Michael Sheen handed back his OBE, he has revealed, as he called on the royal family to end the centuries-old practice of handing the title of Prince of Wales to the heir apparent to the English throne. The actor said he relinquished the honour so as to be able to explore the “tortured history” his native Wales shares with the English and British states in his 2017 Raymond Williams lecture without being a hypocrite. “By the time I’d finished writing that lecture, I remember sitting there going: ‘Well, I have a choice. I either don’t give this lecture and hold on to my OBE or I give this lecture and I have to give my OBE back’,” he told the Guardian columnist Owen Jones. Sheen said the two nations’ shared history still held significance in Wales, giving as an example the strength of feeling over the recent decision to name the second Severn crossing the Prince of Wales Bridge. Speaking on Jones’s personal video channel, the actor referred to the history of the royal title, which the English king Edward I created and gave to his son in 1301 as part of his subjugation of the Welsh principalities. The title has customarily, though not always, been conferred by the English monarch on his son since then. The current Prince of Wales, Prince Charles, is due to forfeit the title when he ascends the throne. At that point, Sheen said, it would be a “really meaningful and powerful gesture for that title to no longer be held in the same way as it has before, that would be an incredibly meaningful thing I think to happen”. Sheen was awarded the OBE in 2009, after being named on the new year honours list. He said he had promised not to actively publicise his decision to hand it back, adding: “I didn’t mean any disrespect but I just realised I’d be a hypocrite if I said the things I was going to say in the lecture about the nature of the relationship between Wales and the British state.” But, while he had reserved the right to be open about it if it ever came up, he said no one had ever asked him until Tuesday. He joins a list of prominent figures who have returned or refused honours, including the musicians John Lennon, Paul Weller and David Bowie; the actors Jim Broadbent, Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders; the poet Benjamin Zephaniah, the playwright Alan Bennett and the celebrity chef Nigella Lawson.