8 Royals Who Renounced Their Titles

Though most royals (contemporary or otherwise) seem reluctant to surrender even an iota of their hereditarily enshrined power, a select few have voluntarily relinquished their titles and royal status. While much of royal life has been exhaustively romanticized through literature, film, and television, these eight royals prove the oppressive modus operandi of a monarchy is a far cry from the opulent, idyllic fantasies of our imagination. 

1. Princess Mako Komuro 
2. King Amadeo I of Spain 
3. Princess Christina of the Netherlands 
4. Diocletian 
5. Christina, Queen of Sweden 
6. Princess Ubolratana 
7. Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor 
8. King Edward VIII 

Princess Mako Komuro 

On October 26, 2021, Princess Mako of Akishino, daughter of Japan’s Crown Prince Fumihito and Crown Princess Kiko, surrendered her royal title per Imperial Household Law upon her marriage to lawyer Kei Komuro, a commoner. The pair met while both students at Tokyo’s International Christian University in 2012 and became engaged in December 2013, but hid their engagement from the public until 2017. Following their wedding, the couple moved to New York City, where Kei prepared to take New York’s bar exam and Mako worked in an unpaid position at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. 

Those who leave the royal family are entitled to receive a one-time lump sum, funded by taxpayers, of ¥140 million. But Mako refused the customary payment in light of her partner’s embroilment in a financial dispute with his mother’s ex-fiancé. Members of the media and public advocated for revisions to the Japanese Imperial Family’s succession laws, calling for palace officials to allow for women in the family to retain their titles upon marriage to a commoner like their male counterparts. With only three viable heirs under Imperial Household Law (one of whom is a teenager and another an octogenarian), the precarity of the imperial family’s succession could jeopardize the future of the world’s oldest hereditary monarchy. 

King Amadeo I of Spain 

Cortes Generales, Italian Prince of Savoy Amadeo, ascended the Spanish throne on November 16, 1870, and became King Amedeo I of Spain after being elected by the kingdom’s legislative body. He was the first and only King of Spain from the Italian royal House of Savoy. In the wake of Isabella II’s deposition during the Glorious Revolution, King Amadeo I’s rule was plagued by republican uprisings, political turmoil, and a growing antipathy from the Spanish public.

Amadeo abdicated the Spanish throne on February 11, 1893—less than three years into his reign. Following his abdication, he described the Spanish people as ungovernable and happily resumed his prior position as Duke of Aosta in the Italian nobility. Amadeo returned to Italy and wed his French niece, Maria Letizia Bonaparte—the daughter of Amadeo’s sister, Maria Clotilde, and Prince Napoléon-Jérôme Bonaparte, brother of French despot Napoleon I. 

Princess Christina of the Netherlands 

Princess Christina of the Netherlands—the youngest daughter of Dutch Queen Juliana and Prince Bernhard—was introduced to Cuban exile Jorge Guillermo, an author and assistant director of a Harlem daycare, while living in New York City and teaching music under an alias. Christina was ninth in line for the Dutch throne when she surrendered her claim shortly before publicly announcing her engagement to Guillermo. Despite a considerable portion of the Dutch public being scandalized by Christina marrying a Catholic, the pair wed in the Netherlands on June 28, 1975. 

The pair had three children and built a multimillion dollar fine art collection before officially divorcing in April 1996 after more than 20 years of marriage. Following their divorce, Christina relocated with the children back to New York City while Guilermo remained in Belgium to study at Catholic University in Leuven. 

Diocletian 

Diolcetian, a lowborn military officer in Emperor Numerian’s imperial guard, ascended the ranks of the Roman military and was declared Emperor of Rome in 284 CE following Numerian’s suspicious death while on military campaign in Persia. Diolcetian defeated Numerian’s elder brother, Carinus, in battle and seized control of the Western Roman Empire to become Rome’s sole ruler. He enacted considerable tax reform and widespread civil stabilization—and also sparked Rome’s last and bloodiest persecution of Christians in 303 CE after consulting with an oracle in Miletus. 

Following an extended period of illness, Diocletian ended his more than 20-year reign and abdicated the Roman throne on May 1, 305 CE. He was the first Roman emperor to voluntarily surrender power. Diocletian retired to a parochial life in his native Dalmatia where he spent his remaining days tending to his garden. Despite numerous pleas from former colleagues begging him to return to political life, Diocletian remained happily retired in his bucolic palace until his death circa 311 CE.

Christina, Queen of Sweden 

Christina became heir presumptive to the Swedish throne at just 6 years old following the death of her father, Gustaves Adolphus, during the Battle of Lutzen in November 1632. Throughout the remainder of Christina’s childhood, Sweden was governed under a Royal Regency Council headed by Axel Oxenstierna—a trusted advisor of her late father—before she was officially crowned queen in 1644 after turning 18. 

Unconventional, intelligent, and famously well read, Christina is best remembered for her stalwart patronage of the arts and her widely documented propensity for androgyny. But her staunch opposition to marriage often led to friction with members of her royal court. Amid growing acrimony for her reportedly lavish spending, Christina announced her intention to abdicate the throne and convert to Catholicism in 1654. She relinquished the throne to her cousin, Charles Gustav, and left Sweden to spend the remainder of her life in exile in Rome. 

Princess Ubolratana 

Thai Princess Ubolratana became romantically involved with a fellow student, Peter Jensen, while studying nuclear physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology—much to the chagrin of her royal relatives. After Jensen (an American) and Ubolratana wed in 1972 at just 21 years old, the Thai princess surrendered her title as required by royal law upon marrying a foreigner. Despite the disapproval of the Thai royal family, the couple had three children together and remained married for 26 years before divorcing in 1998. Ubolratana and her children remained in the U.S. until 2001. After returning to Thailand, Ubolratana quickly resumed her royal duties, representing the Thai royal family at varying state affairs and subsequently launching a public anti-drug campaign for at-risk youth. 

She sent shockwaves through the royal family once more in 2019 by announcing her candidacy for Thailand’s Prime Minister under the now-defunct, left-leaning political party the Thai Save the Nation Party. Just hours after announcing her candidacy, King Rama X—Ubolratana’s younger brother and the reigning King of Thailand—publicly lampooned her candidacy, decrying her unprecedented foray into public politics as a member of the royal family and effectively torpedoing her bid.

Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor 

Charles V served as Holy Roman Emperor from 1519 until relinquishing the title in 1556. A scion and eventual head of the powerful Austrian House of Habsburg, he inherited—alongside the distinctive Habsberg jaw, a congenital deformity common among the royal house likely stemming from generations of incestuous marriages—innumerable titles from his aristocratic family including Duke of Burgundy, Count of Flanders, and eventually Holy Roman Emperor. 

But he frequently struggled to maintain control over his hugely expansive empire. Charles’s reign was beset by looming Ottoman invasions, costly battles with France, and widespread religious reformation threatening the Habsburg progeny’s supreme control over the Empire. After more than 30 years as Holy Roman Emperor, he began dividing control over his vast territories to fellow Habsburgs beginning in 1554, leaving the Spanish Empire to his son, Philip the Prudent. Exhausted by pervasive stints of gout and years of seemingly never ending battle, Charles retired from royal life to an ascetic, monastic life at the Monastery of Yuste in 1557 before his death at the age of 58 on September 21, 1558. 

King Edward VIII 

Following the death of his father, King George V, Edward VIII was crowned King of the United Kingdom on January 20, 1936, beginning what would ultimately become an incredibly short-lived reign of less than a year. On December 11, 1936, the newly-crowned king announced his intention to abdicate the throne to marry Wallis Simpson, a twice-divorced American socialite and rumored Nazi sympathizer. The couple moved to France before embarking on a highly controversial tour across Nazi Germany culminating in a private meeting with Adolf Hitler. 

King George VI granted Edward and Simpson the titles of Duke and Duchess of Windsor, but refused to grant Wallis the designation of “Her Royal Highness.” Edward—a lifelong smoker—died from laryngeal cancer in 1972, after which Wallis retained her title as Duchess of Windsor and retired to a reclusive life at Villa Windsor in Paris.

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