Royal we
The sentence following the preamble of the award begins as follows:[1] Now, We, Edward, by the grace of God, King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and of the British Dominions beyond the Seas King, Defender of the Faith, Emperor of India, etc., etc., have arrived at the following decisions upon the questions in dispute, which have been referred to Our arbitration, ...In this quotation, underlining has been added to the words that exemplify the use of the majestic plural.
William Longchamp is credited with its introduction to England in the late 12th century, following the practice of the Chancery of Apostolic Briefs.
Popes have historically used the we as part of their formal speech, for example as used in Notre charge apostolique, Mit brennender Sorge, and Non abbiamo bisogno.
Recent important papal documents still use the majestic plural in the original Latin but are given with the singular I in their official English translations.
[5] Several prominent epithets of the Bible describe the Hebrew God in plural terms: Elohim, Adonai, and El Shaddai.
Many Christian scholars, including the post-apostolic leaders and Augustine of Hippo, have seen the use of the plural and grammatically singular verb forms as support for the doctrine of the Trinity.
[6] The earliest known use of this poetic device is somewhere in the 4th century AD, during the Byzantine period; nevertheless, scholars such as Mircea Eliade,[7] Wilhelm Gesenius,[8] and Aaron Ember[9] claim that Elohim is a form of majestic plural in the Torah.
Previously, in the Chinese cultural sphere, the use of the first-person pronoun in formal courtly language was already uncommon, with the nobility using the self-deprecating term guǎrén 寡人 ('lonely one') for self-reference, while their subjects referred to themselves as chén 臣 ('subject', original meaning 'servant' or 'slave'), with an indirect deferential reference like zúxià 足下 ('below [your] foot'), or by employing a deferential epithet (such as the adjective yú (愚), 'foolish').
