Incidentally, there’s at least one case of a person inheriting the title of Earl at birth: King Henry VII’s father (the first Earl of Richmond) died before he was born, so Henry Tudor became the second Earl of Richmond at birth, in 1456.
A real title of Prince would be for owner of Principality.
In fake a Duke is the owner of the equivalent, of a Principality, a Duchy, which may not be perfectly equivalent but close enough.
Its confusing because some of the british royals do have a duchy. They don’t really “rule” the province but its a collection of real estate in the general area. Although they don’t really own it, in that they are forbidden from just selling it and buying stocks in Google and Facebook … they just administer it and they get the small profits as a bonus for administering it properly.
So the Prince of Wales is automatically the Duke of Cornwall too, and there is a cornish Duchy that he/she gets.
But the Prince William Duke of Cambridge has no duchy, and so both titles are stating he is a land owner are both fake, just curtesy titles that the monarch says “Hey, everyone can call him Duke of Cambridge, because I SAY SO !” … These things are done in Letters Patent…
In fact the title of Duke of Cambridge was just reinvented and not, never to be, passed on through inheritance, and he gets no duchy real estate from either title.
Short answer: You are mistaken about the levels of Prince vs Duke. In fact Only the monarch and the Prince of Wales - as Duke of Cornwall and the duchy in Cornwall automatically attaches to Prince of Wales - have the duchy… Anything else is just a title.
It would be highly problematic if it was anything other than instant. It took about 17 months for the current queen to be crowned, and there were a bunch of things that needed doing in that time.
The last monarch to not be crowned was Edward VIII, who abdicated before his coronation (they kept the date and used it for his brother). But he was the king for those 11 months.
No, a hereditary dukedom is a legal status, not just a fake courtesy title. It’s highly unlikely that the Duke of Cambridge would do this, but he could be elected to the House of Lords, whereas a commoner simply cannot be.
The dukedom is actually a hereditary title. It’s not likely that it will ever be passed on that way, but if the Duke dies before becoming king, his son George will instantly become the Duke of Cambridge.
Tradition made effective by the “powers that be” - at that point, first the Privy Council (i.e., senior politicians) and then Members of Parliament making a new oath of allegiance, with the official proclamation in between. But as noted above, there have been cases where one or other of those processes was interrupted or ignored by substantive acts of power. Hard to imagine that happening with a now mostly ornamental monarchy, but not theoretically impossible.
Coronation adds a religious sanction to the new reign: and being a big public ceremony, takes a lot of preparation and organisation (imagine the complications of planning a wedding to satisfy the most distant cousins of both families and most of the population of the town, and multiply that by 100). I suppose technically, one could see the period between accession and coronation as probationary - which was one reason why the question of Edward VIII’s marriage had to be settled quickly.
It will also depend on who is doing the reporting, and on the specific situation being reported. While the press may refer to her as the Princess of Hanover, I’d bet you a lot more people would have instant recognition for Caroline of Monaco than for Caroline of Hanover.
The others I understand, but Privy Council? Does he actually sit as a member (or chair) of the Privy councel? (Do they even notify him?)
Well, the Privy Council has 600+ members, and a quorum is three; the meeting minutes indicate no more than four or five show up for regular meetings, so I doubt William attends very often. However, he, his father, and Camilla are all members and have attended at least on occasion. (William and Camilla were only appointed to the Council this past year; Charles joined decades ago.)
Part of the reason William was appointed is doubtless that the Privy Council serves as the Accession Council in the case of a demise of the Crown, and the present queen likely wants her heir’s heir to be a part of that when the time comes.
Kate Middleton did become a princess when she married Prince William; she became Princess William. It’s not Princess Catherine since she’s only a princess by marriage, not in her own right. She’s called the HRH Duchess of Cambridge because her husband is called the HRH the Duke of Cambridge.
There are more than 600 members of the Privy Council, which so far as I know never meets in full, except on the death or marriage of the sovereign. Members only attend the particular meetings to which they are summoned, and - to the extent that it functions at all - the Privy Council functions as a series of more-or-less independent committees. The most active committee is the one which formally advises the sovereign to make Orders-in-Council; it meets once or twice a month and the Privy Councillors in attendance will typically be the particular cabinet ministers to whose departmental responsibilities the Orders relate. The Cabinet, technically, is a standing committee of the Privy Council, and there’s also the Judicial Committee, whose members are all senior judges, and which functions as a court of appeal for the courts in British colonial possessions (and in some former colonial possessions which have chosen not to abolish the right of appeal to the Privy Council) and from the ecclesiastical courts of England and Wales.
Wiki:
That’s Philip, Charles, and Camilla. On the other hand:
That’s Philip, Charles, William, Harry, and Andrew.
Has he actually done anything? No idea.
The answers have illuminated far more than OP’s original question, but the above excerpt already points to the solution to OP’s dilemma. “Prince William of Wales” is the son of “Charles, Prince of Wales.” The reversal of the name and title has a big effect: William is just a Prince associated with Wales, while Charles is its nominal ruler! To change “Prince William” to “Duke William” might have been a demotion (if such a style existed in U.K.) but he became “William Duke.”
“Prince” is particularly ambiguous. Just for starters, note that German has two words translated as “Prince.” A Fürst (prince) is outranked by a Herzog (duke), while Prinz (prince) is a style applied to children and some grandchildren of a Fürst (or higher).
In the excerpted style for William, it’s the “Royal” which reveals his high rank.
The other thing that should be noted about membership of the Privy Council is that it grants the member access to State papers and confidential information ‘on Privy Council terms’. It means the Prince, as future King, is privy (heh) to many aspects of issues he may deal with when King.
It’s a nitpick but, no, he isn’t. The title “Prince of Wales” is a personal honour or dignity granted to the eldest son of the reigning monarch of England (later Great Britain, later the UK), but the holders of this title don’t have any role at all, nominal or otherwise, in the government of Wales.
The Prince of Wales is no more the nominal ruler of Wales than his brother the Duke of York is the nominal ruler of York.
It means he’s entitled to be. It doesn’t mean he gets every secret paper winging its way around Whitehall (any more than opposition politicians or retired senior people on the PC do - Privy Councillor status gives the government an option for consulting or briefing them on something top secret, usually military or to do with foreign policy, not an obligation to do so).
True, but in Prince Charles’s case, we know that he is one of the select few who are routinely sent any papers circulated to the Cabinet. (One of the odd aspects of that story is the belief that he wasn’t getting access to such stuff had sometimes been used by his critics to insinuate that his mother didn’t really trust him, yet it turns out that he had been getting access all along!)
Actually, the Act of Settlement of 1701 does that. And prior to 2011, Charles would not have become king (either immediately or by coronation) had he disqualified himself or converted to Catholicism.
He still won’t. Even as amended by the Succession to the Crown Act 2013, the Act of Settlement says Charles doesn’t become king if he “shall hold Communion with the See or Church of Rome or shall profess the Popish Religion.” What did change recently is that Camilla’s religion no longer bars Charles–the 2013 act removes “marrying a papist” as a bar to succession.
(Camilla isn’t Catholic anyway, and in the case of the present Duke of Kent the authorities have decided that the subsequent conversion of one’s spouse would not affect succession rights, so in Charles’s case this is all hypothetical. It does mean that George or Harry, for example, could marry a Catholic without being booted from the succession.)