Does the upcoming marriage of Charles, Prince of Wales and Camilla Parker-Bowles count as a morganatic marriage? She become HRH the Princess of Wales but HRH the Duchess of Cornwall, and she won’t become Queen-consort. Doesn’t the Queen need to issue new Letters Patent to prevent her from becoming Princess or Wales? Is an act of Parliament needed to prevent her from automatically becoming Queen if/when Charles does? Is the British government going to introduce and of these?
The definition of “morganatic”, for you commoners out there, may be found at this site: http://www.wordspy.com/words/morganaticmarriage.asp
True, Camilla is getting a royal title and will have royal status, but she isn’t getting the equivalent femine form of his main title and if/when Charles becomes King she won’t become Queen-consort and will have a lower status than her husband. Morganatic spouses can be granted titles of some sort.
One of the elements of a morganatic marriage is that children of the marriage, though legitimate, do not inherit titles from the father. That’s not mentioned in the official announcements that I’ve seen, and is likely to be moot in any case, since Charles already has two legitimate sons who are in line for the throne, and would be ahead of any younger half-siblings, and Mrs Parker-Bowles at the age of 57 is unlikely to have children. Perhaps that’s why it was not mentioned …
Could someone please explain to a befuzzled Yankee why this marriage should be different in any way from any other royal marriage? I realize that Charles was married before, but regardless of one’s views on divorce, Diana is definitely dead. So if divorce is valid, then Charles is eligible to remarry, and if it’s not, then he’s a widower, and still eligible to remarry. Or is there some other obstacle?
Camilla is divorced, and her ex-husband is still alive.
Also, this hasn’t been mentioned much, but Camilla is still Roman Catholic, right? Under British law the monarch has to be a member of the Church of England (understandable, since one of his/her jobs is to function as the ceremonial head of same), and his/her spouse cannot be Catholic. Has Camilla converted, is she going to convert, or have the Powers That Be decided at last that this law is as far past its sell-by date as three-month-old milk?
AFAIK, the latter - I think it only just dawned on them that, being The Powers That Be means you can change the rules.
Good luck to them.
Sidenote: there was an interesting documentary about Diana the other day and it seems like public perception of her has shifted a bit; now that the weeping and gnashing of teeth is all over (what they hell was that about, anyway), people are starting to admit that she was actually a bit of a manipulative and neurotic bunny-boiler - some of that was no doubt a product of the whole Royal Marriage sham though, no doubt.
According to this news story from The Age, her former husband was Roman Catholic but it’s not clear what her personal religious views are:
Nope. It is illegal for the Prince of Wales to marry a Catholic. She’s CoE. Her ex was a Catholic - but it’s not normally contagious 
What is the case is that her kids will have no place in the line of sucession.
Her children by her prevous marriage would not be in the line of succession anyway, since they would not be Charles’s children. However, I’m not sure this point has come up before: I think the last English monarch or Prince of Waes to marry a widow or divorcee was Henry VIII when he married Catherine of Aragon, and she:
(1) had no children from her previous marriage; and
(2) had been married to Arthur, Prince of Wales, so if there had been any children of that marriage, they would have been in the line of succession anyway, as Arthur’s heirs.
Actually, they were talking about any children that Charles and Camilla might have together. See post #4.
Henry VIII’s sixth wife was Catherine Parr, and between then they had 10 marriages (she was 2x widowed by the time she married Henry, and married again after his death). Crikey.
Will Charles be the first royal step-parent (of legitimate children) since Edward IV?
Sorry, you’re right. So Henry VIII married childless widows twice. (Catherine Parr was 35 when she married Henry VIII, but had no children by him – her only child was from her fourth marriage! That child, Mary Seymour, probably died in early childhood, and clearly was not in line to the throne.)
By any chance is “morganatic” a reference to Morgan and Mordred?
No, it comes from the Latin “morganatica”, meaning morning gift, ultimately coming from a Germanic word cognate with the modern German “Morgen”.
Right but not the full story. It derives from Morgengibt, the formal bestowing on the morganatic bride of what she might expect in the line of titles and gifts from her husband, on the morning following the consummation of the morganatic marriage. In other words, the Herzog of Uberunterland might marry the lovely commoner, and even make her Baroness Kleinburg as a part of her Morgengibt, but she was not automatically entitled to become Herzogin Uberunterland, owing to it being contracted as a morganatic marriage, as would the Grafin von Nederschleswig, with her noble descent, if she had been the bride. Morganatica was the Latin adjective coined from Morgengibt to describe the relationship, and was occasionally used as a substantive to describe the endowment given the morganatic bride.
Thanks for the info, I thought it meant they didn’t have sex.
Actually, that’s MY preferred definition, especially when set against the alternative of imagining Charles and Camilla having sex…bet those jughandles are awfully handy…
It’s not illegal. He could marry a Roman Catholic if he wanted to (subject to the timelines in the Royal Marriages Act), and the marriage would be perfectly legal and valid. However, he would lose his place in the succession automatically, under the Act of Settlement, 1701.