, because in that area their business did better if they learnt english. I imagine it was similar in the time of the Normans.
There’s a nice video somewhere on youtube of the late Prince Phillip speaking very good German on youtube, having spent quite a bit of his childhood there.
There's also anecdotes about when Queen Victoria's children were old themselves and reminiscing about their childhood, they started speaking English with more pronounced German accents
I looked it up and apparently Victoria and Albert generally spoke in German to each other but while their children all spoke both the letters between parents and children tended to be in English.
When WWI came along, anything that smacked of Germany became unpopular. A lot of things with German names got renamed. For example, German biscuits became Belgian biscuits. That was when the royal family changed their name to Windsor.
@@rruthlessly What I meant was the need for the French-speaking Normans to communicate with their Saxon subjects led to the creation of modern English which contains vocabulary from Anglo-Saxon and Norman French. So neither language Anglo-Saxon or Norman French got the upper hand
maybe interesting side note, "german" king doesn't mean whatever people know nowadays as germany. "germany" for a very long time wasn't germany, like literally. there was a shitton of smaller indepent parts, existing on land now known as german some more connected some less, but for a long time there was no "german identity". thus german nobles were convenient, because old houses with rank and name on paper but often not that much land, or money, or actual power, compared to eg british or french kings. could explain why court wouldn't switch, realistically there wasn't much he could do
I wouldn't go that far, while crumbling, until the French Revolution and consequent conquest of Germany, the notion of a Holy Roman Empire was still present, and after Napoleon's defeat, they quickly formed a federation, first the German, later the North-German, dominated by Prussia, after the defeat of the Austrians. There had been customs unions between different princely states, monetary unions etc for much longer before that, too. Family disputes over who got to inherit which lands were often decided in Reich courts, Reich as in State, not strictly Empire. After all, many were family of each other... They were not unified as the English were, or even the French or Spanish (even if the latter only unified the thrones of Castille, Navarra and Aragon legally in the 18th century, before that, they were technically different thrones occupied by the same person since the 16th century), but they would have a tendency to stick together abroad.
I think this idea of a "German" royal family was a question that was asked so many times, for so many reasons, that over time people forgot why. And yet they kept asking. There were any number of times when Britian was obsessed with the idea of a German enemy within at all levels of society.
i was born and raised in austria speaking german .... i still live in austria ... but i prefer english by now ... if i were to write a diary, it might be in english. i only consume media content in english .... german just sounds so ugly D: xD
This is the real question I always wondered - given that French was the language of the court after the Norman conquest - when and why did the court start talking English?
As far as I know they didn't. Modern English has a lot of French in it, so it's not like there was an official changeover, the old French spoken by the nobility slowly amalgamated with the old English to give us the language we have today.
Old English is the substrate for Modern English, though. The basic grammar and the short, frequent words are almost all Germanic, even though about half the vocabulary comes from French or Latin. It's rather fascinating.
I think it had something to do with the War of the Roses or something. When one royal house replaced the other there was a change because the new king spoke English instead of Norman. Something like that
@@razzledazzle488Henry IV was the 1st English King post the Norman Conquest to speak English. Henry wanted to differentiate himself with his unpopular cousin Richard II whom he overthrew.
In my minds eye , I always saw George I and II as German and George III as British, even though his wife was German, the kings there after were English
Edward, Duke of Windsor, could comfortably be interviewed in German, as you can find on RUclips. I don’t know how well King Charles can speak German, but he can navigate it and read it well from a speech as he has done in Berlin.
The Dutch royal family have German blood in their bodies, too. Queens of the Netherlands got married with German princes. William, a Dutch king, was German, too. In Dutch national anthem, it is stated: "Wilhelmus van Nassouwe ben ick van Duytschen bloet" (I, William of Nassau, am of German blood). Nassau is a place in today's Germany. Long time ago, Dutch and German-speaking countries were considered to be one, and so were Dutch and German. Their people belonged to German tribal groups, the same genetical characteristics. In English, hundreds of years ago, Dutch was called 'Low Dutch' and German was called 'High Dutch'. This happened long before Federal Republic of Germany existed, but German people had already existed before modern countries existed.
Henry II was called FitzEmpress because his mother Mathilda's first husband had been a much more important man than Henry's own Angevin father was. And Mathilda had had one child with her first husband, emperor Henry V, but that child died infant. If there would have been surviving son that would have become Holy Roman emperor, king of England, duke of Normandy etc, then there might have been if not imposition then at least strong German cultural effect on England.
My mother commented about us Germans living as migrants in other countries. She noted that whilst a lot of other ethnicities would live in the same area, thereby creating entire suburbs with specific subcultures... Germans don't. We just try to join in with the people around us, speaking the language and participating in local customs. Maybe it's just something we had back then. (I'm also talking about this and trying to make a wide arc around the times where we were conquerors. I'm talking more on an individual level than societal.)
In defense of the Hanovers, it looks like despite English not being their native language, both George I & II both tried to speak English, and English was the native language of George II's grandson, George III. In contrast, the first English king after the Norman conquest whose native language was English was...Henry IV? That's nearly FOUR HUNDRED YEARS later! It's mind-boggling.
In fairness to Hanoverian King George I and his descendants, their claim to the British throne was through Elizabeth Stuart, the very Protestant daughter of King James I. What made the Hanoverians (later Saxe-Coburgers and Windsors) seem more German was their penchant for marrying minor German princes and princesses, a habit confirmed by Victoria, her children and grandchildren. That marital reinforcement of German blood largely ended with World War I. Charles III married an Englishwoman (Diana), as did his son Prince William (Katherine). By that measure, the current heir apparent, Prince George, is at least three-quarters English -- and really more, because Elizabeth II's mother, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, was from a Scots-English aristocratic family. Charles III's father, Prince Philip, was a member of the Greek-Danish-German royal houses of Battenburg and Glucksburg. The German royal bloodlines are going to be pretty thin by the time Prince George inherits the throne.
In "Blackadder Goes Forth," Capt. Darling, when accused of being a German spy, loudly says he's as British as Queen Victoria, and Capt. Blackadder responds, "So your father is German, you married a German and you're half-German?"
The Plantagenets are in Australia. The Windsors are running off to Canada and such. I'm not betting egg rolls, but next non-English royals - the Prussian princes?
George I couldn't impose German because he didn't win England by conquest he was invited by Parliament to be King so he had to play by thier rules. It's quite different from the Normans, William DID win by conquest in 1066 so the Witan couldn't impose any rules on him, he could do as he liked
Well, Prince Phillip and Her Majesty RE II spoke flawless German! King Charles stutters and does sound like a Brit over here in Germany, though his vocabulary is good.
A bit undercomplex, I guess. Take alone a certain British king of the 20th century who was known to speak English with a noticeable German accent to IT.🙂
Is the simple answer then, with Edward VII? He was the first of the Saxe-Coburgs, which later became the Windsors, and had had a long stint as Prince of Wales because of his mum's long life and reign. Was his first language English? Or was it with George V? Another story I've heard about our former German royals is that the pronunciation of 'Thames' dates from the time of George III who pronounced it with a German accent and you don't have either the 'th' sound or the vowel in English words like 'fail' in German. I found the tale a bit odd as this kind of behaviour, mispronouncing a word or mangling grammar to replicate a ruler's mistake, is associated with tyrants like Stalin and George III wasn't a tyrant.
Yo’ but your only including the Hanoverians as the “British Royal family.” Actually, the original Royal family of Great Britain would have been An Stuart and her family who already spoke English. But the Stuart line died out without a male hier so they had to call over their Protestant German cousins to take the throne, since the English had already determined a Catholic monarch couldn’t rule. Before the Stuart dynasty were the Tudors who spoke English - and before the Tudors their were the Plantagenets who spoke mainly French at court and some English.
Dear Britsh friends, try this: spell "centre" as "center"; "manoeuvre" as "maneuver." See? The Yankees have shown you the path to finally giving up on the French oppression once and for all :)
Similarly my grandmother spoke Greek and Polish and her mother spoke 7 languages. Mostly it has to do with family and locations of where they’re being raised. I was born in New York, and spent 7 years down south in Florida. Then spent 20 years. Give or take. In Virginia. I still have a slight northern accent that many southerners seem to enjoy pointing out. I also jaded a difficult time hearing a child so i picked up on lip reading and a couple words in sign language.
Centuries ago, not only the king but a whole bunch of French people invaded Britain (warriors, noblemen, clerics and so on), so French became part of English.
When George I took the throne of Great Britain, the country was practically a constitutional monarchy. The country that literally chopped off Charles I head for dictating Parliament and deposed another King James II by inviting a foreign prince and his English princess wife to conquer would definitely not change their traditions for one German king.
The British Royal family were still speaking German amongst themselves well in to the 20th century. Also, they were not very popular in the 18th-early 19th centuries. Now alot of left-wing people like to portray the royals as foreign, which is ironic.
Captain Darling “But I’m as English as Queen Victoria!”
Captain Blackadder “Ah! So your mother’s German, you’re half German and you married a German!”
To some people, that quote is incredibly useful.
Also from Blackadder:
Prince George (to be George IV), trying to rally his men: "I mean, for god's sake, we're British aren't we?"
Blackadder: [as an aside, after the Prince is out of earshot] "You're not, you're German."
Actually Victoria’s father-a Hanoverian-was therefore also German as well as English. So Victoria was fully German, not half. Her uncle Ernest came to be king of Hanover which split the personal union that William IV (Victoria‘s other uncle) held. But Hanover went on to be conquered by Prussia in 1866. It probably didn’t bother Victoria much since while the king of Hanover was by then her cousin, the king of Prussia was her daughter’s father-in-law.
@@ugetsu2093It didn't bother her then, but after she died three of her grandchildren had a massive row that lasted four years and killed several million people.
"Baldrick, the Cocker Spaniel, please?"
(because you beat me to it)
Is it possible that Queen Victoria wrote her private diary in English because her mother's English was not great and her mother had control over almost every part of her life?
Her mother was proficient enough to have read it, but it makes sense that Victoria would write in English as a rejection of her mother.
Such a good theory.
But then couldn’t her mother just find a english to german translator, i m sure she well could given her position.
@dariuswong9764 obviously doing that wouldn't prevent her from reading it entirely, but it'd make it harder. If she had to bring in a translator, then there's at least one servant that knows she's going through that much effort to read her child's diary AND that same servant has read all of the princess's juicy gossip. It's a reasonable theory whether or not it's true
Well, there's that and the fact she was born and raised in Britain, and was surrounded by people speaking English.
As my wife pointed out, the imposition of French was because they were conquerors. Getting German kings was because we needed (the view at the time, obviously) someone who wasn't Catholic.
The Hanoverian kings were there by act of Parliament, so by that time they were already mostly figureheads.
The biggest reason for the difference is that the Norman invasion didn't just replace the king, it replaced the whole ruling class
To quote Wikipedia:
"A direct consequence of the invasion was the almost total elimination of the old English aristocracy and the loss of English control over the Catholic Church in England. William systematically dispossessed English landowners and conferred their property on his continental followers."
@@intermariayep, not to mention the sheer number of elite casualties at Hastings.
We had the last laugh, most the elite women remarried to Normans and raised their kids so by the 1100/1200s French wasnt the common language among aristocrats anymore. Same thing happened in Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Italy.
Norman knights really got around, but after a generation of settling they usually assimilated in.
@@intermaria that was always my understanding. Indeed I heard somewhere that sometimes in English meat has the French name (beef, pork, poultry), while the animal itself has the Old English name (cow, ox, pig, chicken); because the French nobility ate the meat, but the Anglo-Saxon peasants looked after the animals.
I also read that the Welsh version of my name (Alun) is indigenous to Britain, but the English version (Alan) is a re-introduction from Norman and Breton nobles via the French Alain. This last factoid may, of course, only be interesting to me.
The fact that ALL European (Brits included) royalty are related to each other and almost all spoke French &/or German &/or English (+ Spanish etc., if that was your nationality) because it allowed for intercommunication, and better marriage prospects ... _and_ access to court politics.
(Actually, the higher your 'rank' and greater your wealth, the more you could get away with 1 language, maybe 2 - because your spouse would be more likely to accommodate _you_ . Those hoping to 'marry up' or 'marry well' were more likely to have more languages.)
Example - 'The Father-in-Law of Europe,' King Christian IX of Denmark, had 6 children all of whom married very well. They were taught English by their Governess, but it wasn't until they were introduced to 'society' that they realised there was a problem - they all spoke with a distinct Irish accent, as their Governess was Irish! The King hired tutors, and the accent was remedied (lol one of my favourite stories.)
His 6, Danish born, English speaking children became:
- Frederik VIII, King of Denmark
- Alexandra, Queen of the United Kingdom
- George I, King of the Hellenes
- Maria Feodorovna, Empress of Russia
- Thyra, Crown Princess of Hanover
- Prince Valdemar
Among his current descendants are:
- King Frederik X,
- King Philippe of Belgium,
- King Harald V of Norway,
- Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg,
- King Charles III of the United Kingdom,
- King Felipe VI of Spain.
You may as well ask why European royals don't speak Danish!
Danish is the closest language to the Norse used by Vikings. Given how far the Vikings travelled through Europe, its curious that Danish is often relegated to 4th or 5th language status.
@@michellebyrom6551 nonsense. Icelandic is the closest language to Old Norse. In fact they're nearly the same thing, only with different pronunciation. An Icelander can easily read and understand Old Norse while a Dane can make educated guesses at the most.
And after Icelandic Faroese is the second closest. After that maybe Danish, but it could just as well be Norwegian or Swedish, I'm not sure about that.
@@misterm7225 So why did you start your reply with "nonsense?" I felt that was too harsh an opener. No wonder the person you quoted didn't respond.
William brought an army with him and gave the Norman aristocracy land in England. So it wasn't just one single foreign family taking the crown, but many Norman's taking over key positions all other the country
In fact, it was a little like England being colonized by the Normans.
Just get out of my head 😂 I wanted to say the same thing.
And all the Anglo-Norman nobles had lands in Normandy too. That encouraged them to keep speaking French. It wasn't until King John lost Normandy in the 13th century and the nobility had to choose kingdoms that the ones left in England started speaking English.
@@DaKea90 😄High five!
@@thomaskalinowski8851we see lower nobility, your typical knights and barons, switching to English around the 1100s as they had often been raised by Anglo Saxon women who remarried after 1066
Queen Victoria was born in Britain, because her father wanted to make sure the potential heir to the throne was borne there.
He had been living in Germany with his wife and stepchildren, because of cheaper living costs.
"...because of cheaper living costs." In other words he was a cheapskate. Typical.
@@mikethespike7579very German you mean?
@@MrTohawk Yep. Germans are very tight with their money.
Why would they have to worry about living costs at all? Wouldn't they already own an estate in Germany (or whatever country that's part of present-day Germany)?
@@theheathbar123 Rulers are nearly always broke. Just look at modern government debt.
A big part of the difference is that in the middle ages the King was the state and the absolute ruler, by the 18th century the state of England was more than a monarch and the role of the king became far more than that, a king must reflect a state rather than a state reflecting a king
not exactly, the King's power was restricted in England by parliament quite early in the Middle ages. William the Conqueror brought along a huge army of French-speaking nobles who had no interest in accommodating the locals. Many of them had family and property back in France. so the entire government became Frenchified
Kings in the middle ages were not absolute rulers, that only started to become a thing around the 16th century
Absolutism came after the renaissance. From the fall of Rome until then, the figure of a king was subsidiary power to the state.
Medieval kings in Western Europe were heavily dependent on support from the most powerful nobles (think dukes or counts). Kings needed their vassals to provide levy (soldiers and tax money). They were also not allowed to raise an army in peacetime (no wars or internal rebellions).
One question I've always had (about royals from a bit earlier) is, how is it that Catherine of Aragon was betrothed to Arthur Tudor since she was about three years old, but in all the time before she actually was sent to England no one bothered to teach her English? Like she and her husband-to-be literally could only communicate in Latin. She must have learned very quickly after that though.
Nothing wrong with Latin
I doubt that they were doing much communicating. She was just breeding stock which it why she, and others, were got rid of when they didn't fulfill their 'duty' to provide a couple of male heirs.
It does seem like an oversight, but it seems like that happened to a lot of royal princesses at the time. No one bothered to teach them the language they would be expected to teach.
Before the 1750s it was customary for a foreign princess marrying a king to bring her old retinue from her own nation. So Spanish princesses who ended up as wives of Austrian archdukes and French kings brought their Spanish favorites with them. Or Italian princesses who ended up as wives of French kings brought their Italian favorites. Thus the foreign queen didn’t bother to learn the language of their king husband because they brought a whole group with them who could translate easily.
“Huns” was how my grandmother spoke of the royals.
Mind ya, shed turn 100 in a bit, and never got too political until after jfk.
She was neat.
I’m pretty sure that’s a word used against Catholics lol
She... was aware that the *entire* indigenous population of Britain is actually descended from two *German* tribes - the Angles and the Saxons - and that English is literally descended from an Early Old German dialect, yes...? 😅
Isn’t hun a word used against Catholics?
@@brídeann I've mostly seen it used as reference to Germans and, by Asia, historically against Europeans in general. I don't think it would make much sense in reference to Catholics, unless OP's grandma was misusing it. Neither Germans nor the British Royal Family have historically been very Catholic... at all 😅
@@sakkikoyumikishi ohhh ok it’s used against germans and catholics in ireland, i think
"Germany"'s main export product throughout the 16th to late 19th century was nubile aristocrats, which makes sense considering the vast amounts of more or less sovereign principalities across the Holy Roman Empire.
Queen Mary, grandma to Elizabeth II. was originally Maria von Teck
Everybody expects The German Imposition
Spanish inquisition jumpscare
But, unlike the Spanish Inquisition, the German imposition never came :(
You could have continued on beyond Queen Victoria to the Royal Family’s later connections to Germany between the 1920’s to 1950’s namely their Nazi sympathisers. Edward VIII’s story is well known but not that of some other Royals. One of Victoria’s grandsons, Prince Charles Edward sided with Germany at the beginning of WWI. He had inherited the Dukedom of Sax Coburg Gotha some years earlier when still in his teens. After the war he joined the nascent Nazi party and rose through its ranks in the inter war years and held a senior position during WWII. Two of Prince Phillip’s sisters married Nazi officers.
+ The last German Emperor Wilhelm II. was also one of Queen Victoria's grandsons. Apparently he had a complicated relationship with the British side of his family, especially with his British mother, who was very intellectual and progressive but not progressive enough to accept his disabled arm. Unfortunately he didn't inherit his parents' intelligence, coped with it by having an inflated ego and became super militaristic. After WW1 he fled to the Netherlands and later hoped that the Nazis would make him Emperor again until he died in 1941.
Yeah funny how she ended the story there, isn't it?
Nazi Germany doesn't exist in ww1. It's the German Empire that fought in ww1.
The obsession with language is pretty funny when monarchs have been learning multiple languages from early childhood for centuries, it seems to be part of their basic education. Latin has been ingrained in the country since the Roman invasion.
The English monarchy has gone through so many crazy twists and turns. But I always look at it that if we didn't recruit a German (protestant) king then the chances are there wouldn't be a monarchy today as they would have been Catholic and had too much power when the revolutions were happening, like in France. The whole of society would be different.
I think that Britain may had just became a republic if the Hanoverian succession didn’t occur. The previous Stuart monarchs were becoming more marginalized/losing direct political power after Cromwell’s time in power.
@@kenw7287well; there was that period where we actually *were* a republic during the Stuart era...
German was victoria's first language. She and Albert spoke to each other in German too
German was not VR 1st language. She was born to an English father and 4th son of the King of GB. Her 1st language was in fact English and she grew up in the UK
@@gregorioeduardo Victoria spoke fluent German and she often spoke German with Prince Albert and with others around her, including Kaiser Wilhelm.
@@franc9111
Prince Philip spoke German and King Charles speaks German and French. Well educated people speak more than one language.
"Why are we so keen to see the British royal family as a foreign power" as Commonwealth citizen...
Yes, I wondered at that.
I think it might be out of some sort of effect where if we say the royals aren't English, it absolves the English working class of their guilt over the things the monarchy has gotten away with doing at the expense of ordinary people in the former British colonies, that the people of the British Isles didn't protest against and benefit from even now.
@@katanah3195yeah, but the monarchy wasn't a powerful institution during the heyday of imperialism.
Not arguing that the crimes of colonialism didn't happen, but by the time the Hanoverians came to the throne, they were effectively figureheads anyway.
So we can't really blame it on the royals.
@@katanah3195I agree with all the rest about the British working class though.
The monarchy doesn't have any real power so the Commonwealth country doesn't bother removing them. Also the law of the Commonwealth was created alongside the monarchy so if they removed them they need to change the law too. In addition to that it cost money and resources and there's little return since Commonwealth country are independent.
Here in New Zealand we have had a foreign royal family since 1947 when we stopped being British citizens.
You can have them if you want, but most Kiwis that I have met are not fond of parasitic spongers. Regrettably, we are probably stuck with them.
Or you didn't stop and you still have your ancestral grumps as your king, nothing wrong in that 😅 we are all a worldwide family living in our own houses with stronger mutual bonds and security assurances.
I wonder what people in Papua New Guinea think of the royal family. I’ve never heard anybody use the phrase “Queen of Papua New Guinea” or “King of Papua New Guinea.”
@@dzimidrol475 At least they don't have to bear the cost of supporting their lives of luxury.
God Save The King. They are not foreign, they are our Royal Family. They are as much ours as anyone elses
Albert and Victoria most likely spoke German to each other. And Albert's English most probably had a heavy German accent. King Charles III surprised the Germans on his visit to Germany last year by holding a speech in perfect, fluent German. His pronunciation was sometimes slightly off, but otherwise.
That said, historically nearly all European royalty has it's roots in some way or form in German royalty. They're all related to each other.
Charles III might have learned from his father. Prince Philip was fluent in German. I saw an interview of him speaking German. He had the speech patern of a native speaker, who resides in a non-german speaking country. Still perfect grammar, but pauses to find the right german word.
@@andreabartels3176Years ago I read an interview by a former German POW who had spent the war time in Britain and had decided to remain in the country after the war. He worked as a gardener at one of the royal family's properties until his retirement. He said that Prince Philip would regularly come around and have a good chat with him in German. It seems, Philip was glad to have someone to talk to who was as fluent in German as he was.
That's the key...they are all related to each other. In terms of labelling someone "foreign" or not, can put any sort of spin on that you want.
I see people make a similar argument about the Romanian Royal Family. Our first two kings were born and raised in Germany but they’re all very much Romanian after that. I guess they have weird accents now because of the exile but culturally they are Romanian
Prince Nikolai?
@@creativesource3514 yeah he speaks funny
@@ilikemandalorians9861 i met him and his wife. Nice people.
@@creativesource3514 fancy! He really seems to have become more mature over the last 10 years
@@ilikemandalorians9861 is he a descendant of King Ferdinand?
Yeah it’s always irritated me that the British royal family is often seen as German, considering we only ever had two true German kings (KG1 and KG2). After that though, every single king has been born and raised in Britain and spoken English. It’s a silly misconception.
I think it's also the marrying of German princesses. I've watched a video a while ago detailing the degrees of heritage from certain countries for British monarchs and it took quite a while for German to loose its major status
Yes, it's wrong. After all George I was a great grandson of James I (VI) so there might have been Hanoverians who thought he wasn't a 'proper' German.
The current king is descended from Greek kings through the male line.
@@Dave_Sisson "Greek" Kings were Danish/ German mostly. There wasn't one ethnic Greek married into that family, besides a very unfortunate lady whose (King) husband died from a monkey bite.
On the one hand I dislike calling them German because it implies that like a few people in your bloodline being from another country makes you unable to truly be British but on the other hand calling them German highlights how an obviously British thing isn't something that just appeared born from the land itself but came from the interaction between many countries and cultures.
You are overlooking that educated, royal Germans would speak French, even to themselves. Frederick the Great thought of himself as a philosopher of the French Enlightenment. On her deathbed, Queen Caroline, wife of George II, urged him to marry again. He replied, "Non, j'aurai des
maitresses!"
So if you're debating how British are the royal family of Great Britain, how about considering the 14 other countries that have Charles III as their king? Several of them have never even been visited by their king, nor have any of the royals spent much time there.
Here's hoping that those fourteen follow Barbados' lead 🇧🇧
I don't think they see Charles as their king but a holdover from colonial times.Being part of the Commonwealth doesn't make Charles one's king.
@peggygraham6129 no, not the nations of the commonwealth as a whole (of which the British monarch is the formal head, and many of which are republics).
The 14 nations-Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and 11 others I can't be bothered to list because it's too early in the morning- that have the British monarch (separately) as their monarch.
AKA the Commonwealth Realms.
Not the same as 'member of the Commonwealth', which is a different thing, and like I said, many are republics, and there's 4 (Lesotho, Swaziland, Malaysia and Tonga) who have their own monarchs.
"Why are we so keen to see the British royal family as a foreign power?" Damn girl. Excellent question.
Probably because they put themselves as fundamentally different to the rest of us. It makes them foreign.
Were they EVER elected?
@@averagebodybuilder I mean the current 'German' line of the royal family was literally put there *by Parliament* so in a sense, yes.
@@treeaboo not in any sense
As a foreign power, perhaps they should be deported.
William the Conqueror was able to impose the French language by military means. None of the German-born royals had that option. And I would guess that prior to being allowed to take the throne they had to make a lot concessions to the British aristocracy.
Partly because there wasn't really a Germany back then, but hundreds of smaller states. For instance, until 1837 the King of the UK was also Elector of Hannover, a pretty decent sized chunk of North West Germany. But their laws said ewww no girls. So Victoria lost that throne to her great uncle?
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_the_Holy_Roman_Empire,_1789_en.png
The yellow part at the top of the map. Much larger than many other areas. England was by far their largest territory. So no realistic backup, especially with the bureaucracy and complexity of the Holy Roman Empire (it later broke up and merged a bit, but no longer with Austria and then became Germany in the 1870-1890s?)
The simple reason is that when William conquered England he brought his own Norman aristocracy with him, replacing all of the Anglo-Saxon ruling class with his own French-speaking Norman aristocracy, so naturally they all spoke in French.
@@treeaboo The simple reason is that William imposed them via his superior military force. Otherwise they would have been killed by the Lords they were seeking to replace.
@treeaboo well they spoke Norman not French. Different langue d'öil
@@aodhanmonaghan1268they were Kings of Hanover from 1814, but yep.
I really like how you mentioned that George I. indeed could speak English and was just rather shy when using it.
There's this ongoing rumor about him that he only spoke German and that that's how the post of prime minister was created (bc allegedly Walpole used the King's alledged imability to speak and understand English to gain more power), but in reality, George I. spoke 5 languages and was able to communicate with his ministers in English or - quite common for European nobility in the 18th century - in French.
The late Duke of Edinburgh, Prince Philip, was *quite* fluent in German and you can find him speak it in a few interviews on youtube.
Yes, remembering that Prince Philip actually came from the European continent and I think was raised partly in Germany or German schools.
"Look, I'm as British as Queen Victoria!!"
"So your father's German, you're half German, and you married a German?"
This happened the other way around as well: Victoria's second daughter Alice marries the Grand Duke of Hesse, Louis IV. resulting in their children, Alexandra, the last Empress of Russia and her brother, Ernst Ludwig, the last Grand Duke of Hesse (Germany) to only write to one another in English, because that was literally their mother tongue.
Maybe, because the people of great Britain still are more than a bit sceptical about anything German...
... To put it lightly.
When reading the charts moment sections on the Internet, you'd think that it's still the 1940s...
Every royal family from Europe is part French, German, English, Spanish, etc, so pointing this out is literally useless.
Clearly missed the Scottish-Australian war for Danish royalty hahaha
I do find it strange how people will refer to the _current_ royal family as being German, when every single British monarch for nearly the last 300 years has been born in Britain. Not to mention, George I was the great-grandson of James VI/I. So it takes three generations for the line of a Scottish king to turn German, but ten generations of being born in Britain isn't enough to make the German line turn British?
There's a definite undertone of xenophobia to some of the arguments.
They kept marrying Germans
@@DanBeech-ht7sw no British monarch has married a German since Queen Victoria though.
Edward VII's wife Queen Alexandra was Danish, George V's wife Queen Mary was British, Edward VIII's wife Wallis Simpson American, George VI's wife Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother was British (specifically, Scottish), and Elizabeth II's husband was Greek, albeit of mostly Danish ancestry, with a bit of British, Russian and German thrown in (and became a British citizen on his marriage). And both of Charles III's wives were/are British.
@@jonathanwebster7091 Edward VII 's wife was half German. Actually, full German, both her parents were born in Germany. George V's wife was half Austrian. Surname Von Hohenstein.
@@DanBeech-ht7sw oh dear.
We're talking about blood quantum and percentages.
Which means diddly squat in Britain.
Queen Mary was born and raised in Britain.
Which therefore makes her British.
People are keen to present the British monarchs as foreign because if they can sell that idea to the general public, it would be a lot easier to sell republicanism. Which is fine if you hold with that idea, but it's a nakedly political argument and should be seen as such rather than as "Canned edgy comment #142B."
Ah politics. And how those in power or have power lie for their own benefits
Just like all the brexit lies
Prince Phillip was fluent in German with pretty much no accent. So I guess the answer is in 2021. But the question stems from the xenophobia of the British public. Even the Queen Mother called him the Hun.
The French situation happened because it was a conquest by thousands of French-speaking Normans, who in turn had been Old-Norse-speaking Vikings less than 150 years prior to 1066. Thus those thousands of conquerors became a group powerful enough to propagate itself and impose French on the rest of English society. One German coming over and becoming king could not do that, ever. So he had to learn English as the whole of the court spoke English. He didn’t bring his own German court and impose it on the British.
I’m happy you mentioned that it’s mostly likely the court would be communicating in French, back in the 18th century. My friends often ask how did they speak and understand each other in the different courts when there was so many ambassadors, foreigners, travellers, international traders going around the centres of power? And I often answer, like Latin in the Catholic Church, French was the Court Language from the 16th to 19th centuries. When people couldn’t speak a certain language, they would go to speak French. Every aristocrat or bourgeois would know some to very good French back then, they’d be taught from an early age and it’d be a sign of wealth, meant that you could hire a French governess or a tutor for your children. French was the language of culture, elegance, prestige, especially after the reign of Louis XIV. And it was not only in England, it would stretch from Portugal to Russia, from Sweden to Greece. And it also influenced how several languages are spoken today. Many adopted French pronunciation to words they already had just so they could sound more French, and it ended up becoming the general way to speak in many cases.
King Edward 8, "The Traitor King" would get drunk and lapse into German at parties at Gloria Vanderbilt's house, after failing to give the British Empire to Hitler.
"Give" is far too strong a word here, but he did seem to want to be allies, or at least not adversaries.
@@MyFiddlePlayer He committed treason, gave top secret defense info to his Austrian pals, and Churchill found out.
Gave him the option of a public trial and execution for treason, or abdication. It's in "The Traitor King" and several other books by now.
Edward 8 was a Nazi spy. Even AFTER the war ended, and news of the atrocities came out, David said,
"Hitler wasn't such a bad chap."
His wife, Wallis Simpson was just as bad, ranting about how that awful Mr. Lincoln had locked up her grandfather for treason. Because SHE wanted slaves, and thought the wrong side won the Civil War. It's in her autobiography.
@@LordMondegrene Nice story, except Churchill was not Prime Minister of UK in 1936 when Edward VIII abdicated.
@@maxn.7234 Did I say he was? NO.
Please restrict yourself to intelligent remarks.
@@LordMondegrene Triggered? LMAO.
I think the main difference is French men TOOK England in the medieval period (French, Norman same thing) but with George it was the English parliament that GAVE the title to germans. Like with the glorious revolution, while ceremonial head changed, parliament was in charge of the government
I believe that I have read that George III's older brother (the heir apparent) was sent to Germany to be educated, but he died before George II, and George III became king instead.
George III was the eldest son. You might be confused with Frederick, Prince of Wales, George II's eldest son, and George III's father, who was born in Hanover, and brought up speaking German, but started learning English when his grandfather (George I) became king of Great Britain and Ireland. He was desperate to come to England, but his father insisted he stayed in Hanover until his majority. This led to resentment and Frederick made sure all his children were brought up in Britain and thought of themselves as British.
It was George III's father, Frederick, Prince of Wales.
He was born in Germany (although he was by all accounts a bit of an anglophile) and really, *really* didn't get on with either of his parents. He had also been left in Hanover to represent his grandfather there when the latter became King of Great Britain in 1714, and it's been speculated that that effected his relationship with his parents.
Frederick's younger brother, William, Duke of Cumberland, (he of Battle of Culloden fame/infamy) who was born and raised in Britain when his parents moved to Britain after their grandfather became King, was much more liked by his parents.
And such was the extent that his parents disliked their elder son, they considered splitting the family possessions, with Frederick getting Britain, William getting Hanover.
The british royal family is as foreign to britain as just about any royal family in europe is to thier respective countries. I think the reason people think of the royal family as german is because of ignorance . Most people dont know that this happened all the time in history . In our current nationalism filled society , we feel and assume that the head of the nation should be native to the land itself and when people learn about the german heritage of the royal family , it really strikes out to them .
Idk , thats just my theory .
I completely agree.
this, nationalism in it's (semi) modern form not that old. also shows in this missconception of him being german. george i was from hannover, he wasn't german. even the HRE didn't really feature a german identity, germany is a pretty new thing
@@thisorthat629 id disagree on the detail of no german identity existing prior to germany. The HRE definitely did feature some german identity, given that the Holy Roman Emperor was always crowned the King of the Germans first, and from 1512 onwards its name receives the addendum "of the German Nation", which shows there is at least some understanding of being german. I agree, that being german is generally not super relevant of an identity for most people in terms of who rules them or what state they belong to until german nationalism kicks into gear post napoleon, but the idea of being german does exist. Depending on the timeframe regional identities may be more relevant to people.
There is also a difference between cultural identity and the state citizenship stated in your passport. The first can exist without the latter, which is more obvious, when talking about minorities, for example the kurds, the bretons, the catalans, the Sami people, or the Sorbs do exist as a cultural identity, while no Kurdistan etc exists.
And modern media like Black adder really doesn't help.
@@TheLennbart I didn't say not at all, but "didn't really". rarely history is black or white, there was some type of "german" identity. which was still very different from modern germany. but it was a 1%er thing, regular people didn't see themselves as germans, neither did a lot of nobles.
on the HRE emperor's title, the german didn't neccessarily refer a german identity (tho the HRE was used to build a german identity, and then further twisted by nazis/far right, see barbarossa mthos. sadly it's still taught in some german history textbooks, and not even put within recent context...), but germanics specifically teutons. you can see this in the latin title. the HRE itself presting itself partly as an successor of ancient roman empire.
on your last paragraph, kinda good point but not in the way you may think. think of "germany" or more specfically thr HRE, as a ton of minorities, some closer, some more removed, black forest people, hannover, schwabingen, cologne, westphalia, franconians, hamburg, ... but without most parts of modern concept of nations. which citizenship is part of.
HRE, and especially it's relationship with modern germany, is complicated.
off topic, but talking about HRE with a pepe pfp isn't exactly a green flag iykwim
I wonder if the top-down imposing of a different language would have gone differently for the Georgians, had the English Throne retained a firmer grip on power, like the continental monarchies 🤔
Also, did Prince Albert learn English before going to England, as a possible consort to QV? Or did he learn the language after getting married?
Maybe also noteworthy that when the Normans conquered Britain they practically replaced all of the preexisting Nobility with new guys, whereas with the Germans, they just got to have the man at the top
Regardless of the language this layer of society spoke they were always so detached from ordinary people it didn't really matter too much. They were always the weirdos at the top of the tree either as rulers or in later times as figureheads/well paid promoters of the UK. They could speak Cockney or Klingon for all I care I will still want them gone.
They haven't stopped speaking German yet, Charles III is semi-fluent in German, but apparently does not use it very often. His father, Prince Philip, spoke German like a native and his mother was a native German speaker, Charles' mother, Queen Elizabeth, spoke almost no German, but was fluent in French. The heir apparent, Prince William, apparently speaks passable German.
Well educated people speak more than one language. The Royal Family's roots are in Germany and France, so why would they not speak those languages? I do, as well as Hebrew, Yiddish and I am learning Japanese.
Victoria and Albert did like to converse in German I recall? There was a mild fetish for Germany in the early Victorian period, much like the Scottish one, both led by Victoria and Albert. One has to remember this was only a few decades after the Napoleonic wars and France was not popular and united Germany was seen as a political and cultural force that would keep the French in check in Europe. Of course that would change by the end of the century!
I grew up in Australia, and most people I've known have always seen the royal family as a foreign power. But thankfully, they haven't actually been powerful at all, except as fodder for trashy magazines.
As far as I’m aware they still speak German fluently as well as French. Just not on a day to day basis.
They also follow some German customs, especially at Christmas.
People of other cultures in the UK speak their own languages and follow their own customs but everyone seems to begrudge the Royal Family acknowledging their own heritage.
Precisely! The Royals did not try to turn the UK into little Germany, though plenty of immigrants from other countries would be glad to turn it into little __________. We see that here in Japan (especially among the Indian immigrants).
Can you put dates next to monarch names please? No idea when the Georges were king!
Yeah, the "see the royals as a foreign power thing" is something that always annoyed me. I've met people who try and use "oh but the king is German" to try and co opt colonialist narratives, and cast the English as an oppressed, colonised people to assuage their guilt about the horrible things the empire did.
Especially becuase there very much was oppression of the English, it was just class based, and doing a class analysis of history is too pinko for some people.
Oh, excellent point!
A friend of mine still refers to the entire British aristocracy as Normans, but aside from a lot of intermarriage this is far closer to the truth than the German thing.
Btw, George I would confer with his Prime Minister- Walpole- in Latin…
I’ve heard of instances of Latin being used as a Lingua Franca around this time - at least once in one of Anthony Trollope’s parliamentary. Series of novels and can’t remember the other ref.
OTOH, the first monarch after 1714 who didn't marry a German was Edward VII, whose wife was Danish. There wasn't a British consort until Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, who died in 2002. Of course consorts are traditionally foreign, but before the Georgians they didn't come from the same area generation after generation. Constantly marrying Germans, many of whom spoke little English, for 200 years must have contributed to the perception that they were essentially a German family.
Actually Edward Vll did marry a German. The "danish" princess was from a German family that had just been imposed on Denmark. They remained German until Margaret ll married a French dude
@@patrickjeffers7864only German by descent.
They were all born and raised in Denmark after that.
@@jonathanwebster7091 and only married germans..until Marge
It wasn't that "consorts are traditionally foreign," rather the caste rules of the Holy Roman Empire said that the son and heir of a ruling family must marry the daughter of another ruling family. Non-royal aristocrats were off limits. Marrying one "morganatically" took the children out of the line of succession. The Elector of Hanover was a Prince of the HRE and a subject of the Emperor. There was only one ruling family in Great Britain and Ireland, whereas there were more than two dozen in Germany. The British royals kept to that rule for more than 100 years after the end of the HRE, until George V changed the family name to Windsor. After that his 2nd son (later to become George VI) could marry the daughter of a Scottish Earl.
@@faithlesshound5621 morganatic marriage was never a thing in Britain (unlike on the continent), and there was never a legal bar on monarchs or princes marrying non-royals or even non-aristocrats-it was just massively socially frowned upon.
Hence why Edward IV could marry Elizabeth Woodville (the daughter of an Earl), same with his grandson Henry VIII and his second, third, fifth and sixth wives, all who were non-royals, also James II; whose first wife and mother of Mary II and Queen Anne was also merely the daughter of an Earl. Mary Queen of Scots' second husband and the father of James VI & I, Lord Darnley; was merely the son of an Earl (though himself of royal descent), and her third husband Lord Bothwell was himself an Earl, not a royal. The wives of Robert I (the Bruce), Robert II, Robert III, and James I weren't royals either.
Going forward, the wives of both of George III's younger brothers, Henry and William, were both non-royals -Henry married Anne Luttrell, who was the daughter of an Earl, William married Maria Walpole, who was the (illegitimate) daughter of the younger son of an Earl.
Indeed, it's been speculated that the latter's marriage, and George III's outrage and shock at such a choice of bride is what prompted the passing of the Royal Marriages Act of 1772, which meant that those in the line of succession (until 2013) had to seek the monarch's permission to marry (it's now only the top 6 in the line of succession). That was-and is- the only legal bar to marriage for royals in the UK.
Also before George V and during the reign of Victoria there were other minor royals who (legally) married non-royals-her fourth daughter Louise married the son of a Marquess, and the husband of her youngest daughter, Henry of Battenburg, was the morganatic son of a royal, but was not of royal rank himself at the time of his marriage.
After seeing this, I couldn't help but have always been thinking that my parents actually secretly raising me in order to prepare me doing some sort of service in palace 😂 I've been exposed to learn both French (13 years old) and German (17 years old) 😅 while growing up.
Victoria, her husband & children all spoke German as well as English. How many of today’s royals are proficient in a second language? The real problem is the lack of language proficiency when it goes with the title. The Prince of Wales should be fluent in Welsh, the Lord of the Isles should be fluent in Gaelic. With privileges goes responsibilities.
Charles specifically did learn Welsh for this reason. Idk how fluent he is now but he did make at least a token effort. No idea if William has ever bothered though
They know multiple languages, but I guess your point is specifically languages of the UK. That part I don't know. If he did learn some Welsh, I'm happy to hear that.
@@jonesnori I mean the languages related to their titles.
The late Queen spoke French fluently and probably German. She also spoke Scottish Gaelic.
King Charles is fluent in German and speaks French pretty well, has kept up the Welsh, speaks a bit of Gaelic. He says his Arabic is very bad, but apparently he's been taking lessons again.
@JDraper but the English people themselves are descended from the Angles, Frisians, Jutes, and Saxons which all originally came from Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands back in the year 449ce.
Don't forget the Celts that had/have been living on the islands *well* before any Germanic peoples ever set foot there!
@@man_eating_monkeyDefinitely and very much not. Celts and Germanics are two groups equal in terms of "grouping hierarchy", as in they're both Indo-European and both include many nations. Celts dominated Europe before Italics and Germanics did. In fact Celts, Italics, Germanics and Slavs are the four most prominent ethnic groups in the history of Europe.
@@man_eating_monkey they are very different, from my knowledge.
@@TheNotoriousDUDE yeah, the fact that england was originally a celtic country is always forgotten
But Old English is already developing into a separate language from Old German around that time. By the time of the Norman Conquest they've been distinct languages for quite some time.
My guess to that question at the end is kind of meant to delegitimize their power within the UK and possibly be used for grounds to abolish the monarchy? With William the royals with certainly be very English again, like properly. Thanks Diana!
I think the difference is to the Normans that the Normans brought a lot of low ranking nobles with them to rule. The German aspect of British royal family is just one family coming in, not hundreds of them. I found as an expat, living somewhere with other English people made it harder to learn the native language because I was practicing English all day with other expats in the same area and the local people spoke excellent English in shops etc, because in that area their business did better if they learnt english. I imagine it was similar in the time of the Normans.
There’s a nice video somewhere on youtube of the late Prince Phillip speaking very good German on youtube, having spent quite a bit of his childhood there.
The only country that knowing more than one language is a "crime"😂😂😂
Only in the latter part of the 20th Century.
??
There's also anecdotes about when Queen Victoria's children were old themselves and reminiscing about their childhood, they started speaking English with more pronounced German accents
I looked it up and apparently Victoria and Albert generally spoke in German to each other but while their children all spoke both the letters between parents and children tended to be in English.
When WWI came along, anything that smacked of Germany became unpopular. A lot of things with German names got renamed. For example, German biscuits became Belgian biscuits. That was when the royal family changed their name to Windsor.
The Imposition of French wadn't complete either. Anglo-Saxon was never completely dislodged. Which is why we speak English now.
Imposition, complete and dislodged all came into English from French. We can speak English without French words but it is harder than you might think.
@@rruthlessly What I meant was the need for the French-speaking Normans to communicate with their Saxon subjects led to the creation of modern English which contains vocabulary from Anglo-Saxon and Norman French. So neither language Anglo-Saxon or Norman French got the upper hand
Thanks
maybe interesting side note, "german" king doesn't mean whatever people know nowadays as germany. "germany" for a very long time wasn't germany, like literally. there was a shitton of smaller indepent parts, existing on land now known as german some more connected some less, but for a long time there was no "german identity". thus german nobles were convenient, because old houses with rank and name on paper but often not that much land, or money, or actual power, compared to eg british or french kings. could explain why court wouldn't switch, realistically there wasn't much he could do
I wouldn't go that far, while crumbling, until the French Revolution and consequent conquest of Germany, the notion of a Holy Roman Empire was still present, and after Napoleon's defeat, they quickly formed a federation, first the German, later the North-German, dominated by Prussia, after the defeat of the Austrians. There had been customs unions between different princely states, monetary unions etc for much longer before that, too. Family disputes over who got to inherit which lands were often decided in Reich courts, Reich as in State, not strictly Empire. After all, many were family of each other...
They were not unified as the English were, or even the French or Spanish (even if the latter only unified the thrones of Castille, Navarra and Aragon legally in the 18th century, before that, they were technically different thrones occupied by the same person since the 16th century), but they would have a tendency to stick together abroad.
there is a reason they changed the name of the family from Saxe-Coburg and Gotha to Windsor in 1917
I think this idea of a "German" royal family was a question that was asked so many times, for so many reasons, that over time people forgot why. And yet they kept asking. There were any number of times when Britian was obsessed with the idea of a German enemy within at all levels of society.
So German to be so shy about speaking English even when they can.
English or German ,same dog different leg as far as I'm concerned
English is a Germanic language with some French thrown in there during the Norman Invasion
I assume the answer to the last question is because it’s funny
i was born and raised in austria speaking german .... i still live in austria ... but i prefer english by now ... if i were to write a diary, it might be in english. i only consume media content in english .... german just sounds so ugly D: xD
Least self hating German be like 👆
Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh spoke German to a very high standard, learning it while visiting his family in Germany in the 1930s. 😀
It is nonsense to describe any monarch as having a nationality
And you English people still claim that German is an aggressive language...
Yeah and what changes? It is lol
This is the real question I always wondered - given that French was the language of the court after the Norman conquest - when and why did the court start talking English?
As far as I know they didn't. Modern English has a lot of French in it, so it's not like there was an official changeover, the old French spoken by the nobility slowly amalgamated with the old English to give us the language we have today.
Old English is the substrate for Modern English, though. The basic grammar and the short, frequent words are almost all Germanic, even though about half the vocabulary comes from French or Latin. It's rather fascinating.
I think it had something to do with the War of the Roses or something. When one royal house replaced the other there was a change because the new king spoke English instead of Norman. Something like that
@@razzledazzle488Henry IV was the 1st English King post the Norman Conquest to speak English. Henry wanted to differentiate himself with his unpopular cousin Richard II whom he overthrew.
In my minds eye , I always saw George I and II as German and George III as British, even though his wife was German, the kings there after were English
Edward, Duke of Windsor, could comfortably be interviewed in German, as you can find on RUclips. I don’t know how well King Charles can speak German, but he can navigate it and read it well from a speech as he has done in Berlin.
The Dutch royal family have German blood in their bodies, too. Queens of the Netherlands got married with German princes. William, a Dutch king, was German, too. In Dutch national anthem, it is stated: "Wilhelmus van Nassouwe ben ick van Duytschen bloet" (I, William of Nassau, am of German blood). Nassau is a place in today's Germany. Long time ago, Dutch and German-speaking countries were considered to be one, and so were Dutch and German. Their people belonged to German tribal groups, the same genetical characteristics. In English, hundreds of years ago, Dutch was called 'Low Dutch' and German was called 'High Dutch'. This happened long before Federal Republic of Germany existed, but German people had already existed before modern countries existed.
Harold Godwinson was the last English king
Henry II was called FitzEmpress because his mother Mathilda's first husband had been a much more important man than Henry's own Angevin father was. And Mathilda had had one child with her first husband, emperor Henry V, but that child died infant. If there would have been surviving son that would have become Holy Roman emperor, king of England, duke of Normandy etc, then there might have been if not imposition then at least strong German cultural effect on England.
Could you do a video on how there are no accurate portraits of Queen Elizabeth I?
My mother commented about us Germans living as migrants in other countries. She noted that whilst a lot of other ethnicities would live in the same area, thereby creating entire suburbs with specific subcultures... Germans don't. We just try to join in with the people around us, speaking the language and participating in local customs. Maybe it's just something we had back then.
(I'm also talking about this and trying to make a wide arc around the times where we were conquerors. I'm talking more on an individual level than societal.)
In defense of the Hanovers, it looks like despite English not being their native language, both George I & II both tried to speak English, and English was the native language of George II's grandson, George III. In contrast, the first English king after the Norman conquest whose native language was English was...Henry IV? That's nearly FOUR HUNDRED YEARS later! It's mind-boggling.
In fairness to Hanoverian King George I and his descendants, their claim to the British throne was through Elizabeth Stuart, the very Protestant daughter of King James I. What made the Hanoverians (later Saxe-Coburgers and Windsors) seem more German was their penchant for marrying minor German princes and princesses, a habit confirmed by Victoria, her children and grandchildren. That marital reinforcement of German blood largely ended with World War I. Charles III married an Englishwoman (Diana), as did his son Prince William (Katherine). By that measure, the current heir apparent, Prince George, is at least three-quarters English -- and really more, because Elizabeth II's mother, Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, was from a Scots-English aristocratic family. Charles III's father, Prince Philip, was a member of the Greek-Danish-German royal houses of Battenburg and Glucksburg. The German royal bloodlines are going to be pretty thin by the time Prince George inherits the throne.
In "Blackadder Goes Forth," Capt. Darling, when accused of being a German spy, loudly says he's as British as Queen Victoria, and Capt. Blackadder responds, "So your father is German, you married a German and you're half-German?"
The Plantagenets are in Australia. The Windsors are running off to Canada and such. I'm not betting egg rolls, but next non-English royals - the Prussian princes?
George I couldn't impose German because he didn't win England by conquest he was invited by Parliament to be King so he had to play by thier rules. It's quite different from the Normans, William DID win by conquest in 1066 so the Witan couldn't impose any rules on him, he could do as he liked
Well, Prince Phillip and Her Majesty RE II spoke flawless German!
King Charles stutters and does sound like a Brit over here in Germany, though his vocabulary is good.
A bit undercomplex, I guess. Take alone a certain British king of the 20th century who was known to speak English with a noticeable German accent to IT.🙂
Given that Victorias grandmother was Charlotte of Mecklenburg Strelitz, surely she'd be 3/4 German?
Fun fact: The first british Emperor/King who spoke English without a notable german accent was George V. in 1910.
Is the simple answer then, with Edward VII? He was the first of the Saxe-Coburgs, which later became the Windsors, and had had a long stint as Prince of Wales because of his mum's long life and reign. Was his first language English? Or was it with George V?
Another story I've heard about our former German royals is that the pronunciation of 'Thames' dates from the time of George III who pronounced it with a German accent and you don't have either the 'th' sound or the vowel in English words like 'fail' in German. I found the tale a bit odd as this kind of behaviour, mispronouncing a word or mangling grammar to replicate a ruler's mistake, is associated with tyrants like Stalin and George III wasn't a tyrant.
Yo’ but your only including the Hanoverians as the “British Royal family.” Actually, the original Royal family of Great Britain would have been An Stuart and her family who already spoke English. But the Stuart line died out without a male hier so they had to call over their Protestant German cousins to take the throne, since the English had already determined a Catholic monarch couldn’t rule. Before the Stuart dynasty were the Tudors who spoke English - and before the Tudors their were the Plantagenets who spoke mainly French at court and some English.
There was the same in Russia. The last Russian tzar Nicolas ll had a German accent. And his wife Alexandra was German too.
Dear Britsh friends, try this: spell "centre" as "center"; "manoeuvre" as "maneuver." See? The Yankees have shown you the path to finally giving up on the French oppression once and for all :)
Even the Germans back then knew the English couldn't or wouldn't speak our language properly, so they didn't bother. xD
Similarly my grandmother spoke Greek and Polish and her mother spoke 7 languages.
Mostly it has to do with family and locations of where they’re being raised.
I was born in New York, and spent 7 years down south in Florida. Then spent 20 years. Give or take. In Virginia.
I still have a slight northern accent that many southerners seem to enjoy pointing out.
I also jaded a difficult time hearing a child so i picked up on lip reading and a couple words in sign language.
Centuries ago, not only the king but a whole bunch of French people invaded Britain (warriors, noblemen, clerics and so on), so French became part of English.
When George I took the throne of Great Britain, the country was practically a constitutional monarchy. The country that literally chopped off Charles I head for dictating Parliament and deposed another King James II by inviting a foreign prince and his English princess wife to conquer would definitely not change their traditions for one German king.
Obviously the Norman invasion wasn't 800 years before George I came to the thrown.
The British Royal family were still speaking German amongst themselves well in to the 20th century. Also, they were not very popular in the 18th-early 19th centuries. Now alot of left-wing people like to portray the royals as foreign, which is ironic.