Contemporary British political discourse abounds with declarations that ‘we’ won World War II, made by those not even born at the time of the event and without any first-hand military experience. Instead, such claims frequently invoke genealogical – and vicarious – connections. While the (in)authenticity of such claims has become a topic of intense public debate in recent years, scholarship in Critical Military Studies and IR has paid only scant attention to vicarious dynamics, focusing instead upon how the exclusivity of military subjectivities is maintained through contradistinction with the ‘civilian’. This thesis provides the first examination of vicarious dynamics in contemporary British war commemoration through a qualitative discourse analysis of remembrance initiatives between 2014 and 2018. It explores the motivations behind, and stakes of, vicarious identification, arguing that the social intricacies of such dynamics exceed the explanatory power of existing frameworks. Accordingly, the thesis develops scholarship on ‘militarised subjectivity’ and ‘ontological (in)security’ through the notion of ‘vicarious military subjectivity’, interpreting identifications with military ancestors as responses to ontological insecurities in late modernity. It argues that appeals to an idealised military past have been central to recent attempts to reactivate the language of patriotic obligation, providing the resources for offsetting ontological insecurities around meaning(lessness) generated by Britain’s contemporary wars and political upheavals. Ancestral experiences of total war have also been at the forefront of attempts to achieve emotional resonance, providing powerful points of personal connection with militarism for a public with declining primary military experience. Individual, organizational and collective subjects have re-engaged with military ancestors to assuage anxieties – including ‘civilian anxieties’ unleashed by the militarization of society – and to establish authentic claims to ‘vicarious military subjectivity’ which confers ‘telling rights’ about war. Finally, the thesis concludes that militarized vicarious identity promotion frames war commemoration in a way that discourages critical engagement with the past, and that vicarious military subjectivity is subject to competing impulses to maintain the exclusivity of military subjectivities and to promote vicarious identifications as a route to militarized national self-articulation.