How we style our monarch is a matter of both accuracy and history. In Coronation Year, 1953, Deeside Field Club got round the numerical problem on their monument in Braemar commemorating the raising of the Jacobite standard in 1715 by using the words "Elizabeth, Queen of Scots", as indeed Her Majesty is.
The nonsense of EIIR wasn't allowed to exist for long on the infamous postbox piloted in Waterloo Place from 1952, though curiously an EIIR pillarbox actually existed for a year or so in 1988 in Aberdeen at the foot of Anderson Drive at Haudagain roundabout. This was the same period when electric trains of the Strathclyde Passenger Transport Executive sported the numeral EIIR and the words "Royal Mail".
The numerical problem on pillarboxes has since been circumvented through the simple expedient of showing the Crown of Scotland minus any royal cipher. Royal numerical anoraks may wish to note that at least two pillarboxes showing the cipher of King Edward VIII still exist in Dowanhill, Glasgow. The sin is compounded by the crown shown being that of St Edward rather than Scotland.
Gordon Casely, Aberdeen. I have always been told that the UK monarch took the higher number if there had been previous English and Scottish monarchs with the same name. This has never happened as monarchs have avoided this by choosing a suitable English name.
Edward VIII had been known as David but took his pick from his Christian names "Edward Albert Christian George Andrew Patrick David", thus avoiding the title David II.
Maggie Jamieson, South Queensferry, West Lothian.
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