If Prince George Comes Out As Gay

In My Humble Opinion
41

There would be many options, even if he’s gay as can be, rather than bi:

a) He marries a woman, has a child with her that is ascertained to be his child. They divorce and raise their child/ren in an amicable way.

b) He lives openly as a gay man who is not legally married and will pass his title to his sister and her children.

c) He marries a man. They do not have children. The title passes to his sister, Charlotte.

d) He marries a man. They have children by a surrogate that are proven to be his. The law does not allow for children born by surrogate, so the children get Duke etc titles, while the crown passes to Charlotte and her heirs.

e) He does all of d, but the law has been changed to allow children born by surrogate as long as there is proof that their biological father is the King.

42

The Captive Prince Trilogy by C. S. Pacat. Also His Royal Secret by Lilah Pace (this one is a two-part series). No idea if either series is any good.

43

Sort of true, but you’d have to get the 16 Commonwealth realms to all agree. Basically, they all have to have the same rules for the monarch and succession. While most realms have got their heads around same sex marriages, I don’t know if it’s enough that they’d accept an heir produced by surrogacy and have the necessary legislation to allow it.

44

Most actually don’t even have same-sex marriage. Only four of the sixteen do. There are more Commonwealth realms where homosexuality is illegal.

45

That would open a huge can of worms. For instance, what is the difference between a surrogate child and one born out of wedlock?

46

That’s a good point, and I imagine a gay King would encourage many of those realms to remove the British monarch as their Head of State as a result. Something that’s probably going to happen over the next few decades anyway.

47

Technically, aren’t the Crowns of the Commonwealth Realms separate entities, even though they are vested in the same individual?

For example, Canada has said that it will follow the UK’s royal succession plan, but it doesn’t have to. Canada could choose a different line of succession, choose a completely different monarch, or choose none at all (hello parliamentary republic!). I think it would essentially boil down to picking a new method of choosing the boss of the federal governor-general and the provincial lieutenant-governors. I know there’s been some talk of choosing the GG and the LGs in a different way absent a monarch.

Likewise, if some Commonwealth Realm decided that they really didn’t like a gay monarch, they could change their rules of succession without affecting any of the other Realms.

48

If Canada chose to become a parliamentary republic, why would you need a governor-general at all?

49

I think the GG and LGs compared to a Canadian-selected monarch or ceremonial head of state (I’ll abbreviate this as “CHoS”) would end up being like a vice-president position compared to the president. The GG might be less important if the CHoS was in Canada most of the time.

The advantage of the parliamentary republic seems to be that it would not mean much change in how things actually work; you just swap out the Queen for someone local, and the rest continues as it has.

50

Because the Crown continues to have reserve powers that it occasionally exercises without being based on advice from the Prime Minister. The Gov Gen, as the Crown’s representative, is the one who actually exercises the reserve power.

If we wanted to become a parliamentary republic, we would need an official who would exercise those powers. For example, the parliamentary republics of Ireland, Germany and India all have presidents who have some powers similar to the Crown’s reserve powers.

It would take unanimous consent of the federal government and all ten provincial governments to abolish the monarchy and define the office and powers of the new GovGen Mark II. Not likely to happen.

51

Didn’t the Canadian GG prorogue parliament a few years back? In retrospect, is that seen as a good decision? And was it truly made on her own or did she have to clear it with the queen?

52

The GG prorogues parliament all the time, at the advice of the PM. That time was no different, except insofar as the PM was asking to prorogue parliament to avoid a confidence vote he was likely to lose. Some people thought that, since the PM is supposed to be the person who has the support of a majority of parliament, the GG should refuse his request, i.e., his advice wasn’t binding because he didn’t command a majority. However, refusing his request would have been far more controversial than granting it was. I believe she consulted with various constitutional experts at the time, but not the Queen.

53

Yes, and the PM took full responsibility for the action. There’s no doubt it was a political call on his point, but that’s what the PM is supposed to do. His estimation was that the so-called coalition was too fragile to warrant dissolving Parliament and would fall apart on its own.

That’s exactly what happened. The prorogation was over the Christmas period, and by the time Parliament re-convened in January, the Liberals and the NDP had taken a shellacking in English-speaking Canada, over getting in bed with the sovereigntist Bloc quebecois.

If he’d tried to avoid Parliament for several months, Her Excellency might have reached a different conclusion, but six weeks over Christmas? Didn’t seem that big a deal, and the PM took full responsibility for his advice to her.

The Queen wouldn’t be involved. The GovGen is given full authority by the Letters Patent to exercise all the powers of the Queen, except the few things that are reserved for Her Majesty (namely, appointing the Gov Gen and appointing extra senators).

There was a recent example at the provincial level where the Lt Gov of BC had to exercise the reserve powers. The BC election of 2017 returned a hung parliament. The Liberals had the greatest number of seats, but not a majority. The second party, the NDP, reached a deal with the third party, the Greens. The NDP/Greens had a majority of one, but if they elected the Speaker, the House would be equally divided.

The Liberal Premier advised the Lt Gov to call a new election, arguing that the current house was unworkable. The Lt Gov refused that advice, saying that it was up to the House, and only if it proved unworkable should there be an election. The Liberal premier resigned, and the Lt Gov called on the leader of the NDP to form a government. A year on, it seems to be working, confirming the Lt Gov’s instincts to let the political process play itself out in the House.

54

That poses an interesting question: would the child of an unmarried lesbian queen be able to inherit? I know a king’s child must be legitimate to be in the line of succession (sorry, Ralph!). For most other titles, the title can only be inherited by a male heir (there are a few where females are specifically included but it’s specific to a particular earldom or whatever).

Bouncing back to the adoption question: yeah, I would assume that the throne would also require a child of the blood. Certainly other titles do, which is why Christopher Guest / Jamie Lee Curtis’s adopted kids can’t inherit the barony.

I wonder what situations are still absolute contraindications to inheriting the British throne. Certainly being a Catholic will do it (simply marrying one of those damned Papists no longer kicks you out of the line… though I guess the kids might be ineligible depending on how they’re raised). Would being a citizen of another country do it? (e.g. if Fergie’s daughters married Americans and didn’t establish their offspring as UK citizens)

55

There was a discussion about citizenship last month in another thread. I would say it’s irrelevant, because citizenship is not mentioned in the Act of Settlement as a disqualifying factor. George I was not a British subject; James I/VI was not English. Both inherited.

56

In the situation posited by the OP, it would all come down to what the PM of the day judges public and parliamentary opinion, in all of the realms still retaining the monarch as head of state, would be willing to see in the way of re-interpreting or amending existing legislation, if necessary.

At the moment I think it’s “heirs of the body” of the Electress Sophia. Norman Tebbit thought precisely this question a wizard wheeze to stymie same-sex marriage (though characteristically he framed it in terms of a queen regnant in a lesbian relationship), and it got nowhere, presumably because the answer is relatively simple. If there’s a will to change things, they will be changed.

57

George I was a British subject by virtue of the Sophia Naturalisation Act 1705, which conferred British subject status on all the descendants of Sophia of Hanover, however remote. This also the class of people who can inherit the throne.

However the Sophia Naturalisation Act was repealed in 1948, so there are now descendants of Sophia, born after 1948, who may not be British subjects. But they would be pretty far down the line of succession.