Lord Nicholas Windsor

Lord Nicholas Windsor (Nicholas Charles Edward Jonathan Windsor; born 25 July 1970) is a member of the extended British Royal Family. He is the youngest child of the Duke and Duchess of Kent, and a great-grandson of George V.

Early years

Lord Nicholas Windsor was born in 1970 at University College Hospital, London, and was the first member of the British Royal Family to be born in a hospital. He was styled as the younger son of a duke from birth, like all great-grandsons of British sovereigns in the male line. He has an older brother, the Earl of St Andrews, and a sister, Lady Helen Taylor. He was baptised on 11 September 1970 at Windsor Castle. His godparents included Charles, Prince of Wales and Donald Coggan.^[1] Lord Nicholas was educated at Westminster School, where he was bullied. He then went to Harrow. He dropped out of Manchester College, Oxford to go trekking round Africa.^[2] When he was 18 years old, he received a police caution for possession of cannabis after being searched in St. James's Park^[3] and later was reported to have suffered from an eating disorder.^[4]

Religion

In a private ceremony in 2001 he was received into the Roman Catholic Church, and therefore permanently forfeited his right of succession to the British throne. The Act of Settlement bars past or present Roman Catholics, and those who marry Roman Catholics, from the succession. His mother, the Duchess of Kent, converted to Roman Catholicism in 1994, the first member of the British Royal Family to do so in modern times. Lord Nicholas is a Patron of the Society of King Charles the Martyr.^[5]

Marriage

In 2001, Windsor met Paola Doimi di Delupis de Frankopan at a party in New York City and their engagement was announced on 26 September 2006.^[6][7] They married on 4 November 2006 in the Church of Santo Stefano degli Abissini in the Vatican following a civil ceremony on 19 October 2006 in a London register office^[8] and she became Lady Nicholas Windsor. This is the first time a member of the extended British Royal Family has married in the Vatican since at least the Reformation.^[9]

Family

Lord and Lady Nicholas Windsor had their first child, a son, Albert Louis Philip Edward Windsor, on 22 September 2007 at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital, London. Albert is the eighth grandchild for the Duke and Duchess of Kent.^[10][11] He is named after his ancestor, Prince Albert (the first Windsor to carry the name since King George VI) and Louis and Edward after his maternal and paternal grandfathers, respectively.^[10] Albert is the first direct male line descendant of George V to bear the surname Windsor but no courtesy title. As the eldest son of a younger son of a British Peer, he is entitled only to the style, Albert Windsor, Esq. He was formerly 27th in the line of Succession to the British Throne but lost that distinction when he became a Roman Catholic. He will still be in the line of succession to the Kent Dukedom, which is not regulated by the Act of Settlement.

Ancestry