During the First World War, the British royal family played a major role in national and imperial mobilisation, but one which has been significantly overlooked in the historiography of the conflict.1 Indeed as David Cannadine has pointed out, the British monarchy in the twentieth century has yet to receive its due attention from academic historians.2 This chapter argues that monarchism was an important cultural force in the British war effort and was a key element in the wartime creation of the idea of a specifically ‘British’ home front. The king and the royal family were seen as an important wartime symbol of ‘home’. They contributed to home front cohesion through wartime work, including fundraising, visiting the wounded, and defusing working-class discontent through royal visits to munitions factories, mines and shipbuilding industries. The royal family was largely successful in dealing with the challenges that waging ‘total war’ presented for the monarchy. The role of the monarch was central to both home front political and popular culture and to national morale, while the royal family’s involvement in the war effort also illustrated the wartime tensions within the United Kingdom between tradition, modernisation and innovation. Moreover, the conflict created an important longer-term legacy for the monarchy.