Prince Alastair was born shortly after the break out of the First World War which had prompted strong anti-German feelings in the United Kingdom. George V eventually responded to this by changing the name of the Royal House from the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to the House of Windsor and relinquishing all German titles belonging to members of the family who were British subjects. In letters patent dated 20 November 1917, George V undertook further restructuring of the royal styles and titles by restricting the titles of Prince or Princess and the style of Royal Highness to the children of the sovereign, the children of the sovereign's sons, and the eldest living son of the eldest son of the Prince of Wales. This excluded Alastair, who was a great-grandson of a former sovereign but was not the eldest living son of the eldest son of the Prince of Wales. It further stated that all titles of "the grandchildren of the sons of any such Sovereign in the direct male line shall have the style and title enjoyed by the children of Dukes." Alastair was born ninth in the line of succession, behind the six children of George V, his grandmother and his mother. When he died, he was 12th in the line of succession. His mother and he were the first two people in line behind the descendants of George V.
Later life
Lord Macduff received his education at Bryanston and at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst. On 31 January 1935, he received a commission as a second lieutenant in the Royal Scots Greys, his father's regiment, which was based in Egypt from 1936. In 1939, Lord Macduff was promoted to lieutenant on 14 July, and was assigned to Ottawa as aide-de-camp to his kinsman the Earl of Athlone, then Governor General of Canada; his own grandfather had held the same post during the First World War. His father having died in 1938, Alastair succeeded, on his grandfather's death in 1942 to the titles Duke of Connaught and Strathearn and Earl of Sussex. However, he died in 1943 at the age of 28 "on active service" in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, in unusual circumstances. Newspapers at the time reported that he died of "natural causes." Theo Aronson, in his 1981 biography of Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, simply stated that the Duke "was found dead on the floor of his room at Rideau Hall on the morning of 26 April 1943. He had died, apparently, from hypothermia." The diaries of Sir Alan Lascelles, King George VI's private secretary, published in 2006, recorded that both the regiment and Athlone had rejected him as incompetent, and he fell out of a window when drunk and perished of hypothermia overnight. His ashes were interred at St Ninian's Chapel, Braemar, Scotland.
Titles, styles, honours and arms
Titles and styles
9 August 1914 – 20 November 1917: His Highness Prince Alastair of Connaught
16 January 1942 – 26 April 1943: His Grace The Duke of Connaught and Strathearn
Until the age of three, he was styled as Prince Alastair of Connaught. However, in 1917, he lost the title of a British prince and the style of Highness. After that, he was known as the Earl of Macduff, this being the courtesy title he had as heir to his mother's Dukedom of Fife.
Arms
In 1942, on the inheritance of his paternal grandfather's dukedom, he was granted arms, being, quarterly, first and fourth his paternal grandfather's arms, second and third his maternal grandfather's arms. Upon his death, the Dukedom of Connaught and Strathearn and the Earldom of Sussex became extinct. His first cousin, James Carnegie, succeeded as 3rd Duke of Fife and Earl of Macduff upon Princess Alexandra's death on 26 February 1959.
