Really? Who might that king be?
Really? Who might that king be?
The house of Windsor springs from the marriage of Queen Victoria to Prince Albert in 1840. He was the son of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in Germany and his name became that used by the British royal family.
A bit of a mouthful, Saxe-Coburg-Gotha turned out not to be Albert's real surname, which was Wettin, the name of another aristocratic German dynasty.
It was only in 1917 that George V, worried by the anti-German feeling caused by the first world war, ordered the royal family to scrap Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and Wettin for Windsor.
Matters are still not that simple. The name of the royal house is Windsor, but the surname of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh [Prince Philip] is Mountbatten-Windsor. The duke is also from the house of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg and so, arguably, are his heirs.
Finally, Mountbatten is an Anglo translation of the actual name, Batttenburg.