Light Dragoons - Colonels-in-chief

Colonels-in-chief

• HRH The Princess of Wales (1992–1996)
• HRH The Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon (1997–2002)
• HM The King of Jordan (2003–)

The Light Dragoons is one of only two regiments in the British Army to have a foreign monarch as its Colonel-in-Chief (the other being the Princess of Wales's Royal Regiment (Queen's and Royal Hampshires). HM King Abdullah served in the 13th/18th Royal Hussars, one of the antecedents of the Light Dragoons.

The dragoons were in origin soldiers trained to fight on foot, but transport themselves on horseback. In other words, they moved as cavalry but fought as infantry. During the first half of the eighteenth century British dragoons became dedicated cavalry, but because of their origins were paid less than the "regiments of horse." In the 1750s the first British regiments to be styled "light dragoons" were converted from dragoons.