British prince

The title is granted by the reigning monarch, who is the fount of all honours, through the issuing of letters patent as an expression of the royal will.

If a British prince has a peerage, then the princess is addressed by the feminine version of her husband's peer title; an example of this case is the wife of Prince William, who was (briefly) officially styled His Royal Highness The Duke of Cornwall and Cambridge while his wife Catherine became Her Royal Highness The Duchess of Cornwall and Cambridge, omitting both the 'prince' and 'princess' titles and their first names.

An exception was the Prince of Wales, a title conferred on the eldest son of the sovereign since the reign of King Edward I of England.

[3] In the Kingdom of Scotland, even though an honorific principality was created by King James VI, the heir-apparent was only referred to as Duke of Rothesay.

Just three weeks after the birth of her fourth grandchild but first male-line grandson, Victoria issued letters patent in 1864[4] which formally confirmed the practice of calling children and male-line grandchildren His Royal Highness with their titular dignity of Prince or Princess prefixed to their respective Christian names.