<P> The 1917 proclamation stated that the name of the Royal House and all British descendants of Victoria and Albert in the male line were to bear the name of Windsor, except for women who married into other families . </P> <P> By early 1919 the living male - line British descendants of Victoria subject to British rule were King George V, his five sons, his daughter Princess Mary, his unmarried sister Princess Victoria, his uncle Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn, his cousin Prince Arthur of Connaught, his cousin once removed Prince Alastair of Connaught, and his unmarried cousin Princess Patricia of Connaught . Prince Alastair and Princess Victoria died unmarried and childless . Princess Mary married into the Lascelles family, and Princess Patricia married Alexander Ramsay . Neither of the Princes Arthur had any further children, meaning all subsequent members of the House of Windsor descend from the sons of George V . </P> <P> Two of George V's sons, Edward VIII (later Duke of Windsor) and Prince John, had no children, so the entire present day members of the House of Windsor are descendants of the other three sons, Prince Albert, Duke of York (later George VI), Prince Henry, Duke of Gloucester, and Prince George, Duke of Kent . </P> <P> In 1947, Princess Elizabeth (now Queen Elizabeth II), heiress presumptive to King George VI, married Philip Mountbatten . He was a member of the House of Schleswig - Holstein - Sonderburg - Glücksburg, a branch of the House of Oldenburg, and had been a prince of Greece and Denmark . However, Philip, a few months before his marriage, abandoned his princely titles and adopted the surname Mountbatten, which was that of his uncle and mentor, the Earl Mountbatten of Burma, and had itself been adopted by Lord Mountbatten's father (Philip's maternal grandfather), Prince Louis of Battenberg, in 1917 . It is the literal translation of the German battenberg, which refers to Battenberg, a small town in Hesse . </P>

How did the house of windsor come into power