For 70 years, the royal family was helmed by Queen Elizabeth—a queen regnant, meaning a queen reigning in her own right, and not through marriage. As of May 6, we will have a queen of a different kind: A Queen Consort, the consort signifying that she (in this case, Camilla) is the wife of a king born to the throne.
“There is really no such formal title as ‘Queen Consort,’” says Christopher Andersen, author of The King: The Life of Charles III. “The wife of the King is his consort, but she has always simply been called Queen. The royals have a knack for dreaming things up. There was no such thing as a ‘Queen Mother’ either, until the late Elizabeth II’s mum decided that’s what she wanted to be called.” (After her husband, King George VI, died unexpectedly and young in 1952, Queen Elizabeth became the Queen Mother; she lived for another 50 years and held that title far longer than she held the title of Queen.)
