Talk:Dowager

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In the United Kingdom, the title of "dowager" applies to . . . (an) ancestress of the present holder of the title. Come again? If Fred inherits the title Lord Blank from a cousin, Fred's mother becomes Dowager Lady Blank without ever having been the incumbent Lady Blank? Okay, that falls under the same principle as Fred's siblings' well-established right to petition for the style and precedence (Hon. or whatever) that would be theirs if their father had lived to inherit – though then it seems to me that the title could be hers even if Fred does not exist. If dad while alive was divorced from Fred's mother and remarried, I guess the subsequent wife and not Fred's mother gets the title. —Tamfang 22:25, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

Not quite. 'Ancestress' could mean any widow whose husband previously held the title. Say the first Lord Smith died, with his wife becoming 'Dowager Lady Smith' and their son and duaghter-in-law becoming 'Lord and Lady Smith'. Unfortunately the late Lord Smith was uncommonly long-lived, leading to the current Lord Smith dying soon after and the unmarried grandson of the Dowager becoming the next Lord Smith. In this case there would be *two* dowagers in the family: the grandmother would remain Dowager Lady Smith, while the mother to the current Lord would style herself Lady Smith to differentiate between the two.

Say then Lady Smith dies of a broken heart, survived by her mother-in-law the Dowager and her son the third Lord Smith alive. Lord Smith marries, has a son and heir, and dies in a plane crash. His infant child is now the fourth Lord Smith, with his great-grandmother still alive and still Dowager. Mind, one cannot be a Dowager anything unless she is a widow and her husband was a previous title-holder. So if the title passes to a cousin, Mr. Jones-Smith, his mother remains Mrs. Jones-Smith and does not become a Dowager.

Just in case someone decides to scoff at the above scenario, it has happened before (at least the first part). In 1952 there were three Queens in Britain - the Dowager Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, and current monarch Elizabeth II. --65.95.59.29 20:32, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

So (apart from the strange definition of "ancestress") you're saying that only the first of the two kinds of "Dowager" described in the article is accurate. Which is what I thought, but I was proposing a rule under which the second would be roughly accurate. —Tamfang 21:10, 23 February 2006 (UTC)