abstract
| - Ernst August was born in Hanover, the eldest son of King Ernst August IV (1914–1987) and his first wife, Princess Ortrud of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg (1925–1980). He was christened, Ernst August Albert Paul Otto Rupprecht Oskar Berthold Friedrich-Ferdinand Christian-Ludwig. As the senior male-line descendant of George III of the United Kingdom, Ernst August is head of the House of Hanover, the surviving senior branch of the medieval House of Welf which once also ruled Ferrara and Modena in Italy. The title of Prince of Great Britain and Ireland was recognised ad personam for Ernst August's father and his father's siblings by King George V of the United Kingdom on 17 June 1914. Ernst August's grandfather and great grandfather were deprived of that title under George V's letters patent of 1917, dated 30 November, while the hereditary Dukedom of Cumberland and Teviotdale and the Earldom of Armagh, borne in 1917 by his paternal great-grandfather, were suspended under the Titles Deprivation Act 1917. However, on 29 August 1931, his grandfather Ernest Augustus, Duke of Brunswick, as head of the House of Hanover, declared the formal resumption, for himself and his dynastic descendants, of use of his former British princely title as a secondary title of pretense, which style, "Royal Prince of Great Britain and Ireland", his grandson Ernst August continued to claim. Ernst August is also a great-grandson of the last German emperor, Emperor Wilhelm II. His father's sister was Frederica of Hanover (1917–1981), sometime queen consort of the Hellenes, and he is thus a first cousin of both ex-King Constantine II and his sister, Queen Sophia, whose husband Juan Carlos I abdicated his throne in favour of their son, Felipe VI of Spain in 2014.
|