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“Downton Abbey” Read-Cap: Lord Grantham And The Dreadful No Good Rotten Very Bad Awful Day
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No. 5 ·
JohnD
To expand on the prior two comments:
Robert Crawley is the Seventh Earl of Grantham (the actual earldom of Grantham died out with the first earl and has never been recreated). If his family name were Grantham, then he’d be the Earl Grantham, instead of “Earl of.” There would seem to be no subsidiary title, as Matthew Crawley is just Mr. Crawley.
To give a real-life example, the heir to the throne is the Prince of Wales. If Prince Charles (the heir presumptive) dies before his mother, Prince Andrew would become the Prince of Wales and Price William would drop down in the order of succession. Noble titles generally only pass through the male line (with exceptions). As a result of this, Prince Charles has a nephew, child of his sister Princess Anne, who is a commoner. He’s llth in line for the throne.
All the women in the Crawley family are commoners (it’s that male line thing). Like their husbands (in the case of Violet, Isabel, and Cora) they have the status their husbands had or have. An earl’s daughters are no more the nobility than Daisy in the kitchen, but their marriage prospects are generally better (if the family has some cash). Can’t land the Duke of Crowborough without a nice marriage settlement. (The infant Sybil Branson will be Miss Branson, although her late mother was Lady Sybil.
Is that clear?
Feb 5, 2013 at 8:44 pm · @Reply
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I admit that I don’t understand how the British family lines and titles work….. But, will someone explain to me how the Lord and Lady Grantham have daughters that are referred to as the Crawley girls? I thought that the Crawleys were the husband of Mary and his mother who is trying to make honest women of all the towns’ prostitutes.