Talk:Commoner (disambiguation)

message: There are, in my opinion, two different definitions of 'commoners': the "more common" definition is anyone who is not of royal title or of nobility (with peerage - real or even courtesy).  The 'royal' definition, a more continental Europe one, seems to be anyone who is not royal.  For example, the Countess Claudine Rhédey von Kis-Rhéde (Queen Elizabeth II's great-great-grandmother on Queen Mary's side) was a member of nobility and would certainly be classified as someone with peerage by British definition, but she was viewed as a commoner among the 19th century German and continental European royals using the second definition, as the royals thumped their noses at her.  --JNZ (talk) 11:02, 25 February 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: There may be some confusion of the continental use of the word 'Countess' as opposed to it's use in Britain. Claudine Rhédey von Kis-Rhéde was a 'Countesss' as a courtesy title as the daughter of a peer. That would be equivalent to holding the courtesy title 'Lady' in Britain because your father was an Earl or Duke. Claudine was NOT actually a Peer in her own right. That makes her equivalent in rank to say Lady Diana Spencer before her marriage to Prince Charles. But where British Royals could marry Commoners freely with no consequence for inheritance rights, a German Prince who married outside his class would be classified as having entered into a Morganatic Marriage, and the children of that marriage were legally barred from the succession - as Claudine's were. Claudine's son was easily able to marry a British Princess, as there were no legal issues around the family's 'low' ancestory in Britain.  For that reason, a whole stream of Morganauts (children of Morganatic Marriages) headed to Britain in the 19th Century (like the Tecks and Battenbergs), as the marriage prospects were considerably better than back home. Indisciplined (talk) 19:14, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Two Definitions of 'Commoners'

message: even the cited sources disagree with this article. The first source makes the point that English law doesn't distinguish between nobility and commoners, this is reiterated when the three estates are listed as knight, parson, ploughman, none of which are peers. is commoner even a legal class in the UK? The claim that Kate Middleton is the 1st commoner to marry an heir in 350 means that Elizabeth Bowes-Lyons is not a commoner, neither was Camilla 71.194.44.209 (talk) 04:34, 8 June 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know of a current legal use for the term "commoner" (as used in this article) which ever comes up in practice, nor can I immediately think of one. When I (rarely) use the term "commoner" in a legal context it refers to someone with a right of common. Even the Crown could (theoretically) be a commoner of that kind. Francis Davey (talk) 07:13, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

text: I can't think of any valid meaning for the claim about Kate being the first commoner for 350 years... I don't think we should include it in the article; just because a few journalists have parroted it doesn't make it true or notable.--Kotniski (talk) 08:43, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

text: Camilla is the granddaughter of a Baron, so she certainly has some noble blood. Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon is the daughter of an Earl, so again she has noble blood. While they are both technically commoners, it is obviously understandable that Kate Middleton could be branded "the first commoner to marry an heir in 350 years" by those that consider a commoner to be someone with no noble blood. 122.57.99.154 (talk) 06:26, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

text: I'd go along with that. Francis Davey (talk) 10:34, 28 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  This article is wrong 

message: This article was nominated for deletion and that discussion was closed by an admin with the comment:"The result was no consensus. To delete, that is. But consensus that this should be editorially improved, e.g. by making it a dab page."[]. I am not sure what articles a disambiguation page should link to, so I will not attempt to do that, but if others want to, or want to discuss it here, that would be fine. I am removing the tags on the article as it was considerably improved during the AfD discussion, and ask that the assertions about members of the royal family being "technically commoners", which have been deleted, be not put back into the article without a reliable source.Smeat75 (talk) 23:59, 4 February 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: I had a go at a disambiguation page version. Mcewan (talk) 09:07, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Very good in my opinion, thank you for doing that.Smeat75 (talk) 16:18, 5 February 2013 (UTC)

text: There are a number of incoming links from redirects from the university terms Fellow Commoner, Gentleman Commoner etc and their variants. Explanation of these is not really appropriate for a disambiguation page but I have nevertheless inserted some notes from the previous text. It's possible that we should have an article about this usage Commoner (British universities) perhaps, or alternatively remove the incoming links (i.e. treat it as a dictionary problem). Mcewan (talk) 10:52, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Recent discussion about deleting this article 

message: See Peerage and the Peerage law for some possible origins of this notion. Mcewan (talk) 10:47, 5 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Legally / Technically a commoner