Letter: European royalty

After you published a letter from me (19 November) agreeing with an earlier letter opining that the royal wedding was a distraction, a fellow correspondent and I were attacked via the online comments section by someone who clearly wants to get their name on the next Honours list.

On reflection, I suppose I made a mistake calling the boy "Saxe-Coburg-Gotha". The logical name would be Battenberg.

Talking of distractions, has it not occurred to anyone that William's granny might just give the newlyweds a while to see how they shape up and hand the crown to him?

Or does she not have the authority to do that? Now that would keep the population preoccupied for a while in case the UK has to get bailed out by the EU in the future. Watch this space.

Barry Lees

Denholm Street

Greenock

I REALISE that David Fiddimore was attempting to inject an element of humour into his letter (19 November) on the forthcoming marriage of HRH Prince William of Wales and Miss Catherine Middleton. However, his disparaging reference to the Royals as "an obscure Anglo-German family" is patent nonsense.

Leaving aside the silly reference to "obscure", the Royal Family can in no modern sense be described as Anglo-German.

Mr Fiddimore is presumably looking back to the accession of the Elector of Hanover as King George I in 1714. However, George I was the great grandson of King James VI of Scots, and therefore a direct descendant of Mary Queen of Scots. Hardly an "Anglo" origin to the dynasty.

Secondly, the last German to marry into the direct line of royal succession was Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. This was as far back as 1840. So the present Royal Family is hardly very "German", either.

Apart from which, what is wrong with being Anglo-German? Surely, in modern, confident Scotland, we are neither anti-English nor anti-German.

KEITH HALLEY

Newbattle Abbey Crescent

Dalkeith, Midlothian