- Some members of the royal family get titles like "duke," "earl," or "baron."
- These titles are part of the Peerage, an old ranking system for British nobles.
Queen Elizabeth II died on Thursday, allowing her son Charles to ascend to the throne and clearing the way for many in the royal family to assume new titles.
In his first speech as a new monarch, King Charles III revealed that Prince William and his wife Catherine — formerly known as the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge — will now be the Prince and Princess of Wales.
It remains unclear if Prince Harry and Meghan (currently the Duke and Duchess of Sussex) will assume new titles as well, but all this speculation begs one giant, oft-unaddressed question: What are royal titles and what do they actually signify?
Titles like "earl," "baron," "duke," and "duchess" don't exist just to make their bearers sound extra fancy.
They're part of an old ranking system for British nobility known as the Peerage
Back in the day, the monarch bestowed these titles on "peers of the realm"— people who swore loyalty to the crown in exchange for land or money, according to the Peerage experts at Debrett's London. The five possible titles, ranked from highest to lowest, are: duke, marquess, earl, viscount, and baron for men; duchess, marchioness, countess, viscountess, and baroness for women.
In addition to being bestowed, the titles could also be inherited, but only by male heirs. All the people who had these titles formed the Peerage and were known as Peers. Dukes and duchesses are generally addressed as "Your Grace," while all others Peers are addressed as "My Lord" or "My Lady."
You don't have to be in line for the crown to get one of these titles: There are both royal and non-royal Peers.
Being a Peer used to come with political power
Peers used to have a birthright to sit in The House of Lords, which is the upper house of British Parliament. Because of the male-only inheritance rule, the House of Lords was once made up of exclusively male hereditary Peers. That's no longer the case.
Since the Life Peerage Act of 1958, the Prime Minister and Queen have been jointly appointing "Life Peers" to the House of Lords. These are people who get a Peerage title for the duration of their own lives but can't pass it down to their kids. Because you don't have to be a man to be named a Life Peer, this law has allowed women to finally get some seats in the House of Lords.
The Lords got another shakeup in 1999 when a new law ousted all but 92 of the roughly 750 hereditary Peers still left in the governing body. Today, Life Peers make up the vast majority of the House of Lords.
The best-known Peers are still the royal ones
The Peers lack much of the political muscle they once had, but Debrett's guide asserts that "their social influence remains undimmed, and their lives remain a source of interest and speculation." This is especially true when it comes to the royal family.
Many of the men in the royal family have held Peerage titles as traditionally most hereditary titles can still only be inherited by males. Prince Philip, to whom Queen Elizabeth II was married to for 73 years, was the Duke of Edinburgh. Their younger sons Andrew and Edward are the Duke of York and the Earl of Wessex, respectively.
As the eldest son of the late Queen, Charles most recently held the title Duke of Cornwall plus all the income generated by Duchy of Cornwall.
The Duchy of Cornwall — essentially a suite of properties owned by the royal family — covered the expenses of Prince Charles and his heirs. That means Harry and Meghan, William and Kate, and their children were all covered by the Duchy of Cornwall, too. Charles paid them a combined $6.5 million (£5 million) in 2019, according to The Journal.
The Duchy paid Charles $28.1 million (£21.6 million), The Journal reported. Its total value is $1.2 billion (£923.8 million).
Prior to her death, the Queen and the Prince of Wales effectively controlled most of the royal family's fortune and divvied out payments to support other family members, The Journal reported.
All the grandchildren of Charles will now become princes and princesses too. According to a law set out by King George V in 1917, known as the Letters Patent, all royals who are either the children or the grandchildren of the sovereign through a male line can hold the titles of prince and princess, Tatler reported.
This means that Archie and Lilibet Mountbatten-Windsor, Harry and Markle's children, are technically now prince and princess. (All three of Prince William and Kate Middleton's children have used princely titles before, a point of contention in the family.)
It's tradition for men of the royal family to get a new title when they marry
Take William, for example: For most of his life, he was just "His Royal Highness Prince William of Wales." But upon his marriage to Kate Middleton in 2011, the queen gave him the Dukedom of Cambridge, and Kate became the Duchess of Cambridge.
The same thing happened when Prince Harry and Meghan Markle married in 2018, becoming the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. The Sussex title was one of many options considered "available" at the time — meaning the people who last held them have died without legitimate heirs and the titles are free to be bestowed by the Queen.
To learn more about the Peerage and its long, long history, check out this incredibly thorough guide from Debrett's.