Royal pets in history: the real dogs and cats of kings, queens and emperors

This guide follows the real animals of royal courts, from the cats of ancient Egypt to the corgis of Elizabeth II. Each page looks at one court or one breed and asks what the records actually say: the diaries, letters, memoirs, palace records and kennel club files written by people who knew the animals. The guide keeps to the animals' lives. Paintings of royal people belong to our guides on Indian court painting and European royal portraits.

Why real royal animals matter for a pet portrait

Purrealism paints dogs and cats in 15 royal styles, from Maharaja and Mughal Emperor to Renaissance Royal and Regency Era. Each style dresses your pet as a ruler of a real court. Those courts also had real animals, and they left a record of how rulers lived with them.

The record is often personal. A Prussian king writes to his sister that his dog has died. A Mughal emperor gets up at dawn to watch his tame cranes. A queen keeps her corgis' food prepared in the palace kitchen and feeds them herself. Reading these records makes a royal portrait of your own pet less of a costume and more of a link to a long habit: people in power loving their animals and wanting them remembered.

Royal animals through history

Ancient Egypt

Egypt's cats helped make the modern house cat. A study of ancient cat DNA in Nature Ecology and Evolution found that cats from both the Near East and Egypt contributed to the domestic cat, and that the Egyptian cat spread widely in the classical period along trade routes. The Glencairn Museum says the Egyptian word for cat was miu or miut, and that the word for dog, iwiw, may have sounded like a bark.

The Greek historian Herodotus described how Egyptians mourned their animals. When a house cat died a natural death, he wrote, the people of the house shaved their eyebrows. When a dog died, they shaved the head and the whole body. Dead cats were taken to the town of Bubastis to be embalmed and buried, and female dogs were buried in sacred coffins in their own towns. The lives of these animals are covered in cats in ancient Egypt and the dogs of the pharaohs.

China

The Royal Kennel Club says short-legged, short-faced dogs of the Pekingese type can be traced in China to the 8th century, and that the breed was a favourite in the imperial palace in Peking, from which it takes its name. When European forces sacked the Summer Palace in Peking in 1860, small palace dogs were taken to Britain. The club counts four; JSTOR Daily, reporting the work of the cultural studies scholar Sarah Cheang, says five, and that one, named Looty, was given to Queen Victoria. The story of the palace dogs and the empresses who kept them is in the Pekingese and the Chinese emperors.

Japan, Korea and Siam

In Japan, the veterinary scientist and cat historian Iwazaki Eiji tells Nippon.com that the diaries of Emperor Uda, who reigned from 887 to 931, include detailed entries on a black cat he received from his father at the age of 17. Iwazaki adds that the Pillow Book of Sei Shōnagon describes Emperor Ichijō giving his cat a court rank.

In Korea, the Korea Heritage Service tells the story of King Sukjong of Joseon and his golden cat, Geummyo, recorded in a poem by Kim Si-min. The cat was the only creature allowed to eat near the king, and it slept beside the throne on cold nights. After the king died, the cat refused food, and the queen dowager had it wrapped in silk and buried beside the road to his tomb.

In Siam, now Thailand, manuscripts called Tamra Maew, or cat treatises, described lucky and unlucky types of cat. The Public Domain Review says such treatises circulated from the Ayutthaya period, which ended in 1767, and that the surviving copies date from after that year. The Cat Fanciers' Association says the first Siamese cat in the United States was a gift to President Rutherford B. Hayes from the American consul in Bangkok in 1878. These courts share the page on royal cats of Japan, Korea and Siam.

Mughal India and the maharajas

The Mughal emperor Jahangir wrote his own memoirs, which Alexander Rogers translated into English. In them he describes a pair of tame sarus cranes that he named Laila and Majnun. When a servant told him the birds were about to mate, he hurried out at dawn to watch. The memoirs also record gifts of animals: the ruler of Iran sent him nine large European hunting dogs that he had asked for. Our page on Jahangir and his animals reads these entries closely.

India also has its own hunting breeds. In 2020 India's Prime Minister named the Mudhol hound, Rajapalayam, Chippiparai and Kombai among the country's fine native breeds, and said the Army, CISF and NSG had trained Mudhol hounds. That September, the National Bureau of Animal Genetic Resources registered the Mudhol hound, the Rajapalayam and the Chippiparai as India's first three recognised dog breeds. Their royal history is on the page about Indian royal dog breeds.

Stuart England

The diarist Samuel Pepys watched Charles II play with his dog through a council meeting on 4 September 1667, and wrote that the king was not minding the business. When Charles died in 1685, John Evelyn wrote in his diary that the king took delight in having little spaniels follow him and sleep in his bedchamber. The Royal Kennel Club says toy spaniels became well established at the courts of Charles I and Charles II. The full record is on Charles II and his spaniels.

Prussia

Frederick the Great of Prussia kept small greyhounds all his life and wrote about them. When his favourite, Biche, died at the end of 1751, he wrote to his sister Wilhelmine that he was ashamed a dog had moved him so deeply, and that it was better to feel too much than to be hard. In 2005 the Potsdamer Neueste Nachrichten reported that eleven sandstone plates with the names of his greyhounds lie on the top terrace at Sanssouci. See Frederick the Great's greyhounds.

Russia

The Royal Kennel Club calls the borzoi the wolfhound of the Imperial Russian aristocracy. In 1903 the American breeder Joseph Thomas visited the tsar's kennels at Gatchina and counted 80 grown borzois. The tsars also kept palace pets. The Saint Petersburg branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences says Peter the Great's dogs Tiran and Lisetta, and his horse, also named Lisetta, stand in the Zoological Museum in Saint Petersburg. The Tsarskoe Selo State Museum says three of Catherine the Great's Italian greyhounds are buried behind the Pyramid in the Catherine Park. Read more in the borzoi and the tsars.

Britain in the 1900s

Elizabeth II received a corgi named Susan for her 18th birthday in 1944. The Royal Kennel Club says Susan founded the line of Windsor Pembroke corgis, which ran for 15 generations. The Kennel Club links the breed's numbers to her reign: registrations peaked at nearly 9,000 puppies in 1960, seven years after her coronation. Her dogs, and the Welsh cattle dog behind them, are on the page about Elizabeth II's corgis. Queen Victoria's dogs have their own article: Queen Victoria and her dogs.

Two kinds of royal animal: the hunting pack and the palace pet

Royal animals did two different jobs, and the records treat them differently.

The first job was the hunt. Hunting dogs lived in kennels, often in large numbers, and were bred for speed, strength and courage. Joseph Thomas wrote that the Grand Duke Nicholas's hunt at Perchino kept 300 borzois in 1904, and that each rider led a team of two male borzois and a female. Jahangir asked the ruler of Iran for large hunting dogs. These animals appear in the records in groups, by breed and by number.

The second job was companionship. Palace pets lived in the ruler's rooms, and the records give them names. Frederick's greyhounds slept in his bed, according to Franz Kugler's history of his reign. Charles II's spaniels had their puppies in his bedchamber, as Evelyn complained. Peter the Great sent written messages to his officers in the collar of his dog Tiran, the Russian Academy of Sciences says. A portrait of a pet belongs to this second tradition: one named animal, loved for itself.

How to read royal pet stories

Royal animals attract good stories, and some of them are not true. A few habits help separate the record from the legend.

Look for a witness from the time. Pepys and Evelyn saw Charles II's dogs with their own eyes. Frederick's letters about Biche are in his own words. A story that first appears a century later needs more care.

Watch for the word "legend". The Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation calls the story that Frederick the Great brought the potato to Prussia a legend, although visitors still leave potatoes on his grave. The American Kennel Club calls the story of the Blenheim spot, a thumb-shaped mark on a spaniel's head, folklore. Karl Rödenbeck's chronicle of Frederick's reign says the tale of Biche jumping onto the king's desk after her capture was disputed.

Do not assume a breed name proves ownership. The Royal Kennel Club says the King Charles spaniel got its name when King Edward VII asked for the royal link to be kept, long after Charles II died. The American Kennel Club says the spaniels of Charles II's time had longer muzzles than today's King Charles spaniel.

Compare the numbers. Sources often count differently. The Royal Kennel Club says four Pekingese came to Britain from Peking in 1860, while JSTOR Daily gives five. The American Kennel Club says Perchino held 130 adult borzois at its peak, while Joseph Thomas counted 300 borzois in the Grand Duke's hunt in 1904. Where two good sources disagree, our pages give both and say who said what.

Separate the animal from its picture. A painting shows what an artist and a patron wanted to show. This guide uses paintings only as evidence that an animal existed. The art itself belongs to our painting guides.

Royal animals at a glance

Choosing a royal portrait for your own pet

The history can help you choose a style. If your dog is a spaniel, a greyhound or a corgi, you may like a European style that matches the courts where those breeds lived, such as Baroque Aristocrat, Regency Era or Victorian Noble. If you are drawn to Jahangir's court or the maharajas' hunting dogs, the nine Indian styles, from Mughal Emperor to Rajput Warrior, come from those courts. Our article on how to choose a royal portrait style goes through the styles by coat colour and character.

Royal pets also had names and titles. Ichijō's cat held a court rank, and Frederick's greyhounds had names such as Biche, Alcmène and Thisbe. The royal title maker further down this page takes your pet's name, an optional street, town or house name, a title form and whether your pet is a dog or a cat, and shows four playful titles to copy for a card or a caption, with a button for more.

The cover of this guide shows a golden retriever wearing a royal crown and a red robe, one of the portraits in the gallery. When you are ready, the portrait studio takes one clear photo of up to 5 MB and lets you choose any of the 15 styles, as a digital download or an art print.