What's In a Title?

 Recently, someone (who admitted she was not familiar with the British nobility), questioned what the big deal was with Dante hiding his title from Beatrice in The Inconvenient Sister and why Beatrice, as a want-to-be investigative journalist, would not have known all his titles, anyway. 

British nobility is known primarily by their highest title. In this case, a Duke is only second to the King, and therefore the title "Duke of Dorset" is Dante's highest title and the one by which everyone would have known him as. Now, when he was being announced such as for state balls (which did not occur in this book), all of his titles would have been read, but most people would only pay attention to his highest title. That said, as a Duke (second to the king), he was at the highest echelon of society. 

Beatrice is prejudiced against the upper classes. Although she was also born into nobility, she is the youngest in a stream of sisters, naïve, idealistic, and wants to make changes in the world. A baron (the title Dante introduces himself to her with) is at her same level in society because her mother is a baroness. Although her sister is now married to an earl, she would not have any benefit in society from her sister's marriage--even if her sister did not have children, the title could never be inherited by her. The only benefit is that men who want connections to her brother-in-law (and who presumably are titled) may be interested in marrying her for that connection. Beatrice, herself, has no social rank and will only get the social rank of her husband. She also has no wealth, and that is why her family wishes her to make a good marriage. 

Although she wishes to be an investigative journalist, neither she nor her boss would know or care about all the titles bestowed on Dante. None of the additional titles would help them achieve their goal of printing how stuck up he is and writing a story about how he does not care for the poor. These are the stories that would have sold the newspaper--which was extremely important in an era where they were footing the bill to print it and needed to recapture their investment. 

I'm not sure if a British journalist today would even know all the titles for nobility because there are so many. With the internet, they would, of course, be relatively easy to look up, but in the premise of the story, the characters would have to know all of Dante's titles (and by extension the titles of all the nobility they wished to target), even though all but that of "duke" are rarely used. It is a step beyond just remembering someone's middle name--and I, personally, don't know Elon Musk's, President Trump's, or Bill Gates' middle name (without looking it up)--even though I frequently write scathing blog posts on my RSS Feed news blog, and knowing someone's middle name would be an easier task than remembering all someone's titles.