The House of Windsor

On 17 July 1917 King George V issued a proclamation announcing that his house and family would henceforth bear the name of Windsor. That same day he made a corresponding declaration before the Privy Council, and the London Gazette printed the proclamation the same day. The name Windsor was to be borne by all descendants of Queen Victoria in the male line who were subjects of the British crown, except for women who had married or would marry. At the same time the king, on behalf of himself and his whole family, renounced the titles of Dukes and Princes of Saxony and of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha and all other German dignities and titles.

A German ruling house

Since the accession of Edward VII in 1901 Britain had been ruled by the line of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, a branch of the Saxon house of Wettin. It descended from Prince Albert, Queen Victoria’s husband. George V was a direct descendant of German princes, and his wife, Queen Mary, came from the family of the Dukes of Teck from Württemberg. Kaiser Wilhelm II was his cousin, as was Tsar Nicholas II, overthrown in March.

In wartime such kinship became an embarrassment. The anti-German feeling that as early as 1914 had forced Prince Louis of Battenberg out of the Admiralty grew even stronger in the spring and summer of 1917. From 13 June German Gotha G.IV bombers raided London in broad daylight, and the first such raid killed 162 people. The aircraft bore the same name as the dynasty. The fall of tsarism in Russia also revived republican feeling in Britain. The writer H. G. Wells wrote in 1917 of an “alien and uninspiring court”. According to an often repeated anecdote, the king replied that he might be uninspiring, but he would be damned if he was alien.

Choosing a name

The court searched for a new name for a long time. According to the king’s biographers, it was not even clear what surname the royal family actually bore. Heralds suggested Wettin or Wipper, which were judged equally German and quite useless. Names of old English dynasties, such as Plantagenet, York or Lancaster, were reportedly considered. In the end the proposal of the king’s private secretary, Lord Stamfordham, was adopted. Windsor referred to the town and to Windsor Castle, for centuries a seat of English monarchs. The name sounded familiar and could easily be linked with English history. Wilhelm II is said to have joked that he was going to the theatre to see “The Merry Wives of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha”.

New names for relatives

The change of the dynasty’s name completed a wider operation. As early as 19 June the court had announced that, at the king’s wish, his relatives who were British subjects were renouncing their German titles. Royal warrants of 14 July allowed them to adopt English surnames. Queen Mary’s brothers, Prince Adolphus of Teck and Prince Alexander of Teck, took the surname Cambridge and in return for the titles they gave up received British peerages: Adolphus became Marquess of Cambridge and Alexander Earl of Athlone. Admiral Prince Louis of Battenberg took the surname Mountbatten and the title of Marquess of Milford Haven, and his nephew, Prince Alexander of Battenberg, became Marquess of Carisbrooke. Queen Victoria’s granddaughters of the house of Schleswig-Holstein ceased to use the name of that house. The letters patent creating the new titles were officially published only in November 1917.

Several of the king’s relatives who had sided with Germany during the war were to lose their British titles against their will. These were above all the Duke of Albany, Charles Edward, a grandson of Queen Victoria and the reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, who was a general in the German army, and the Duke of Cumberland of the house of Hanover and his son. Parliament passed an act on the matter in the autumn of 1917, and the deprivation of titles took effect in 1919. The name Windsor, on the other hand, outlasted the war and remains the name of the British royal house to this day.