Mountbatten encyclopedia topics

Current Holder of the Marquessate

The current head of the Mountbatten family is George Mountbatten, 4th Marquess of Milford Haven, Prince Louis I's great-grandson, who was born in London on 6 June, 1961. He has a son named Henry, born in 1991.

Notable Mountbattens

The sons of Princess Beatrice and Louis's brother, Prince Henry of Battenberg — Prince Alexander and Prince Leopold — also took the new surname, with Alexander being made Marquess of Carisbrooke.

Prince Henry of Battenberg's eldest daughter, Carisbrooke's sister, Queen Ena of Spain, never assumed the English form, however.

The best-known of Prince Louis I's descendants were his youngest son, Admiral Prince Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma, and the former's grandson, son of Louis's daughter Princess Alice of Battenberg): Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, who is now husband of Queen Elizabeth II.

Prior to his marriage in 1882, Prince Louis I had an affair with the actress, Lillie Langtry, and it is thought that he was the father of Jeanne Marie Langtry, born some months later.

The Royal Mountbattens

In 1952, on the accession of Queen Elizabeth, there was a belief that certain members of the Mountbatten family wished to change the name of the Windsor dynasty to Mountbatten. Queen Mary (the new Queen's grandmother) expressed her aversion to this idea to the then Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill.

Queen Mary's objection was partly based on the fact that Prince Philip was in fact a Royal Hellenic Prince, son of Prince Andrew of Greece, and only a Mountbatten through his mother Princess Alice. His original surname would have been the awkward-sounding Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg. Prince Philip had only taken the more "English-sounding" surname when joining the Royal Navy, on the advice of his ambitious uncle, Earl Mountbatten. Queen Mary was also of the generation which considered a morganatic surname to carry some stigma, and therefore did not want it to be the name of the British Royal House. Her attitude may have been influenced by her own origins; although Queen Mary's mother was a British royal princess, her father, Francis, Duke of Teck, was the child of a morganatic marriage, and for most of his life carried only the honorific Serene Highness. As such, he was considered somewhat declassé by strict royalists, something that may have rankled Queen Mary to some degree.

Winston Churchill raised the matter in Parliament where it was decided that the name of the Royal House would remain Windsor, as decreed in perpetuity by Queen Mary's husband George V.

However, under an ambiguously-worded Order-in-Council issued in 1960, the name Mountbatten-Windsor is apparently the personal surname of some of the descendants of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip. It differs from the official name of the British Royal Family or Royal House, which remains Windsor.

The change of surname does not apply to members of the royal family not descended from Prince Philip—the Dukes of Gloucester and Kent, for example.

The Order specifically applies to those descendants of the Queen and Prince Philip not holding Royal styles and titles (the children of Prince Edward, for example) but in practice it is used by all, as exemplified at the marriages of the Prince of Wales and the Princess Royal, when both used Mountbatten-Windsor in their entries in the marriage registers.