Last week it was announced that the second in line to the English Succession, Prince William, was engaged to a beautiful and elegant English commoner named Kate Middleton, whose parents are entrepreneurs but who studied Art History at St. Andrews University, where she and Prince William (who originally studied History there, but apparently changed his major to Geography) met and began their relationship.  In what was otherwise a very innocuous and pleasant news article (I wish the couple well), something caught my attention:  the motto of the British royal coat of arms.

It must seem very bizarre that such an arcane subject of heraldry would be of personal interest, but as it happens the quote on the British Royal Coast of Arms, “Dieu et mon droit,” which translates into “God and my right” is a subject of considerable personal interest.  To untangle that will require some analysis.  The quote itself is in French, and has its origin in the insecure legitimacy of Henry V (whose father was a usurper to the British throne) and who himself contested the French throne, deeply involving England in ferocious battle in support of his claims, leading to such figures as Joan of Arc rising up in favor of the French before being burned at the stake and the Shakespearean drama of the Battle of Agincourt with the cry, “This band of brothers.”

Anyway, before we get carried away by noble rhetoric, let us examine that Henry V was himself an insecure monarch.  Like most insecure monarchs, he sought to bolster his dubious legitimacy by making a provocative claim, that he owed his power and authority to his own power (his “right hand”) and the divine right of God, leaving him accountable to no one.  His insecurity led him to make that provocative claim because there were others alive in England who had more right to sit on the throne than he.  Needless to say, his provocative claim of divine right leadership meant nothing when his less martially-inclined son Henry VI presided over the wholesale slaughter of British nobility (and plenty of commoners too) in the Wars of the Roses.  What is somewhat mysterious is why a monarchy that stands on opposing grounds to divine right monarchy (and has since the English Revolution and Glorious Revolution of the 1600’s) still makes a divine right claim on its coat of arms.  Do they assume that the English people won’t know enough French to realize what they are claiming?  If so, it’s always a poor idea to rely on the ignorance of one’s potential enemies.

Even within the heraldry of the British royal family, there is a wide gulf in sentiments expressed.  The Prince of Wales, the much maligned Prince Charles, father of last week’s happy future groom, has a much more appropriate phrase (from German) on his coast of arms:  “Ich Dein,” or “I serve.”  Clearly, there is a wide gulf in sentiment between “service” and divine right legitimacy in one’s heraldic statements, a gulf that represents the distance between servant leadership and corrupt, ungodly, satanic models of leadership.  It is interesting to see those two grounds of legitimacy–service and a supposed divine right–contrasted within a single family’s Coat of Arms.

It is not only royal families whose heraldry reveals fascinating information about them.  For example, the famous English playwright William Shakespeare got into some interesting controversy regarding his application for a coat of arms.  In large part, it would seem, due to his increasing royal favor as a result of his being a playwright and partner in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, he received a coat of arms as a second-generation member of the gentry (the coat of arms was granted to his father, giving Shakespeare instant credibility as a member of the lower orders of the elite, above the status of a mere commoner).  Reflecting his insecurity about legitimacy, he (like Henry V, interestingly enough) put a very ferocious motto on his Coat of Arms, “Non Sans Droit,” or, “Not without right” that directly involved the sensitive position of his right to possess a coat of arms.  Needless to say, not everyone (including rival playwright Ben Jonson) accepted his claim without mockery.

It should go without saying that if I am interested in the coat of arms of other people that I would be interested in my own heraldry.  Intriguingly, my family name (Albright) is an anglicized version of a noble German surname (Albrecht) that appears in Austria, Switzerland, and nearby areas during the late Middle Ages.  My own ancestors came to the United States during colonial times, settling in Pennsylvania and ascribing their name to a town in the Poconos (where, sadly, every building was for sale the last time I visited) before moving across the state to an area better known for groundhogs (the town of Punxsutawney), where they lived for generations before my grandfather moved south to the Pittsburgh suburbs.  However, in my own research of my family, I have been unable to find any kind of motto used by the Albrechts or Albrights for their coat of arms, in German or Latin or any other language.  Then again, my family was of uncontested noble blood and had been for generations, all the way back to the 1300’s at least–they, unlike Henry V or William Shakespeare, had nothing to prove to anyone.  Food for thought, no?