Why is our royal families blood german???? how did they get to be our king and queens?

Question

I been on this site http://www.tree.familyhistory.uk.com/getperson.php?personID=I908&tree=05

and if u keep clicking their mothers and fathers names it goes right back until one of the kings were from germany and his wife from gotha (where ever that is) how the h**l did they rule us then?????

Answer 1

It all stems from Queen Victoria who married German Albert.  Her children married into German families.  This was done often in history to link countries.  German Willie (First WW) was her grandson.  At the time of that war British royalty disassociated itself from Germany by changing it's name from Saxe Coburg to Windsor.

So the historic connection remains, especially with prince Philip who is not only part German descent but also descended from Victoria, as our Queen is.

Answer 2

all the royals and I mean all of them are related one way or the other, and arranged marriages or suitable marriages are de rigour - that is why King George got to be King instead of his brother - they didn't allow divorced people to marry the line or if they did they had to give up their place in line - so to speak.

Answer 3

Correction.  The Royal Family do not "rule" us - they are representatives of our Country, a job to which they commit themselves, for life, at their Coronations.

Our "rulers" at the moment are the elected Labour Party and all the Governemental and Local Bodies which have been set up to run the Country.

Can you claim to have 100% "English Blood" whatever that may be?  Is it just possible that you may be the eventual product of immigrants to this Country which over the years has been an enormous melting pot of people from different parts of the World?  The House of Windsor have a recognisable Pedigree and her Maj is a very hard-working and loyal woman determined to honour the vows she made in Westminster Abbey such a long time ago.

Answer 4

intermarriages with other Royal houses, in fact Prince Phillip is part Greek and part German.

Answer 5

Thanks, Artimort for an excellent answer!  Simply put, the current British Royals have German ancestors* because Parliament enacted the Act of Succession in 1701, which barred any Roman Catholics from the throne, most notably any possible Stuarts, leaving the German Protestant Hanovers as the nearest blood relatives of the Stuart dynasty.

Again, here's  a short answer of how the Scottish House of Stuart and the present-day Windsors are related:

1) The English Parliament deposed the only surviving son of Charles I, and James I's** grandson, James II, in 1688 when it could no longer tolerate the Roman Catholic convert and his push for "absolute monarchy".  Stuart pretenders would continually try to recapture the British throne until Bonnie Prince Charles lost the Battle of Cullodeen in 1746.

2) Earlier, James I's daughter, Elizabeth, had married the Elector of the Palatine (a part of Germany), so the Hanovers remained the neared Protestant relatives of the Stuart line when Queen Anne died without issue. [She gave birth to 17 children, but not one of whom reached adulthood.]  

3) A descendant of the Hanovers, Queen Victoria, married her German first cousin, Prince Albert, of Saxe-Coburg Gotha.

4) Their descendants, notably Queen Elizabeth II's grandfather, changed the name of their house to Windsor following World War I because Saxe-Coberg Gotha was too German sounding.

Then again, the Scottish Stuarts (who frequently intermarried with the French royal family) were cousins of the Welsh Tudors, who were related to the Yorks and Plantagenets, who descended from William I (the Conqueror), who himself was a descendant of Frenchified Vikings . . .  In short, almost all the Royal families in Europe are distant cousins because they intermarry with each other.  For example, James II, when he was deposed, went to live with his French cousin, Louis XIV.

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* Of course, the Queen Mum's father was a Scottish Earl.

* *I probably shouldn't even mention that James I of England was James VI of Scotland or that England was a Republic for a decade after Parliament beheaded Charles I.

Answer 6

cause they let their guard down!!

Answer 7

Queen Victoria married a German Duke, Albert of Gotha, a town/area in Germany. They took his surname and after the WW1 changed it to Windsor to avoid anti German feeling.

They also had many children which due to keeping blood lines "pure" went onto marry into many of Europes Royal familys including the Russian Royal family.

Rumour has it one of her grandchildren was bullied by his older brother at Eton into taking the Dukedom of Gotha on when he was just 13 years old. The prince in question did indeed end up being a high ranking officer in Hitlers n**i party/ army.

There was a programme on Channel 4 in the UK about it recently

Tony Robinson (Baldrick in Blackadder) also showed a documentary just before Christmas in which he found the current queen shouldnt be on the throne and the true heir is a guy in Australia. All down to the true heir being usurped during the Plantagenate reign but just shows what an injust outdated system the monarchy is!

Answer 8

because 've av da vays ov makin vem tolk'

lesson to be learnt...don't do the spell check! took hours!

Answer 9

Back a very long time ago when Germany was still just barely forming, it was divided into a ton of little fiefdoms and cities which were eached ruled by a different family.  Those families, owning their own land like that and everything, declared themselves the kings and queens of their little kingdom.  As such there were a ton of marryable princesses to be had in Germany, and so when princes of other countries went to go wife hunting, they went to Germany.

Answer 10

Yes, the entire current British royal family is of German descent starting from King George I of Great Britian (10 November 1683 – 25 October 1760). He was the frst German prince from the House of Hanover (a German royal house) to claim the English throne after Queen Anne's death in June 11, 1727. Queen Anne was the last "English queen" to rule who died childless and ended the House of Stewart. She had a half-brother later known as James III and a handful of close relatives, however, they were all devoted Catholics and were sent away in exile. Under the "Succession Law" which lasted til this day, all Catholics are to be removed from the line of succession and only protestants could inherit the throne.

Since Queen Anne died childless and all the other "rightful" heirs were Catholics, the next suitable candidate was a protestant Prince George Louis who was born in German and a distant cousin of Queen Anne. His maternal grandmother was Elizabeth Stewart, who was the eldest daughter of King James I (James VI) of England. He does have claim to the English throne, but he was placed very far down the line. Since every one before were a devoted Catholic, therefore, the crown was passed onto George I.

At the age of 54, he ascended the British throne as the first monarch of the House of Hanover. Though many aspirants to the throne bore a closer relationship to his predecessor, Queen Anne, his mother, Sophia, had been designated heir by the Act of Settlement 1701 because of her Protestant faith. Sophia predeceased Anne by a matter of weeks, leaving the Protestant succession to George. The Jacobites attempted to depose George and replace him with Anne's Catholic half-brother, James III, but their attempts failed.

Answer 11

Technically the last "English" monarch was Richard III (1483-1485) before the Welsh took over with the Tudors.

In terms of the monarchy and it's German ancestry, this dates back to 1714 and George I. To prevent a Jacobite restoration and thus a Catholic monarch the Act of Settlement was passed in 1701 when it became clear that Queen Anne wasn't going to provide an heir.

The succession was settled on the elderly Electress Sophia of Hanover (an Electorate that would later form part of Germany) who was the grand-daughter of James I, but more importantly a Protestant. However she died before Queen Anne and so the crown was inherited by her son George and the House of Hanover began.

This changed to Saxe-Coburg-Gotha when Queen Victoria married Albert of S-C-G. This name was changed by George V to the current Windsor because it sounded more English since Britain went to war with Germany in 1914.

Answer 12

Royalty would only marry royalty and with so many of them disappearing around Europe there were not many left and so we ended up with German Royalty marrying into our Royal family.

How did we end up with the name Windsor though well World War One broke out in 1914 and anit-German sentiment was at its height in 1917. In protest, King George V renounced all the German titles belonging to him and his family and adopted the name of his castle, Windsor.

Answer 13

intermarriages to force a treaty / trade agreement.  It's how Kaiser Wilhelm II ended up being related to the Queen of England during WWI

Answer 14

As an additional point of interest,the royal familys' 'real' name is 'Saxe-Coburg Gotha',changed to Windsor simply because of Windsor park.

Answer 15

There was a great deal of intermarriage between the royal houses of England and Germans. The Act of Settlement 1701 made it clear that the heir of the throne from that point forward had to be a Protestant, and Electress Sophia of Hanover, the daughter of Elector Frederick V and Elizabeth Stuart, the daughter of King James I of England, was the obvious heir as the monarch from that time until present day has to be a Protestant descendant of James I. As Sophia died before Queen Anne, the heir became George, who became known as King George I of England. The present royal family has even more close German blood because of the marriage of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, who are Queen Elizabeth's great-great grandparents.

Answer 16

All of the royal families have been interbred and intermarried for centuries. Historians have tracked hemophilia throughout 5 different royal families that have decended from Queen Victoria's ancestors.

The German royal family assumed the throne of England after Anne, the last Stuart heir died. King George Hanover became King George I followed by George II, III, IV, William IV, and then Queen Victoria from 1837-1901.

Answer 17

Because we ran out of royals ourselves.  First we had to switch to Welsh Royals (the Tudors) and when they ran out we switched to Scottish (the Stuarts).  Then we got tired of them and asked some people from Holland over (William and Mary).  When they ran out we invited George, Elector of Hannover, to become George I.  Basically, they have been running the show since then - about 300 years.  Our present Queen, though, is in fact half Scottish, and at least one eighth Danish.  Not English though :-)

Answer 18

european royals intermarried to keep their blood line pure

when stuarts died out because of inbreeding, nearest relative was a german

Answer 19

How far can you go back with your own ancestry before you find one that is not English. One branch of my own ancestry has been traced back to 1650 in Suffolk, England, and I haven't found anyone in any of the other branches of my family tree who was not born in England. However, sooner or later things change, my wife Is Irish, so our children will not have the same "Englishness". This does not matter one bit.

Why don't you be trueful and admit that you are just having a snipe at a family that by tradition does not respond to criticism like you or I would.

Answer 20

Queen Victoria married Prince Albert, who came from Germany.

Answer 21

Royal Families of Europe intermarried quite a lot. When Victoria was on the throne, she had a dream that all family members would inhabit the thrones of Europe and that would guarantee a peaceful and prosperous existence for all.Unfortunately,her pride in "the German element"(she was quite proud of HER German ancestry) did not bear her out.Her grandson and the Kaiser turned out to be not so helpful. Victoria turned very British after the disappointment.Today's family is more British,thanks to the Queen Mother(Scots),Diana,Sarah Ferguson,Sophie Wessex,Anne's first husband, Margaret's husband...

And to correct an erroneous answer, Philip is Danish and German;he has no Greek blood in him. His family took the job of the Greek monarchy because no one else wanted it.