The Curious Case of the Label that DIDN'T Change...
Heralder's great work regarding the Spanish Royal Family appears to be based on the encyclopaedia Proyecto Galicia : Serie de Heráldica Genealogía y Nobiliaria. T. V (LVIII). La Coruña: Hércules de Ediciones, 2011 and the Spanish Blog de Heraldica which notes that the Coats of Arms are 'attributive'. There is apparently evidence that Sofía was assigned a Label during the reign of her grandfather, King Juan Carlos, i.e. before 2014. Labels at that time were presumed to have a white background except for the Heir whose is blue. Sofía's Label, seen here, shows three red Roses, one on each Point, taken from the Coat of Arms of her mother, Queen Letizia. It appears that her elder sister, Leonor, was initially assigned a blue Label charged with a Fleur-de-Lys on each of the three Points to reflect the Bourbon Dynastic Inescutcheon, as shown below, but also to make the transition to a plain blue Label as Princess of Asturias easier. |
With the abdication of King Juan Carlos and the accession of King Felipe, Sofía becomes the first and to date only grandchild of a Spanish Sovereign in modern times who has already been assigned a Label to then become a child of a Spanish Sovereign. One would expect, therefore, that Infanta Sofía's Label would have been changed from having three Roses to having a single Rose on the central Point, especially as, at roughly the same time as the accession of Sofía's father, all Royal Labels in Spain which had been white changed to blue.
We saw in a previous Blog that Infanta Cristina's Label changed (for different reasons, of course). So why not Infanta Sofía's...?