Royal family

“ A much nobler royal family would be just as superfluous now as the present we have outgrown the need of a paternal or guardian king. Nor is the question of principle really affected by the fact that this ignoble family, like other species of the lower animals, is excessively prolific, and that every prince or princess born of it, costs us several thousands a year. ”

“ They were necessitated to choose among the royal family a man in the flower of youth, or, at least, in the vigour of life, who, by his valour and wisdom, might prove the proper head of a nation always in a state of war. ”

“ And there is the "royal family"—the customary hive of royal brothers, sisters, cousins and other noble drones and vagrants usual to monarchy, —all with a spoon in the national pap-dish, and all bearing such titles as his or her Royal Highness the Prince or Princess So-and-so. Few of them can carry their royal splendors far enough to ride in carriages, however; they sport the economical Kanaka horse or "hoof it" with the plebeians. ”

“ England is a domestic country. Here the home is revered and the hearth is sacred. The nation is represented by a family — the Royal Family; and if that family is educated with a sense of responsibility and a sentiment of public duty, it is difficult to exaggerate the salutary influence they may exercise over a nation. ”

“ Dare has purchased images of all the royal family, in her great zeal, and I had them in my apartment—King, Queen, Prince of Wales, Dukes of York, Clarence, Kent, Sussex, Cumberland, and Cambridge; Princess Royal, and Princesses Augusta, Eliza, Mary, Sophia, and Amelia, God bless them all! ”

“ The royal family was no otherwise distinguished from others, than as their personal merit acquired influence, or their high birth and capability of succession engaged respect. The companions of the prince were highly honoured for their faithful attachment to him, and their valourous atchievements in war; but, as to rights and privileges, were on the common footing of other freemen. The only distinction was between the chieftains, or lords of the villages, and the vassals who were under their jurisdiction. ”

“ There was enough in all this to make a stranger consider and interrogate; and the result of his reflections would, I think, have been that, after all abatements are made, the monarchy has still a great hold upon the affections of the people. The people takes great comfort in its royal family. The love of social greatness is extraordinarily strong in England, and the royal family appeals very conveniently to this sentiment. ”

“ In order clearly to comprehend this point, it is necessary to explain the ancient usage as to Royal precedence, and the manner in which it has been affected by the 31st Henry VIII. The Royal Family are to be considered in two lights, according to the different senses in which the term Royal Family is used—the larger sense includes all who may possibly inherit the Crown; the confined sense, those within a certain degree of propinquity to the reigning Prince, and to whom the law pays an extraordinary respect ”

“ The Royal Family were also assiduous in honouring with their presence the entertainments of the great nobility, provided they were Whig in politics. We hear of their being at a ball at the Duchess of Somerset’s, a dinner at the Duchess of Shrewsbury’s, a supper at my Lady Bristol’s, and so on. ”

“ The conspicuous position of members of the Royal Family increase the risk of their being placed in awkward circumstances, and circumstances which would be of little consequence in the case of private people, would be very serious and embarrassing if they affected members of the Royal Family of England. ”

“ With the exception of the prince of Wales, all the male relations of the sovereign are ranked first in the order of their degrees of consanguinity with him or her, and secondly, in the order of their proximity to the succession to the Crown; thus the members of the several groups into which the royal family is divided take precedence according to their own seniority and the seniority of their fathers or mothers, the sons of the sons or brothers of the sovereign being preferred to the sons of the daughters or sisters of the sovereign among the sovereign’s grandsons and nephews. ”

“ People suppose a family to be royal because it reigns; on the contrary, it reigns because it is royal, because it has more life, plus d’esprit royal—surely as mysterious and occult a force as the virtus dormitiva of- 331 - opium. ”

“ The crown being hereditary in one family, but elective in the person, and polygamy being permitted, must have multiplied these heirs very much, and produced constant disputes, so that it was found necessary to provide a remedy for the anarchy and effusion of royal blood, which was otherwise inevitably to follow. ”

“ The families of all reigning sovereigns, whether grand dukes, dukes, princes, landgraves, electors, etc., are royalty, nay even certain mediatised families, families that have ceased to be reigning, and which are very numerous on the continent, claim the same status, and may therefore intermarry with royal princes and princesses. ”

“ But I suppose it is always the case in England that, when a marriage is being arranged, one ought to follow the direction of one's family, as, for instance, a prince, called to rule a hereditary kingdom, ought to hear his parliament. ”

“ With marriage, comes changes to the system. The married person demands order, security and peace—to live as a family in a family—in a regulated household—he seeks a true monarchy.
51. A prince without family spirit is not a monarch. ”

“ We understand that in the failure of them, all rights to our said crown, and succession to our dominions, which might at any time whatsoever belong and appertain to them, be and remain transferred to our most dear and most beloved grandson the Duke of Berry, and to his children and descendants, being males born in lawful marriage; and successively, in failure of them, to those of the Princes of our Royal House, and their descendants, who in right of their birth, or by the order established since the foundation of our monarchy, ought to succeed to our crown. ”

“ The marriage, which was in preparation all through the grim days of 1857, was celebrated with due splendour on January 25th, 1858, and awakened a universal interest which was not even surpassed when, five years later, the heir to the throne was wedded. "Down to the humblest cottage," said the Prince Consort, "the marriage has been regarded as a family affair." And not only this splendid and entirely successful match, but every joy or woe that has befallen the highest family in the land, has been felt as "a family affair" by thousands of the lowly. ”

“ Your father shall be my brother, and your mother my sister, as you are my son and the heir to my crown. We will all live together here in one palace.” Then he called the queen, and all his ministers, and told them all about his daughter. And there was great rejoicing and festivity in the whole court. [41]
After this the king gave his son-in-law his own large ship to bring back the princess and the whole family. So the captain left his own ship there, but he asked the king to send one of his ministers with him, “Lest they should not believe me,” he said ”

“ An heir was born to its noble possessors on the 15th of June, 923. From early boyhood his taste and studies were unsuited to close intercourse with the world; and grown to a man, he resisted gently but firmly, the will of his family, who had chosen for his wife the heiress of the house of Dwingt. ”

“ The European travels of such a young lady could not have much interest, ordinarily. But, for ten years and more, I went from Court to Court, rather than from country to country, in that huge family of Royalty whose members have been intermarrying for so many generations that all the occupants of the thrones of Europe have become cousins, and a princess can visit from palace to palace as if from house to house among relatives in a countryside. ”

“ Now in countries where the royal blood was traced through women only, and where consequently the king held office merely in virtue of his marriage with an hereditary princess, who was the real sovereign, it appears to have often happened that a prince married his own sister, the princess royal, in order to obtain with her hand the crown which otherwise would have gone to another man, perhaps to a stranger. ”

“ They lived, in fact, as one great family bound in close association by their habits of life and their family relationships, and they knew no such unnatural distinction as king or subject, lord or vassal. ”

“ If I drop this into the gulf it is only a drop. I know I am robbing my heirs without benefiting the house; but then—the house is my heir. I should leave everything to my dear niece, except a little remembrance to Lucy and yourself. ”

“ The political and religious centre of each community would be the perpetual fire on the king's hearth tended by Vestal Virgins of the royal clan. The king would be a man of another clan, perhaps of another town or even of another race, who had married a daughter of his predecessor and received the kingdom with her. The children whom he had by her would inherit their mother's name, not his; the daughters would remain at home; the sons, when they grew up, would go away into the world, marry, and settle in their wives' country, whether as kings or commoners. ”

“ Families arise amongst the royal lineage of Europe that suddenly, like a lamp fitfully glowing up just the moment before it expires, throw off, as by some final effort, a numerous generation of princes and princesses ”

“ Eliminating, and for obvious reasons, the greater and more powerful Houses, the record of most old English families is a contradiction in terms of the rigid but quite logical observance of a Continental noblesse. There is about an even chance that sooner or later you tap the root of the family and its fortunes in a woolstapler, a goldsmith, a vintner, an iron-forger, a flockmaster, a haberdasher, or a grocer, and last, but assuredly not least, in a successful lawyer. ”

“ As we may naturally expect the well-trained, obedient child to do honor to man's estate, we may admit that the well-governed family, in which the members make life and its object their aim and study, will, in time, assume the proportions of a mighty kingdom, reflecting the wisdom of the Gods, to whose increase there will be no end. ”

“ The lady I have married is worthy of all homage, and my very confidential friends, with some of my wife’s relations only, witnessed our marriage. Have you not always taught me to consider myself heir to the first sovereignty in the world? ”

“ HOUSEHOLD, ROYAL. In all the medieval monarchies of western Europe the general system of government sprang from, and centred in, the royal household. The sovereign’s domestics were his officers of state, and the leading dignitaries of the palace were the principal administrators of the kingdom. The royal household itself had, in its turn, grown out of an earlier and more primitive institution. ”

“ My mother’s relations, who were all high in the public service, my grandfather, as I said, being the Duke’s chief minister, made life more easy and pleasant for us; but for many years my mother never went into society, and our society consisted of members of our own family only. ”

“ A family on the throne is an interesting idea also. It brings down the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life. No feeling could seem more childish than the enthusiasm of the English at the marriage of the Prince of Wales. ”

“ Now, it is not often that one gets a chance of playing with a King's daughter, so it is no wonder that, when the Princess followed her royal parents into the great hall on the appointed day, she found it filled from end to end with all the little princes and princesses and all the little counts and countesses and all the little dukes and duchesses that the surrounding kingdoms could produce. ”

“ The Princes of the family, the Princes of the blood, the chancellor, and the ministers are surely sufficient to attest the legitimacy of an hereditary prince. The Queen was snatched from the very jaws of death ”

“ And, should a friend attempt to set him right,
His lordship would impute it all to spite;
Would love his favourite better than before,
And trust his honesty just so much more.
Thus families, like realms, with equal fate,
Are sunk by premier ministers of state.
⁠Some, when an heir succeeds, go boldly on,
And, as they robb'd the father, rob the son.
A knave, who deep embroils his lord's affairs,
Will soon grow necessary to his heirs. ”

“ The family that can furnish his Majesty with one of his many wives—the family that can form an alliance with one of the sovereign’s daughters—is sure to gain great influence and power, and to be loaded with many honours. ”

“ He received a reward for this, and set out for the kingdom of which the jackal had spoken. He arrived, and enquired of the king: ‘What wilt thou give me if I cure thy daughter?’ The king replied: ‘If thou canst do this I will give thee my daughter to wife.’ The youth prepared the remedy, made the princess bathe in it, and she was cured. The king rejoiced greatly, gave him the maiden in marriage, and appointed him heir to the kingdom. ”

“ I am old and ill, and must arrange my affairs. The task is painful both for you and for me. I will not refer to my anger at my son's marriage; your misfortune disarmed me—I called you to my side, and I desired to behold and to love in your son William, the heir of my fortune, the pivot of my dreams of future ambition. Alas! madam, fate was cruel to us! My son's widow and orphan shall have all that can insure them an honourable existence; but, sole master of a fortune due to my own exertions, I adopt my nephew, and look upon him henceforward as my sole heir. ”

“ Royal families have been seen to fall into irreparable errors, by becoming infatuated with a false idea of their own nature: at one time they look upon themselves as divine and exceptional families, at another as mortal and private families ”