Senior Royals, Junior Royals: Who's Who in the Family?

     On February 24th, the Telegraph's Gordon Rayner described Zara Tindall as "the most senior member of the Royal family to sell the rights to the first portraits of [her] child" in his article regarding the Queen's eldest granddaughter and her husband controversially selling photos of themselves and their recently-born daughter, Mia, to Hello! magazine.

     The description had to do with Tindall's place in the line of succession (15th), and the fact the nobody above her has ever taken the same action.

     Nevertheless, it does beg the question: Who exactly is a "senior" member of the royal family?

There is no question that these people are "senior" members of the royal family

     This term tends to be used frequently to describe the Queen, Prince Philip, and other members and their spouses (if any) who are in the immediate line of succession - which itself can be defined as the first 5-10 people beginning with Prince Charles.

     However, this definition flawed, for it does not include members such as Princess Anne, the Duke of Kent, the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, and Princess Alexandra, who are among those members of the family who "earn their keep" by carrying out an array of public activities and engagements on the behalf of the Queen and in their own right. Furthermore, it includes people who are not actively involved in royal duties on a regular basis and/or do not have royal titles, such as Prince George, Princess Beatrice, Princess Eugenie, and Lady Louise Mountbatten-Windsor.

     What exactly constitutes a "senior" member of the royal family is largely arbitrary. There are no official press releases from the any of the Palace press offices that refers to members of the royal family as "senior" or "junior", nor are they referred to as such on the official websites. Instead, these terms have been used in the media to distinguish between the members of the family who are higher up on the royal totem pole and members who are lower on it.

HRH Prince Edward, Duke of Kent carries out many royal engagements
throughout the year on behalf of the Queen, as well as in his own right.

     However, these two categories fail to recognize certain nuances. For example, the Duke of Kent is 33rd in the succession to the 16 Commonwealth thrones. However, he does carry out many royal functions, and is one of the royal colonels (Colonel of the Scots Guards) at the Trooping the Colour in June for the Queen's Official Birthday. He may not be a "senior" royal in terms of his place in the succession, but cannot either be classified as a "junior" member of the family either because of his royal work.

     With that in mind, here are my categories for members of  the royal family: Senior, Mid-Major, Junior, and Non-Royal. They are based on a mix of circumstances - including the type of titles and styles held by individuals (or lack thereof), their relation to the Queen, and whether they currently carry out royal duties on a regular basis (meaning that they appear on the Court Circular, the official record of previous royal engagements).

1) Senior Members

In my categorizations, a senior member of the royal family is a person who:

• Has the style of Majesty or Royal Highness attached to his or her name
• Is descended from Elizabeth II or is married to such person
• Undertakes public royal duties on a regular basis

Under this definition - again, entirely my own - senior members of the royal family include:

• The Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh
• The Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall
• The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge
• Prince Harry of Wales
• The Duke of York
• The Earl and Countess of Wessex
• The Princess Royal

2) Mid-Major Members

The following are who I call the mid-major members of the royal family, and they:

• Have the style of Royal Highness affixed to their names
• Are first cousins of the Queen or married to such person
• Undertake public royal duties on a regular basis

Mid-major members include:

• The Duke and Duchess of Gloucester
• The Duke of Kent
• Princess Alexandra

3) Junior Members

Then there are the junior members of the royal family, who:

• Have the style of Royal Highness attached to their names
• Are descended from the Queen, are first cousins of the Queen, or married to such persons
• Do not carry out public royal duties on a regular basis

Junior members include:

• Prince George of Cambridge
• Princess Beatrice of York
• Princess Eugenie of York
• The Duchess of Kent
• Prince and Princess Michael of Kent

4) Non-Royal Members

Finally, there are those members of the royal family who are technically not royal. They are of the blood royal, but: 

• Do not have the style of Royal Highness affixed to their names
• Do not carry out any public royal duties (aside from participating in occasional royal events such as the Diamond Jubilee and the annual Trooping the Colour)

In addition, they can be descended from Elizabeth II, her sister Princess Margaret, or her first cousins.

Non-royal members include:

• James Mountbatten-Windsor, Viscount Severn
• Lady Louise Mountbatten-Windsor
• Peter and Autumn Phillips & Family
• Zara and Michael Tindall & Family
• Descendants of Princess Margaret (daughter of George VI and sister of the Queen)
• Descendants of the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, the Duke and Duchess of Kent, Prince and Princess Michael of Kent, and Princess Alexandra (all grandchildren of George V and first cousins of the Queen or married to such persons).

The modern royal family descends from George V and Queen Mary, the reigning Queen's grandparents

     These listings end here with the male-line descendants of George V and Queen Mary (from the Queen to Princess Alexandra's children). The line of succession can go on virtually indefinitely, but the public face of the monarchy for the last century has largely been these male-line descendants from the founders of the House of Windsor.

     It is possible for members of the royal family to move up or down these categories.

     When Prince George become old enough to conduct solo public royal engagements and appears on the Court Circular, he will be upgraded to the "senior" category with his parents. Similarly, the daughters of the Duke of York - Beatrice and Eugenie - can also find themselves in the "senior" category if they decide to become working members of the royal family at some point in their lives (and I believe they should as the only "blood" princesses of their generation).

Princess Eugenie and Princess Beatrice have taken on careers outside of royal life, but have carried out some limited engagements from time to time.

     However, it must be noted that these listings are arbitrary in part because they depends on the existence of the Queen. When Prince Charles ascends to the throne, these categories will have to be re-defined or even eliminated.

     For example, the "mid-major" category was created for the Queen's first cousins and their spouses who regularly conduct royal public duties. With the accession of Charles III (or George VII), I would expect that such members will be pulled off the royal payroll and no longer carry out such duties (assuming they have not already decided to end their public engagements). They would then be shifted down into the category of "junior" member, and the mid-major category would be moot.

     So the reality is that there are no "fixed" definitions of who is a "senior", "junior", or whatever within the royal family, for it is dependent on how one views the individual members, as well as on who is occupying the throne. However, this can be a guide to the current royal family in terms of the present day circumstances, and as time goes on and circumstances change, it will be updated.



Photo Credit: Ben via Flickr cc, Frédéric BISSON via Flickr cc, Carfax2 via Wikimedia Commons cc