No, he was declared of age in 1437 when he was ~16 ( you might be thinking of when he was crowned king of France in 1431 ). Still young though.
Yeah, this really is just a technicality. There was no regent declared because the best-qualified figure was John of Gaunt, who was deeply unpopular at the time of Edward III’s death. So instead a group of councilors exercised real power. Richard II chafed repeatedly against this domination and began to try to assert himself after 1381 when he was a teenager, but he could not quite shake their control ( and was batted down firmly in 1387 ) until he declared his own majority in May 1389, at age 22.
The takeaway I guess is that until Parliament formalized the matter in the 20th century, the age of majority was an unsettled issue that varied depending on expediency.
There’s no way a reigning monarch would actually serve in the Armed Forces. There’s too many security issues (& bizarre legal issues) involved for that to happen. I don’t even think he’d even attend school as has been the custom for post-WWII royals; his guardians would revert back to the old ways of governesses and tutors at the palace.
BTW it’s possible in theory for someone to inherit the crown *before *they’re even born. It’s happened with peerages and with other monarchies (Spain & Persia for example) Say the Queen, Prince Charles, and Prince William all died in a freak accident last month; the Cambridges’s unborn child would’ve ascended the throne in utero, with Uncle Harry serving as regent until his 18th birthday (Kate would remain his legal guardian). And in the event of a stillbirth his reign would’ve been expunged and King Henry IX’s reign backdated to that freak accident.
It could happen. William’s job is not without risk, the Queen is 87 and Charles is 64. All three could die before 2031, and it may not even need three freak accidents.
AFAIK, only people can inherit the crown. Harry would become King immediately, and if the baby was born alive, it would immediately replace him as monarch.
At least, that’s how the law officers thought it would work when they were asked about it in the 30s. They weren’t 100% sure IIRC, and they basically said that it didn’t matter a whole lot because the magic of an unwritten constitution is the ability to make stuff up as you go along. I’ll see if I can find the documents.
Before being explicitly asked their opinion on that issue, they had said (in an opinion on whether Elizabeth could be the sole successor to her father since she had a living sister):
IOW, something will happen and it’s not clear what. (But then they were asked specifically on that issue, and they came up with the first thing I quoted, which is that the crown probably goes to the living heir until the superior heir is born, and that a regency on behalf of a reigning fetus probably wouldn’t be legal in Britain.)
Why would it just be for a male posthumous heir? If William IV had died, and Queen Adelaide was pregnant, it wouldn’t have mattered if the posthumous child was a girl or a boy - either way, the child would take precedence over Victoria, since William was Kent’s older brother.
Hmmm - the wiki article on the Regency Act 1830 states that Victoria would be displaced by either a male or female posthumous child. But the Chief Law Officers opinion quoted upthread refers to a male child.
It’s happened with one English monarch – though not his inheriting the monarchy. Henry Tudor, later to become King Henry VII, became second Earl of Richmond at birth because his father (the first Earl of Richmond) died before he was born.
Legitimacy doesn’t factor into this at all, from what I’ve read in recent days.
Whoever the actual dad is doesn’t matter, as long as the current marriage is/was legal when the child is born.
