The British royal family comprises
King Charles III and his close relations. Charles is the head of the
House of Windsor. There is no strict legal or formal definition of who is or is not a member, although the
Royal Household has issued different lists outlining who is a part of the royal family.[1][2] Members often support the monarch in undertaking public engagements, and pursue charitable work and interests. The royal family are regarded as British and world
cultural icons.
The
Lord Chamberlain's "List of the Royal Family" published in 2020 mentions all of King
George VI's descendants and their spouses (including
Sarah, Duchess of York, who is divorced), along with Queen
Elizabeth II's cousins with royal rank and their spouses.[2] The Lord Chamberlain's list applies for the purposes of regulating the use of royal symbols and images of the family.[3] Meanwhile, the website of the royal family provides a list of "Members of the Royal Family"; those listed correspond to the royal family members mentioned and pictured below, with the exception of
Princess Beatrice,
Princess Eugenie, the
Duchess of Kent, and
Prince Michael of Kent and
his wife.[4]
Boxes indicate living individuals with royal titles and styles.
Purple indicates living individuals listed or described as members of the royal family on the official website.[9]
Boldface indicates living individuals listed as members of the royal family in Lord Chamberlain's Diamond Jubilee Guidelines in 2012,[10]
Italics indicate individuals born or married into the family after the
Diamond Jubilee.
Dashed lines indicate married couples, dotted lines divorced couples.[7]
Dagger (†) indicates deceased individuals.
Titles and surnames
Marriage certificate of Elizabeth Windsor and Philip Mountbatten, signed by members of the royal family
The monarch's children and grandchildren (if they are children of the monarch's sons), and the children of the eldest son of the Prince of Wales are automatically entitled to be known as
prince or
princess with the style
His or Her Royal Highness (HRH).[11]Peerages, often
dukedoms, are bestowed upon most princes prior to marriage.[12][13]Peter Phillips and
Zara Tindall, children of the King's sister, Princess Anne, are therefore not prince and princess.
Lady Louise Mountbatten-Windsor and
James Mountbatten-Windsor, Earl of Wessex, though entitled to the dignity, are not called prince and princess as their parents, the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, wanted them to have more modest titles.[11] The King reportedly wants to reduce the number of titled members of the royal family.[14]
By tradition, wives of male members of the royal family share their husbands' title and style.[15] Princesses by marriage do not have the title prefixed to their own name[11] but to their husband's; for example, the wife of Prince Michael of Kent is Princess Michael of Kent.[15] Sons of monarchs are customarily given dukedoms upon marriage, and these peerage titles pass to their eldest sons.[15]
Male-line descendants of King
George V, including women until they marry, bear the surname Windsor. The surname of the male-line descendants of Queen Elizabeth II, except for women who marry, is
Mountbatten-Windsor, reflecting the name taken by her Greek-born husband,
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, upon his
naturalisation. A surname is generally not needed by members of the royal family who are entitled to the titles of prince or princess and the style His or Her Royal Highness. Such individuals use surnames on official documents such as
marriage registers.[16]
Public role
The Princess Royal meeting members of the public during a walkabout in
Paisley, Renfrewshire
Members of the royal family support the monarch in "state and national duties", while also carrying out charity work of their own.[17][18] If the sovereign is indisposed, two
counsellors of state are required to fulfil his role, with those eligible being restricted to the sovereign's spouse, and the first four people in the line of succession over the age of 21. In 2022, the
Earl of Wessex and the
Princess Royal were added to the list by special legislation.[19]
Each year the family "carries out over 2,000 official engagements throughout the UK and worldwide", entertaining 70,000 guests and answering 100,000 letters.[17][20] Engagements include state funerals, national festivities, garden parties, receptions, and visits to the
Armed Forces.[17] Many members have served in the Armed Forces themselves, including the King's brothers and sons.[21][20] Engagements are recorded in the
Court Circular, a list of daily appointments and events attended by the royal family.[22] Public appearances are often accompanied by walkabouts, where royals greet and converse with members of the public outside events.[23] The start of this tradition is sometimes attributed to a trip Queen Elizabeth II made in 1970 to Australia and New Zealand.[24]Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother also interacted with crowds on a trip to Canada in 1939 and in 1940 during
The Blitz in London.[25][26]
Given the royal family's public role and activities, it is sometimes referred to by courtiers as "The Firm", a term that originated with George VI.[32][33] Members of the royal family are politically and commercially independent, avoiding conflict of interest with their public roles.[34] The royal family are considered British
cultural icons, with young adults from abroad naming the family among a group of people who they most associated with
British culture.[35] Members are expected to promote British industry.[36] Royals are typically members of the
Church of England, headed by the monarch. When in Scotland they attend the Church of Scotland as members and some have served as
Lord High Commissioner to the Church of Scotland.[37][38]
Members of the royal family are patrons for approximately 3,000 charities,[20] and have also started their own nonprofit organisations.[21] The King started
The Prince's Trust, which helps young people in the UK that are disadvantaged.[39] Princess Anne started
The Princess Royal Trust for Carers, which helps unpaid carers, giving them emotional support and information about benefit claims and disability aids.[40] The Earl and Countess of Wessex (as the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh were then known) founded the Wessex Youth Trust, since renamed The Earl and Countess of Wessex Charitable Trust, in 1999.[41] The Prince and Princess of Wales are founding patrons of
The Royal Foundation, whose projects revolve around
mental health, conservation, early childhood, and
emergency responders.[42]
In 2019, following the negative reactions to the "
Prince Andrew & the Epstein Scandal" interview, the Duke of York was forced to resign from public roles; the retirement became permanent in 2020.[43] The Duke and Duchess of Sussex
permanently withdrew from royal duties in early 2020.[44] Following these departures, there is a shortage of royal family members to cover the increasing number of patronages and engagements.[5]
Royal biographer
Penny Junor says that the royal family has presented itself "as the model family" since the 1930s.[5] Author Edward Owen wrote that during the
Second World War, the monarchy sought an image of a "more informal and vulnerable family" that had a unifying effect on the nation during instability.[45]In 1992, the Princess Royal and her husband
Mark Phillips divorced; the Prince and
Princess of Wales separated; a biography detailing the Princess's
bulimia and
self-harming was published;
her private telephone conversations surfaced, as did the Prince's
intimate telephone conversations with his lover, Camilla Parker Bowles; the Duke and Duchess of York separated; and photographs of the topless Duchess having her toes sucked by another man appeared in tabloids. Historian Robert Lacey said that this "put paid to any claim to being a model of family life". The scandals contributed to the public's unwillingness to pay for the repairs to
Windsor Castle after the
1992 fire. A further "
PR disaster" was the royal family's initial response to the
death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997.[27]
In the 1990s, the royal family formed the Way Ahead Group, made up of senior family members and advisers and headed by Elizabeth II, in a quest to change in accordance with public opinion.[27][46] The 2011
wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton led to a "tide of goodwill", and by Elizabeth II's
Diamond Jubilee in 2012 the royal family's image had recovered.[27] A 2019
YouGov poll showed that two-thirds of British people were in favour of maintaining the royal family.[47] The role and public relations of the extended royal family again came under increased scrutiny due to the Duke of York's friendship with convicted
sex offenderJeffrey Epstein and
allegations of sexual abuse, along with his unapologetic conduct in the
2019 interview about these subjects and subsequent
2021 lawsuit.[48][49][50] In June 2019, the royal family, several members of which advocate for environmental causes, faced criticism after it was revealed that they "had doubled [their] carbon footprint from business travel".[51]
In a
2021 interview, the Duchess of Sussex, who is of
biracial heritage, relayed second-hand that there had been "concerns and conversations" within the royal family about the
skin colour of their son,
Archie Mountbatten-Windsor, while the Duke of Sussex stated it was a single instance.[52] The interview received a mixed reaction from the British public and media, and several of their claims were called into question.[53][54] The Duke of Cambridge said the royal family were "very much not a racist family". In June 2021, documents revealed that "coloured immigrants or foreigners" were banned by Elizabeth II's chief financial manager at the time from working for the family as
clerks in the 1960s, prompting black studies professor
Kehinde Andrews to state that "the royal family has a terrible record on race".[52] In response, the palace stated that it complied "in principle and in practice" with anti-discrimination legislation, and that second-hand claims of "conversations from over 50 years ago should not be used to draw or infer conclusions about modern-day events or operations."[55] In March 2022 and during the Caribbean tour of the then Duke and Duchess of Cambridge as part of the
Queen's Platinum Jubilee celebrations, the family encountered criticism from a number of political figures and the press, given their past connections to
colonialism and the
Atlantic slave trade via the
Royal African Company.[56][57]Reparations for slavery emerged as a major demand of protesters during the couple's visit.[58] Both the then Prince of Wales and Duke of Cambridge have condemned slavery in their speeches,[59][60] and the Prince has described acknowledging the wrongs of the past as a necessity for the Commonwealth countries to realise their potential.[61]
Historically, the royal family and the
media have benefited from each other; the family used the press to communicate with the public, while the media used the family to attract readers and viewers.[62] With the
advent of television, however, the media started paying less respect to the royal family's privacy.[27] Princes William and Harry have had informal arrangements with the press whereby they would be left alone by the
paparazzi during their education in return for invitations to staged photograph opportunities. William has continued the practice with his family posts on
Instagram. Relations between the media and British royals have been destabilized by the rise of the
digital media, with the quantity of articles becoming paramount toward gaining
advertising revenue, with neither side able to exercise control.[62] In the 2000s, the phones of Prince William and Catherine Middleton, and Prince Harry and his then-girlfriend
Chelsy Davy, were hacked multiple times by media outlets,
most notably by a private investigator working for a News of the World journalist.[63][64] A 2021
BBC documentary suggested that briefings and counter-briefings from different
royal households was the reason behind the negative coverage about members of the royal family. Buckingham Palace, Clarence House and Kensington Palace, which represented the Queen, the then Prince of Wales and Duke of Cambridge respectively, described these suggestions as "overblown and unfounded claims".[65]
The then-Duchess of Cambridge, escorted by security officers, meets with Sir
Michael Dixon
Senior members of the royal family, who represent the monarch, draw their income from
public funds known as the
sovereign grant.[66] The sovereign grant is an annual payment of the
British government to the monarch. It comes from the revenues of the
Crown Estate, which are commercial properties owned by
the Crown. It is common belief amongst the British public that funding for the royal family comes from taxpayers' money, but this is not the case. The revenue of the crown estate actually far exceeds the amount provided in the sovereign grant.[67][68] Members of the royal family who receive money from the sovereign grant must be accountable to the public for it and are not allowed to make money from their name.[66] The monarch also receives the income of the
Duchy of Lancaster, and the Prince of Wales from the
Duchy of Cornwall.
The security of the royal family is not paid from the sovereign grant but is usually met instead by the
Metropolitan Police.[69] The royal family, the
Home Office, and the Metropolitan Police decide which members have a right to taxpayer-funded police security. Extended members do not retain automatic right to protection; in 2011, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie ceased receiving police security.[14][70]
Clarence House served as the official residence of
Charles III when he was Prince of Wales from 2003 until he inherited the throne on 8 September 2022.[68] Another London residence of his when Prince of Wales was
St James's Palace, which he shared with the Princess Royal and Princess Alexandra.[76] Princess Alexandra also resides at
Thatched House Lodge in
Richmond.[77] The King also privately owns
Sandringham House in Norfolk and
Balmoral Castle in Aberdeenshire, which are his personal property. He inherited them from Elizabeth II upon her death.
The Prince and Princess of Wales and the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester have their official residences and offices at apartments in
Kensington Palace, London.[78][79] The Duke and Duchess of Kent reside in
Wren House in the grounds of Kensington Palace.[80] The Duke and Duchess of Sussex's official residence in the United Kingdom is
Frogmore Cottage, near Windsor. [81][82] The Duke of York lives at the
Royal Lodge in
Windsor Great Park, while the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh reside at
Bagshot Park in
Surrey.[83][84]
^"Prince Harry Has Reportedly Already Reunited With One Royal Family Member". Vanity Fair. Retrieved 16 April 2021. The princess, her husband Jack Brooksbank, and their newborn, August Philip Hawke Brooksbank, have been living at Frogmore for the past few months, the residence on the grounds of Windsor Castle..
Burke's Guide to the Royal Family. Burke's Peerage, 1973.
Cannon, John Ashton. The Oxford Illustrated History of the British Monarchy. Oxford University Press, 1988.
Churchill, Randolph S. They Serve the Queen: A New and Authoritative Account of the Royal Household ("Prepared for Coronation Year"). Hutchinson, 1953.
Fraser, Antonia (ed). The Lives of the Kings & Queens of England. Revised & updated edition. University of California Press, 1998.
Hayden, Ilse. Symbol and Privilege: The Ritual Context of British Royalty. University of Arizona Press, 1987.
Longford, Elizabeth Harman (Countess of Longford). The Royal House of Windsor. Revised edition. Crown, 1984.
Weir, Alison. Britain's Royal Families: The Complete Genealogy. Pimlico/Random House, 2002.
Royal Family (1969) is a celebrated and reverential
BBCdocumentary made by
Richard Cawston to accompany the investiture of the current
Prince of Wales. The documentary is frequently held responsible for the greater press intrusion into the royal family's private life since its first broadcast.
1 Not a British prince by birth, but created
Prince Consort. 2 Not a British prince by birth, but created a Prince of the United Kingdom. Princes whose titles were removed and eligible people who do not use the title are shown in italics.
The generations indicate descent from
George I, who formalised the use of the titles prince and princess for members of the British royal family. Where a princess may have been or is descended from George I more than once, her most senior descent, by which she bore or bears her title, is used.
The generations include wives of princes descended from
George I, who formalised the use of the titles prince and princess for members of the British royal family.