- published: 05 Oct 2015
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Queen mother is a title or position reserved for a widowed queen consort (a queen dowager) whose son or daughter from that marriage is the reigning monarch. The term has been used in English since at least 1577. It arises in hereditary monarchies in Europe, and is also used to describe a number of similar yet distinct monarchical concepts in non-European cultures around the World.
A queen consort, as a king's wife, has an important royal position but does not normally have any rights to succeed a king as monarch after his death.
The queen consort's eldest son (or daughter, if there is no son or if the kingdom practises absolute primogeniture) would normally be crowned as successor upon the king's death, often leaving the new monarch's mother still alive, but no longer holding any official position. A new king, of course, might already be married, or marry subsequently, and would have his own queen consort. A daughter who succeeded would be a queen regnant and normally called simply "the Queen", so a confusion of titles could result.