In the Commonwealth realms, a Royal Style and Titles Act is passed in order to declare the Sovereign's formal title.
The most significant of these Acts is the Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act 1927, which was passed in the United Kingdom in recognition of the creation of the Irish Free State, a development that necessitated a change in King George V's title.
The 1927 Act was amended by:
- the India Independence Act (10 & 11 Geo. 6. c. 30) and Order in Council Approving Proclamation Altering the Style and Titles Appertaining to the Crown by Omitting the Words "Emperor of India" on 22 June 1948. Because of this change the King's title in the English language became:
George VI by the Grace of God of Great Britain, Ireland and the British Dominions beyond the Seas King, Defender of the Faith
- An Act to provide for an alteration of the Royal Style and Titles. 1 & 2 Eliz. 2 c. 9 . Pursuant to this Act, the Sovereign's title became:
Elizabeth II, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith
The Act signified a change in the way that the Crown in the United Kingdom related to the Crown in other Commonwealth realms, opened the way for the monarch to have a different title in each Dominion.
Interestingly, in December 1952 the Dominion governments agreed that the practice of separate titles should continue in the reign of the new monarch, Elizabeth II. Each country adopted its own titles; the British Act of Parliament clearly stated that it applied only to the United Kingdom and those overseas territories whose foreign relations were controlled by the UK government. For Britain, the act also tidied up use of the title of King of Ireland, following Ireland's declaration as a republic in 1949. Henceforth, Elizabeth would be known in the UK as Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland rather than of Great Britain and Ireland separately.
Famous quotes containing the words royal, style, titles and/or act:
“High on a throne of royal state, which far
Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind,
Or where the gorgeous East with richest hand
Show’rs on her kings barbaric pearl and gold,
Satan exalted sat, by merit raised
To that bad eminence; and, from despair
Thus high uplifted beyond hope, aspires
Beyond thus high, insatiate to pursue
Vain war with Heav’n, and by success untaught,
His proud imaginations”
—John Milton (1608–1674)
“The history of all Magazines shows plainly that those which have attained celebrity were indebted for it to articles similar in natureto Berenice—although, I grant you, far superior in style and execution. I say similar in nature. You ask me in what does this nature consist? In the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful coloured into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought out into the strange and mystical.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
“We have to be despised by somebody whom we regard as above us, or we are not happy; we have to have somebody to worship and envy, or we cannot be content. In America we manifest this in all the ancient and customary ways. In public we scoff at titles and hereditary privilege, but privately we hanker after them, and when we get a chance we buy them for cash and a daughter.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“The ambivalence of writing is such that it can be considered both an act and an interpretive process that follows after an act with which it cannot coincide. As such, it both affirms and denies its own nature.”
—Paul De Man (1919–1983)