Do People Who Get Knighted by the Queen Get Anything for It?

this video is made possible by - lane - Lane is a one-stop shop digital identity protection - who go beyond just being an amazing password manager and provide identity protection monitoring restoration and more visit - Lane comm forward slash today I found out and apply the promo code today I found out for a 10% discount so in the video today we're answering a viewer question because Michael s asks us do people get anything when they're knighted by the Queen as we've discussed before and will no doubt talk more about in the future as a direct result of her position as sovereign of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth the Queen has a large array of powers at her disposal that are entirely unique to her of these powers is the ability to Knight a person she feels is particularly worthy of such an honor but this brings up the question what do you actually get for being knighted both today and historically to begin with its importance you first understand that there are several so called orders of niter that the Queen can appoint to a person what exactly a person did to get the honor on what their job is is usually taken into account when deciding which one they belong to for example the Queen usually appoints members of the military or civil service to the order of bath while people who do work in Foreign Relations will usually be appointed to the order of Sam Michael and st. George by far the most well known order though is the seemingly Bill and Ted named most excellent Order of the British Empire which is often shortened to simply the Order of the British Empire for this one there are no specific criteria for appointments and it's generally the order that members of the public will be appointed to that being said the Queen is under no obligation to appoint individuals to any specific order and as the fount of honour she is considered the ultimate authority in these matters however there is only one Honor noted to be given entirely at the Queen's own will this is the Royal Victorian order all other appointments typically are made at the suggestion of specific government officials or royal advisors though as mentioned the Queen can ignore any suggestions at her own discretion because you know she's the queen in addition members of the public can nominate anyone they feel is deserving of a knighthood or a specific honor by contacting the relevant Authority and providing a detailed account of that person's individual achievements for the curious it is not possible to nominate yourself for a knighted though several services exist that will petition for one on your behalf for a fee of course on the subject it's here that we are today I found out we'd like to note that neither myself nor the co-author of this piece Lee just as British Karl Smallwood a fact fiend fame have not yet been knighted despite years of tireless work getting the masses interested in learning stuff which has to be generally good for society right I mean the Queen does take suggestions and all of that just saying in any event every order of night it has several grades which are comparable to military rankings with higher grades being considered more prestigious in nature the exceptions to this being the Order of the Garter and the order of the thistle both of which only have a single grade knight or lady depending on the gender of the person being given the award it should also be noted that some grades such as being a companion in the order of bath do not allow the individual to use such accolades as sir or Dame then there's the honor knight bachelor which is basically a knighthood where the person isn't admitted to any specific order that we mentioned previously this also has a single grade of Knight as you may have surmised from that this is only bestowed upon men so this all brings us around to pretty much the only real and tangible benefit that is conferred upon someone who is given this honor and that's a title you see anyone outside of clergy members who the Queen bestows the grade of night or Dame in any of the aforementioned orders can if they so wish use the title sir or Dame or again in the case of the Order of the Garter or thistle lady and they can do this in all of their day-to-day dealings individuals named a commander member companion or left Tenon's of a specific order meanwhile may instead add the letter signifying this for example they can add OBE signifying the individual is an Officer of the Order of the British Empire or CMG signifying the individual is a Companion of the Order of Sir Michael Ince and George to the end of their name ann's if you're wondering yes foreigners can be given an honorary knighted by the Queen but they can't the title sir Dame or lady meaning they can't use the one and only tangible benefit of being knighted as with the aforementioned lesser grades they can add the letters to the end of their name if they want but something like Bill Gates KDE it just doesn't have the same ring as Bill and yes both Bill Gates and his wife Melinda have been given an honorary knighthood and a dame hurt if either of them were to become British citizens at some point it is usual for such individuals to then be able to officially use their titles with the knighthood no longer being considered just honoree on that note with the exception of a title all of the other benefits conferred by a knighthood are intangible in nature to the points that even a site dedicated to helping people receive such an award noted that the main benefit is simply a raised profile given however that a decent percentage of those knighted already have fairly high profiles this is of little benefit to those individuals this isn't keeping with historical precedence with the title of Knight throughout history being largely ceremonial in nature especially in the United Kingdom for example as noted by Royal Collection Trust the title in ancient times didn't confer any monetary benefit upon a person since anyone granted the title of Knight would equate them they expected to have the financial ability to support the honour of knighthood so that he could provide himself with arms Armour horses and the required number of armed followers to render military service to his sovereign for a minimum period yeah that said one historical advantage to being a knight is that if you were captured in battle yours in all likelihood be set up in relatively nice accommodations and then a ransoms rather than potentially slaughtered as the common folk wire although if it was obvious you had a good deal of money or powerful connections it didn't really matter if you were a knight or not this catch-and-release ransom system was pretty much par for the course for the affluent it's also worthy of explicitly mentioning that historically the title of Knight was seen as being so exclusive that nobody not even a king could be born a knight to maintain the exclusivity of the position and no doubt because of the political benefits of the change King Henry the eighth's made the ability to confer the title of Knight upon a person something that he and only he could do the same holds true today though the Queen can grant some opposition to boost a knighthood in her stead if she so wishes previous to this monarch privilege anyone of sufficient rank such as a royal commander of the army could Knight a person that they deem it worthy of it as for the act of knighting itself while historically it might include ritualistic bathing and things of this nature today it usually consists of a simple ceremony where a metal signifying rank is placed upon the awardees chest by either the Queen or a designated member of the royal family to facilitate this and make everything go as smoothly as possible prior to the award ceremony each recipient will be given a small pin to attach to their clothes from which the medal will be hung and the medals themselves will be laid out by role assistant on a fancy cushion at Buckingham Palace as per tradition those becoming a knight or Dame will also be lightly tapped on each shoulder with a sword first on the right and then on the left after which they are given said medal or badge those of lower ranks in the orders who are not allowed to use the accolades ordain they only get the medal there's no sort tapping involved as an event steeped in tradition every aspect of the knighting process has a symbolic meaning and the items associated with it are considered national treasures for example the stool people being knighted kneel unknown unsurprisingly as the kneeling stool is over a hundred years old and immaculately maintained to ensure that it remains in good condition the sword used by the Queen is similarly steeped in tradition originally being used by her father George the sixth when he served as colonel of the Scots Guards this sort is actually the Queen's personal weapon and any member of the royal family knighting a person in her stead has to use their own we should note here that contrary to what popular culture will have II believe the Queen doesn't say arise so whoever indeed she doesn't have to say anything although if she has been known to make small talk or even joke during the ceremony because she's the queen and she could do whatever the hell she wants quite literally if you want to learn more about that do check out our video on how as the Queen has combined with our video on diplomatic immunity it's truly fascinating indeed the extent of this means that she could use their sword to a lop off the head of the person being knighted and technically cheap shouldn't have any trouble getting off scot-free however if she actually did this the reality might be a little different than what the laws of the land strictly dictate it is worth noting however that this would take something of a genuine revolution as the Queen actually retains an amazing amount of power over the laws of the lands and any changes to them as well as the ability to dissolve Parliament and even a point whatever Prime Minister she would want another thing we'd like to point out is an aspect of ancient knighting processes that has sadly been lost to history and that's the slab you see at one point before being knighted a person would be expected to stand there as the person knighting them slapped them across the face sources vary on what exactly this was supposed to signify but the general hypothesis is that it was more or less a show of dominance by the person administering the slap but whatever the case to sum up a being knighted by the Queen disappointingly does not come with a fiefdom and peasants to work the lands nor many such tangible Awards indeed you don't even get a custom sword though we do know of at least one person who was knighted who went ahead and got one made anyway that would be Sir Terry Pratchett however the laws of the UK mean that he cannot carry it around in his day-to-day life despite you know being a knight so all you get is a title and a bit of added notoriety potentially providing some small intangible benefits like allowing you to get a table right away at a fancy restaurants when all the commoners have to wait in line so now if you do happen to have sir or Dame before your name you probably need identity protection more than most people and that's where dashlane enters the picture then even if you don't have a title which is probably at least 70% of people watching you need - Lane anyway - Lane is a one-stop shop digital identity protection tool that includes a VPN for all of your devices so that you can use public internet safely and anonymously they also do something called dark web monitoring which basically means they monitor the underbelly of the web for people selling your data and they'll understanding further if a service you've signed up to maybe Equifax or Sony or one of the others suffers a breach - Lane will tell you right away and alert you to other services which share that username and password so you can change the information before hackers get access to those other sites plus - Lane does what it's always done it stores your passwords it keeps your personal data secure it fills all those annoying boxes asking for payment info and passwords for you it does it all a lot of - Lane is free but there's some premium upgrades you can buy if you want to to see if those are right for you you can get a 30-day free trial and after that get 10% off using art code today I found out - leme calm /they found out so go protect yourself right now there's a link in the description below and let's get into some bonus facts while considered by most to be a great honored night oats have been turned down in the past with some sources claiming around 2% of the roughly 3,000 people singled out for a knighthood reject the honour notable people to do this include John Cleese and David Bowie reportedly turned down a knighthood twice usually the reasons for turning down a knighthood are not made public and we only really know about them because of a Freedom of Information request that the BBC filed a few years ago and now for another bonus fact a knighthood can be revoked or and nulls at the Queen's discretion if the person in question does something decidedly dishonorable and unbecoming of a knight a notable example of this being Anthony Blunt who served as the Queen's art advisor until it was revealed that he was actually a Soviet spy and now for another bonus fact ed Sheeran was injured by Princess Beatrice after she attempted to jokingly knight in with a sword at the behest of singer James Blunt at a party apparently the princess does this all the time for party goers with her father Prince Andrew ceremonial sword though ed Sheeran is the first person that she's injured doing so so I really hope you found that video interesting if you did hit that thumbs up button don't forget to subscribe don't forget to check out - Lane link below and as always thank you for watching [Music]

Channel: Today I Found Out

Views: 968,620

Rating: 4.8953581 out of 5

Keywords: today i found out, tifovidz12, tifo, awesome, facts, didn't know, British Orders of Knighthood, How to get a Knighthood, How Does One Become A Knight?, British Empire, British Knighthood Honors, Knighthood Honors, Knight facts, perks of being a Knight

Id: vwIl-yHVFlY

Length: 12min 27sec (747 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 20 2018