Definition
Further information: queen motherA queen mother is a person satisfying the following criteria:
- She is the mother of the current monarch.
- She is a queen dowager
- She must have been queen consort, but not having ceased to be so due to a divorce or annulment.
A further condition is that the term "queen mother" applies only if a male monarch is married. If he is unmarried, his mother retains her title of queen. (This is analogous to the mother of a peer, who is called a dowager if the peer is married but not otherwise.)
Contrary to myth, queen mother does not necessarily mean mother of the Queen; it applies whether or not the monarch is male or female.
A queen mother retains the style of Her Majesty that she enjoyed as queen, but there is no further coronation ceremony to reflect her changed status.
Read more about this topic: British Queens Dowager
Famous quotes containing the word definition:
“Was man made stupid to see his own stupidity?
Is God by definition indifferent, beyond us all?
Is the eternal truth man’s fighting soul
Wherein the Beast ravens in its own avidity?”
—Richard Eberhart (b. 1904)
“I’m beginning to think that the proper definition of “Man” is “an animal that writes letters.””
—Lewis Carroll [Charles Lutwidge Dodgson] (1832–1898)
“Although there is no universal agreement as to a definition of life, its biological manifestations are generally considered to be organization, metabolism, growth, irritability, adaptation, and reproduction.”
—The Columbia Encyclopedia, Fifth Edition, the first sentence of the article on “life” (based on wording in the First Edition, 1935)