Members of the Royal Family might have chauffeurs, but they also drive their own cars around town, and Queen Elizabeth had some tongue-in-cheek vanity license plates. Former royal butler Grant Harrold explained the meaning behind her personalized plates, and it turns out the idea was a family joke.
“There is a lot of interest around royal cars, and this includes their registration plates,” Harrold says. “While they didn’t tend to have personalized plates featuring their names for security reasons, there were some really interesting personalized plates in the fleet.”
Speaking to private number plates company Regtransfers, King Charles’s former butler explains that the late Queen started using an “MYT 1” plate on the private car she used at Sandringham, adding MYT 2 and MYT 3 over the years.
Part of the late Queen’s lengthy official title was "Most High, Most Mighty, and Most Excellent Monarch, Elizabeth the Second," Harrold says. “So the MYT plate is believed to take the ‘Most Mighty’ part of this.”
The former butler says “there were a couple of rumors about the origins" of the plates. "The first, was that it was gifted to The Queen by her husband Prince Philip as a bit of a tongue-in-cheek joke," he shares.
“Prince Philip had an incredible sense of humor, and they had many private jokes in their marriage—so this is something I could see him doing," Harrold says of the late Duke of Edinburgh. "He would have found it hilarious to see the Queen driving around with it. I think the plate is a perfect insight into the private side of their marriage, filled with ‘in-jokes’ and a lot of fun."
However, Harrold says that it was never officially confirmed that the gift was from Philip. "There are also some people who believe the plate was a gift from Charles to his mother," The King's former butler shares.
MYT 1, 2 and 3 were such a part of the late Queen's life that cars with the license plates drove behind Queen Elizabeth's coffin during her funeral procession.
"Regardless of who the gift was from, the message behind it is the same—and it shows a fun, lighthearted, behind-the-scenes version of the royals that we don’t often get to see—which I think is really lovely," Harrold adds.