Duchess Sophie is said to have missed out on a title that hadn’t been held by a royal for over 100 years after Queen Elizabeth granted an unusual request.
The Royal Family currently has eleven working members and several of them have been bestowed with new titles, patronages and responsibilities in recent years. This includes Prince Edward becoming Duke of Edinburgh, which in turn made his wife Sophie the Duchess of Edinburgh. This is now her most senior title and she holds several others too, all the feminine equivalents of her husband’s titles. However, there was one Prince Edward - and therefore Sophie - was reportedly set to receive from Queen Elizabeth that they missed out on. At the time of their marriage it hadn’t been held by a royal for over 100 years and it ended up being bestowed upon Prince William and Kate in 2011 instead.
"Prince Edward was going to be the Duke of Cambridge, but he watched the film Shakespeare in Love, which had a character called the Earl of Wessex," a courtier previously alleged to The Telegraph. "He liked the sound of it and asked the Queen if he could have that instead."
If this was indeed the case, then it seems as if Queen Elizabeth had intended to bestow the Duke of Cambridge title upon her youngest son before he apparently made this request after seeing Colin Firth play Lord Wessex. This means that Duchess Sophie would have become Duchess of Cambridge instead of Kate, if Prince Edward hadn't supposedly had a preference for the Earl of Wessex title.
His alleged decision made him the only one of Queen Elizabeth’s sons to not have a Dukedom at the time, as Prince Andrew was already Duke of York and King Charles was Duke of Cornwall at the same time as being Prince of Wales. In light of this, it was perhaps quite an unusual choice from Prince Edward to forgo the Dukedom of Cambridge.
He and Duchess Sophie were known by their Earl and Countess of Wessex titles for 24 years before His Majesty made an exciting announcement on his brother’s 59th birthday last March. Taking to social media he shared that he had bestowed his late father Prince Philip’s Dukedom of Edinburgh upon Prince Edward, which made Sophie a Duchess too.
It had been stated when Prince Edward and Sophie married that it was expected for him to become Duke of Edinburgh "in due course", so it was heart-warming to see King Charles uphold their late parents’ wishes. Whilst he might have had to wait a long time to become a Duke, the Dukedom of Edinburgh undoubtedly means a huge amount to him - and to Sophie.
She remarked upon this in an emotional tribute to her husband for his 60th birthday and how much she feels she "deserves" it in recognition of his work with the Duke of Edinburgh Award.
"He was so happy and humbled when Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth made him a Knight of The Garter in 2006 and was equally delighted and moved the day His Majesty The King – who we are both incredibly proud to support - made him Duke of Edinburgh. Both he deserves in equal measure and I am so proud of the man he is," Duchess Sophie proudly declared.
Since they became Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh, their son James started using his father’s subsidiary title of Earl of Wessex. Prince William and Kate became Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in 2010 and they continue to hold these iconic titles, though are now known as Prince and Princess of Wales as their most senior ones.
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