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How are the Spanish and UK Royal Families related? The curious story of the modern European monarchy
These are the families ties linking Felipe VI and Elizabeth II, whom the Spanish king called “Aunt Lillibet”
It is well known that the European royal houses are linked to each other in many cases by family ties from the past, and while it’s sometimes necessary to go back a few generations to find a common ancestor, it’s often not too difficult to find the connection.
It may be unsurprising, then, that the British and Spanish Royal Families are linked by blood. In fact, their ties run deeper than that, with King Felipe VI of Spain affectionately calling Queen Elizabeth II “Aunt Lillibet”.
The Spanish head of state and the old UK monarch maintained a close relationship, and Rey Felipe referred to her using the nickname that other members of the British royal family also used.
See also: Queen Elizabeth II — a life in pictures
The blood ties between Felipe VI and Elizabeth II come from both his father’s and his mother’s sides. Spain’s former king and queen, Juan Carlos and Sofia, who are the parents of the current king, are great-great-grandchildren of Queen Victoria of England, as were both Queen Elizabeth and her husband, the Prince Philip the Duke of Edinburgh.
This makes Felipe and Elizabeth third cousins once removed, and Felipe was actually 567th in line to the British throne before his relative’s death.
In the case of Prince Philip, his ties with Juan Carlos and Sofia were even closer. He was a second uncle to Queen Sofia as King George I of Greece was his grandfather and the great-grandfather of Felipe VI’s mother.
As for Juan Carlos I, his grandmother, Queen Victoria Eugenia, was a first cousin of the Duke of Edinburgh’s mother, Alice of Battenberg.
The new king of the UK and the Commonwealth is Charles III, who is also a distant cousin to Spain’s King Felipe VI.
Image: Wikimedia commons
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