In Belgium, for example, it was the fact that the royal family was legally required to have a surname under the Civil Code which forced King Philippe to reclaim his family's Saxon titles in 2015 after almost a century, even though he had no wish to use them.
Thank you, Tatiana Maria, for explaining that the reason for returning to the discarded "de Saxe-Cobourg" in 2015 was due to legal Belgian requirements for a surname, but I don't understand why "of Belgium" wasn't formalized instead, or something else like Windsor chosen altogether.
I am partway through a more expansive explanation of the 2015 royal decree, with proper attribution of legal authorities and recorded facts, which will hopefully clarify issues such as these. It is still incomplete, but parts 1-6 are finished:
https://www.theroyalforums.com/foru...elgian-royal-family-38975-18.html#post2321611 If anyone has questions or concerns about what I have written there, please feel free to ask.
But I will try to provide a relatively short answer to your question, Prinsara. King Philippe's intention was to
prevent "of Belgium" from being formally recognized as the royal family's surname. The reason was that the King does not hold the power to regulate the surnames of his family members. (Thus, he could not merely change family members' surnames to a brand-new name like Windsor without their consent.) If "of Belgium" were to be confirmed as the family's legal surname, there might be a hundred royal descendants all bearing and passing on the name "of Belgium" in a few generations, and the then-monarch would be powerless to put a stop to it.
Unfortunately for Philippe, the requirement in the Civil Code that all Belgians be registered with a surname made it difficult to argue that "of Belgium" was not their surname. The male-line blood princes and princesses of the royal family were entered into the civil registry as, for example, "His Royal Highness Prince Laurent Benoît Baudouin Marie, Prince of Belgium". Which implied that either Laurent was violating the law by registering himself without a surname (not an argument Philippe would wish to make, presumably), or else Laurent's surname was included within his registered identity of "His Royal Highness Prince Laurent Benoît Baudouin Marie, Prince of Belgium". Since it stretches plausibility to argue that "His Royal Highness" or "Prince" is a surname, the only reasonable inference was that "of Belgium" was his surname.
By reconfirming the members of the family as e.g. "His Royal Highness Prince Laurent Benoît Baudouin Marie, Prince of Belgium, Duke of Saxony, Prince of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha", the King opened the way to claim that "of Saxe-Coburg", rather than "of Belgium", was the segment of Laurent's civil identity which qualified as his legal surname. (I am only using Laurent as an example; the other male-line descendants of Leopold I were registered in the same manner.)
Just as a general reminder to readers, sources for the information in this post have been posted earlier in this thread.
