Royal adultery is only treason when a female consort does it (her lover also commits treason). This is because it could interfere with the succession by casting doubt about the paternity of the king’s heirs. Prince Phillip can impregnate all the tarts he want and not interfere with the succession. We know damn sure all of the Queen’s children popped out of her (didn’t the Home Secretary have to watch her give birth?).
Is every command from the queen legally binding?
Is disobeying a legally binding command the same as betraying the nation to others?
Is everything in England nominally owned by the Monarch?
-FrL-
This isn’t correct. It is treason for the queen consort of a king to have sexual intercourse with someone other than the king, but it’s not treason for the husband of a queen regnant to have intercourse with someone other than the queen.
The difference is that the purpose of the prohibition is to protect the royal bloodline. If the queen consort has it on with someone other than the king, and later gives birth, it may cast suspicion on the legitimacy of that child’s claim to the throne. But that’s not a possibility when the queen’s husband is rogering the chambermaid.
Treason is defined by statute, starting with the Treason Act of Edward III’s time. Ham sandwiches are not cited therein. 
More seriously, the Queen is not an absolute dictator whose word is law. First, you would have to establish that she has a legal power to give a particular order, when acting in her personal capacity; then, that the person to whom the order was given was under a legal duty to obey that order; and third that Parliament had made it an offence in those circumstances to disobey that order. I can’t think of anything that meets those requirements; maybe APB can comment.
just because her picture is on the money doesn’t mean she owns it.
No, it’s not treason. In any case, the UK no longer has the death penalty for treason, and any penalty can only be imposed by the courts after a trial, not summarily by the monarch.
No, it’s not her money personally, and probably not hers in right of the Duchy of Lancaster or of the Crown (unless the bank is owned by the Duchy or the Crown). Money in the form of notes and coins is generally owned by the bank, and not even by the people with deposits there.
No, it could probably done by an ordinary act of parliament, the only problem being that such an at would need the royal assent.
This treason thing.
I understand that treason is a crime against the state so how on earth can the rogering by either male or female be in this category?
Methinks it’s more a case of “WTF does one think ones doing, you bastard?”
Sour grapes maybe or perhaps a woman scorned and a man totally pissed off
Late I know, but glad someone picked this up.
Calling something that happened once, 350 years ago, for 11 years* a constitutional precedent is very tenuous. If there were ever such a situation again I very much doubt the current government of the day and Parliament would take out the history books and feel obliged to re-enact either the method or proceedings of Charles I’s trial and deposal.
*I’ve always wanted to do that. 
And, just to reinforce this point, the 1660 Convention Parliament placed Charles’s promise in the Declaration of Breda on a statutory basis in the Act of Indemnity and in the Act of Attainder against the Regicides. Also, the 1660 Act for the Confirmation of Judicial Proceedings explicitly excluded the proceedings of all the High Courts of Justice, the most famous of which had been the one which had tried Charles I. This might have been victors’ justice, but it is victors’ justice that is still on the statute book.
As for treason and the ham sandwich, there is one further, very obscure complication! If this happened within one of the royal palaces, the inquest would be heard by the Queen’s own coroner, the Coroner of the Household, sitting with a jury comprising senior members of the Royal Household. Which would create all the same complications that arose when the Coroner of the Household was appointed to hear the inquest into the death of Princess Diana.
Seriously, there is a hierarchy of royal commands. What the Queen can do depends on how she does it, whether it is by signing a document, authorising the use of the Great Seal, by meeting with the Privy Council or giving her assent to legislation. A verbal order from her has almost no legal authority, even if, for all sorts of reasons, people do tend to do what she says. Especially if they are being employed by her as one of her servants. Another way of thinking about this is that her powers are theoretically so extensive that the ways in which she can exercise them have developed so that everyone can be extra sure that she means what she is commanding. However, she needs no special monarchical superpowers to ask for a sandwich. So there would be no question of there being some legal loophole to justify her actions in killing a servant. But that does not mean that she could then be prosecuted.
“Rex non potest peccare”
“L’état, c’est moi.”
The king is the embodiment of the state, and since the Crown descends by hereditary principles, interfering in the royal bloodline is treason against the state. A queen who commits adultery is potentially fouling up the royal bloodline. That was a serious issue, because if there was a question about the parentage of an apparent child of the king, who stood in the line of succession, it might become the pretext for treasons, stratagems, and spoils - not to mention civil war.
This aspect of the law of treason was set out in the Treason Act of 1351, which is still in force.
In this link it quite clearly states violated.
Supposing the “guilty” party was quite willing?
I know that Henry VIII had several of his wives naffed off for tarrying with the riff-raff, Jane Seymour springs to mind.
So in this day and age what would the effect be if, for arguments sake,Liz* had had a liaison with one of her footmen?.
*I mean no disrespect towards HRH
From the Wiki article on High Treason in the United Kingdom:
No offence would have been committed, since the Treason Act doesn’t include the Queen regnant. A child of a Queen regnant is clearly within the Royal bloodline. Also, by the legal presumption of paternity of a child born during a marriage, the child would be presumed to be the child of the Duke of Edinburgh, and therefore legitimate.
[size=“1”]Her honorific is “Her Majesty”, and hence “HM”, not “HRH”.
Just a minute here.
A child of the Queen is clearly within the Royal bloodline?
Let’s assume that Phil disputes that the/any sprog is of his loins and insists on a DNA test,the test results show that he isn’t the father gasp
What then
While we’re at it, I’ve always had my doubts about Wills and Harry being Charlies kids
Yes, because Queen Elizabeth is a Queen regnant - she ascended to the throne in her own right, and is the reigning monarch, as the eldest daughter of the previous monarch. Therefore, her children are in the royal bloodline, regardless who their father was. Prince Charles is the heir apparent because he is the eldest son of Queen Elizabeth, not because he is the eldest son of Prince Philip.
But there is the issue of legitimacy, in the hypothetical we’re considering. Only legitimate children of the monarch are in the line of succession. So if Elizabeth had had a child out of wedlock prior to her marriage, that child wouldn’t have been in the line of succession. However, there is a legal presumption that any child born during the time of a marriage is the child of the husband, and therefore legitimate. I don’t know if there is any mechanism in law by which Prince Philip could insist on a paternity test.
He only had Anne Boylen and Catherine Howard beheaded. Catherine of Aragon and Anne of Cleves got off just being divorced. Jane Seymour died shortly after giving birth to the future Edward VI (Henry mourned her for 3 years and was buried next to her). Catherine Parr outlived him. Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.
yes, the queen now is not the absolute monarch that once ruled the earth… so a major crime would be looked at differently these days than it was in, say, the last time an elizabeth ruled.
as i remember she had some men disposed of under and above ground for consorting with women she did not approve of. elizabeth daughterofhenry didn’t marry but did have men court her that were held to certain standards. if they didn’t, well, things didn’t go too well with them.
the fact that most monarchies have male regents throw the weight of the law onto the wives. also “the you know beyond a doubt who the mother is” thing makes the line of decent rather clear.
i do think that if there were more reigning queens there would be more law thrown on the husband’s side.
philip would just have to take it on the chin. although he is related to the queen via queen victoria, he is quite a bit removed from the ruling line. he is not the regent, the regent’s genes trumps all.
now, the wales thing could create quite the incident. charles is the next in line, he is very high up on the ruling line as mum is regent. should his children not be his genetically this would be a very, very, big deal.
the kids would be stripped of all titles, land, and whatever else is held in the hereditary titles of charles. they would have nothing more than what they would be due under their mother’s side (remember that mum is from an old family, but as a girl and youngest girl; not in line for anything) or whoever dad turned out to be.
Just a small aside - Queen Elizabeth is Queen regnant. A regent is someone appointed by Parliament to stand in for a monarch who is unable to rule. I suspect the most likely reason for this would be in cases where the new monarch is clearly too young.
Philip is not a regent, but a consort.
sorry, i knew there was another word for it but the wee sorry american english (shorthand) dictionary i have didn’t have regnant in it. got it locked in the brain now.
You’re quite right and me, an Englishman, got it bloody wrong:smack:.