Corgi royal portrait: the history behind Queen Elizabeth II's corgis

Part 1

Why corgis became linked with royal portraiture

Her family's corgi history began years before Susan arrived. In 1933, King George VI brought home a Pembroke Welsh Corgi puppy named Dookie, and a second corgi, Jane, joined the family a few years later. Princess Elizabeth and her sister Margaret grew attached to the dogs early on, which set the stage for her own corgi, Susan, in 1944. Susan became so important to her that she was hidden under rugs in the carriage during Elizabeth's 1947 wedding journey with Prince Philip.

From there, Susan became the shared ancestor of nearly all the corgis the Queen owned afterward. She kept more than thirty of them over her reign, and two of her last dogs, Holly and Willow, were about the fourteenth generation descended from Susan. Because the dogs went everywhere with her, they came to feature prominently in her public image. If your own dog has a long family tree, you can picture how deep that line of descent ran for her.

Part 2

Photographs that captured royal corgis

One well-known image from the 1930s shows the young princess with Dookie, captioned at the time as a born sentimentalist. Another widely shared photograph from 1936 shows Princess Elizabeth with her sister Margaret and the family's first two corgis, Dookie and Jane. A later image from George VI's photo album shows a young Elizabeth feeding Dookie by hand from a dish held by a footman.

The corgis also turned up in bigger royal moments. One of Elizabeth's corgis, Crackers, appeared in the photograph marking her parents' silver wedding anniversary. If you share pictures of your own dog with family, you will recognize the instinct behind keeping the corgis in these milestone photographs.

Part 3

Informal images and public affection

Because they accompanied her in so many public appearances, they featured prominently in how people pictured her. Princess Diana once described the dogs around the Queen as a moving carpet. Royal expert Penny Junor has said the corgis also helped put visitors at ease, rushing ahead of the Queen into a room and breaking the ice before she arrived.

These informal glimpses, more than any single formal sitting, are probably why so many people feel they know the royal corgis. If your dog has a habit of greeting guests before you do, you already know the effect.

Part 4

How this imagery shaped the breed's popularity

The visibility of the royal corgis left a measurable mark on the breed's popularity. In 1944, the year Susan was born, Pembroke Welsh Corgi registrations jumped by 56 percent. Registrations kept climbing, reaching nearly 9,000 puppies in 1960, seven years after the Queen's coronation. Numbers later fell sharply, dropping to about 1,806 registrations twenty years after that peak.

More recent screen moments also produced spikes in registrations. Pembroke registrations rose 16 percent after the first season of The Crown aired and 47 percent after the second season. The release of the animated film The Queen's Corgi was followed by a 25 percent rise in registrations in the first quarter of that year compared with the year before. Registrations also reached a thirty-year high in 2022, the year of the Queen's Platinum Jubilee. These media moments repeatedly boosted the breed's registrations.

Part 5

Corgis in wider art and popular culture

The royal corgis eventually spread beyond photographs into other forms of imagery. The breed has appeared on coins, in statues, and on souvenir mugs tied to the royal family. Corgis also featured in a sketch alongside Daniel Craig as James Bond during the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics. They have shown up in screen productions too, including The King's Speech and The Crown, both of which the Kennel Club has linked to renewed public interest in the breed.