(No link, because I don’t believe in linking to inane nonsense, or I’m pretty sure it’s nonsense)
I don’t normally follow the Royal Family, but I occasionally catch some of these videos when my wife watches them. The gist of this supposed palace upheaval is that King Charles has appointed his sister Princess Anne as Queen, replacing Camilla; and Anne somehow wants her grandniece Princess Charlotte to be Queen at some point when… I can’t even make head or tail of it.
Is such a thing even legally possible, i.e. the king unilaterally deciding that from now on it’s a sibling act? And I’d think that Prince George would want his wife to be queen when his time comes.
YouTube has always had a modicum of off-the-wall videos about ghosts, ancient aliens, Mu, Atlantis, etc., but IME that’s been marginal. For instance, if i look for documentaries about Ancient Egypt, I’ll find ten videos featuring actual professional archaeologists and historians for every one video about how aliens built the Pyramids. I expect some trash; there’s always some chaff among the grains. But this business about the royal family blows that other stuff out of the water.
The title “Queen” has two legally very different meanings. One is that of a Queen regnant, i.e. someone who holds the Crown in her own right, having inherited it from the previous monarch, and as a consequence of it being the head of state of the UK and the other Commonwealth reigns. The King has no control over this, as the line of succession is governed by Act of Parliament. This was the situation with the late Elizabeth II.
The other meaning of “Queen” is that of a courtesy title: A woman may be “Queen” by virtue of being married to the reigning King. Such a queen has no constitutional function. That’s the situation with Camilla.
Conceivably, one might make an argument that the courtesy title of “Queen” is under the royal prerogative, and that the King could decide to give that title to someone else. It would be highly unusual, and there’s no precedent I’m aware of, and it’s far-fetched, but an argument could be made.
Note that while, necessarily, there can always only be one reigning monarch at a time, the same is not true for the courtesy title of Queen. When George VI died, his widow retained her title of Queen until her death in 2002, alongside her reigning daughter, Elizabeth II.
I can remember, back in the days of Usenet groups, some mad person asserting, repeatedly, that when Queen Elizabeth died, “the British people” would rise up and demand that Camilla’s Parker Bowles sons take over the line of succession.
My job involves reading a lot of SEC filings, and sometimes around the November/December holidays we get bizarre filings claiming strange things.
A couple years ago, someone claiming to be the illegitimate granddaughter of Clint Eastwood (“Clint Windsor”)and Queen Elizabeth, and on the approval of Warren Buffet was trying to claim ownership of tens of thousands of shares of Berkshire Hathaway, etc… I don’t know if it was a prank by a bored associate, or someone genuinely confused and disturbed. There were no comments or any follow up by the SEC.
For comparison, the American courtesy title of “First Lady” is usually held by the wife of the President, but it has occasionally been held by other members of the President’s family. And I think that in those cases, it was done by unilateral decree of the President.
IIRC, there had been some amount of discussion over the last two decades as to whether Camilla would be titled as queen when the time came, which Charles settled by decreeing it in the speech he gave on TV shortly after his ascension. (I believe his precise words were “She becomes my Queen Consort”.) I recall Elizabeth saying in one of her final speeches that she hoped the people would accept Camilla as queen.
True; a Queen Consort becomes Queen Mother when she’s widowed. This is similar to how the widow of a hereditary peer becomes “The Dowager Lady (or Duchess) ______” when the next generation succeeds to the title.
I know a lot of this from reading or listening to period fiction, or just old fiction like P.G. Wodehouse. The rules regarding how “Lord” and “Lady” are used, and whether they are used with a noble title, a given name, a surname, WHOSE* given name or surname*-- all this gets quite intricate, but knowing how it all works helps to keep the characters straight in period fiction about the upper classes.
And besides all that, dukes and duchesses have their own forms of address and honorifics, and do not use “Lord” and “Lady”.
*For instance: Lord Randolph Churchill’s wife Jeanette could go by Lady Randolph, or Lady Randolph Churchill, but not Lady Churchill, and absolutely not Lady Jeanette.
Though in terms of bizarre preposterous stuff that doesn’t really seem all that. That seems like pretty bog standard monarch succession shenanigans. Totally believable except for the fact parliament took away the Monarch’s power to pull that crap centuries ago.
I mean how preposterous can it be, it doesn’t even involve lizard people?
They’ll need to claim something after they are turfed and exiled. When Constantine II was booted out of Greece, did they formally strip him of his citizenship, or did they say he, specifically, couldn’t come back despite being technically Greek?
No. Calling the wife (or widow) of a King ‘Queen’ is not just a courtesy title. Centuries of English legal opinion has taken it for granted that the wife (and, by extension, a widow) of a King has a distinct legal status, different from any other woman. That’s because, unlike all other married women in past centuries, she was acknowledged to have her own separate legal identity. She could own land in her own right, she could bring legal cases and she had her own great seal. Committing adultery with her was its own form of high treason. Gender equality for other women has removed or weakened most of those distinctions, but her special status remains.
This was explicitly recognised when Charles and Camilla married. It was officially acknowledged that, without legislation to alter the fact, she would automatically have the legal status of a Queen, even if she never used the title. In fact, that wasn’t the first time the issue had come up. After Charles and Diana had separated, it was acknowledged that the same would apply to Diana if Charles succeeded while still married. It was accepted that Diana and later Camilla would technically be ‘Queen’, even if they explicitly decided not to use the title.
It should also be pointed out that there have been plenty of shenanigans like this (if not quite as incestuous) since the glorious revolution, it just requires the monarch (or the heir) to have a faction in the parliament behind them to carry it out.
Of course that was in the days before the concept of political parties had solidified to the degree they have now, so would be fairly hard to pull of nowadays
Yes, but not as of right — they didn’t get to be regent automatically, by virtue of being the king’s wife. They were appointed as regent on particular occasions but other people could just as easily have been appointed and, on other similar occasions, were appointed.
AIUI, doesn’t British law provide that the next in line of succession acts as regent when such is necessary? That would be William, whose having gone almost completely bald at the age of 42 makes me feel better about my only having a slightly receding hairline at the same age.
