I don’t know much about how noble titles work. I do know, however, that to a lot of people those silly things are extremely important and that a huge amount of effort has gone into recording and codifying who should be called what because their ancestors boinked each other. Most of those rules, however were codified during an era where it was simply assumed that men marry women and have kids with unambiguous, unchanging genders. Are the noble institutions adapting along with the rest of society’s growing acceptance of LGBT people? Are there clear answers to the following questions?
Can a noble title be passed to a same sex marriage partner? If a duke marries a peasant woman, she would become a duchess, right? If a duke marries a peasant man, would he become another duke?
If someone with a noble title undergoes a sex change, does the title simply change to the opposite gender equivalent? If a count undergoes a sex change, would she then be a countess? I would think yes, but don’t the male titles often trump the female titles, and would that make them actually different titles?
Would a sex change alter succession? If a king and queen have an older daughter and a younger son, the prince would be next in line, right? What if the princess underwent a sex change, would he now be next in line as the eldest prince?
I’m aware that the rules probably vary a lot from location to location. I’m not really asking about any one place in particular and would be interested in hearing where these issues have been decided, where they haven’t, and how they differ from one place to the next.
A woman who becomes a duchess upon marriage to a duke (or upon her husband inheriting a duchy) is a duchess consort - her husband’s title has not been passed to her, and she will in principle not keep the right to use it in case of a divorce; same when the sexes are reversed.
The three husbands of the recently-deceased 18th Duchess of Alba (who inherited the title from the 17th Duke) were by that token dukes consort; they were generally not referred to as Dukes without the “consort” attached to avoid the misunderstanding of someone thinking that the consort was her, but the couple would be referred to collectively as “the Dukes of Alba”.
Yes. And male titles do not trump female ones, “root” titles trump consorts. Doña Cayetana trumped every titled male in Spain except for the King and Prince.
That assumes semi-salic succession. There are locations where succesion is salic (it always must go to a male), others where it is semi-salic (males go first), and others where it’s by primogeniture. Currently in Spain we have semi-salic succession; news that the “replacement” was also going to be a girl were received with relief by many, as it cooled down the debate over type of succession. Doña Leonor has received the titles corresponding to the heir presumptive(*); if there was a number-3 in the way and it turned to be male (something which if it happens will probably take place earlier than Princess Sofía getting sex reassignment), the debate would reopen. What would happen, no idea. If Princess Sofía got sex reassignment it would be either after the Crown was lost, after breaking up with his family, or with his parents’ agreement; in the first two cases the issue becomes moot, and in the third it is to be expected that it would have been solved beforehand.
in Spain and technically speaking we don’t refer to someone as being “the heir” until they actually inherit. The news and the general public talk about Leo as her father’s heir, but the law doesn’t, and any official documents from the Crown or the Royal House will reflect this more-restrictive usage.
Answer to all is either: it depends, or in most cases no answer is available as it hasn’t come up. You’d be looking for the small exceptions. For example: Japan was debating whether to allow a reigning Empress when it looked like the only other option was for the line to die out, but the debate was shelved when a male heir was finally born in 2006.
Maybe not, even if a heterosexual couple, see: morganatic marriage. Many royals today are married to commoners, so it’s less a case of someone losing titles like Edward VIII, but titles are not passed on automatically. Camilla is not the Princess of Wales, but the less prestigious Duchess of Cornwall and Rothesay.
Many countries now pass the crown to the eldest child, regardless of sex. See this map, all the big European monarchies do this or will in the future. The exceptions appear to be the Princes of Liechtenstein and Monaco (the Prince is the highest title and is distinct . Vatican is elected and Andorra has two, one elected and one appointed. Needless to say, the younger son might not be too happy.
For #3, the succession to British noble titles have been explicitly deemed to be not affected by sex changes. The Gender Recognition Act of 2004 says that when someone acquires a new gender, that change “does not affect the descent of any peerage or dignity or title of honour.”
I don’t think it’s been explicitly dealt with for the British monarchy, but the window where that would ever matter is beginning to close, as men only come before their older sisters if they were born before October 2011.
Camilla is the Princess of Wales, but has opted to be called something else. (There were some legal consultations in the 1920s about whether Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, soon to marry the Duke of York, automatically took all of her husband styles and titles, and the answer was determined to be yes.)
In many countries which have ceased to be monarchies, rules about the devolution of titles of noblity no longer have the force of law; if people observe them, it’s by convention only. Once consequence of this is that there is no mechanism for changing the rules to address new situations, like same-sex marriage or gender reassignment. People [who care about these things] will just have to muddle along as best they can.
Obviously there are still countries, like Spain and the UK, where this is still a matter of law. In those countries, unless the law already explicity addresses these questions, we can’t say how it will address them unless and until is amended to address them. We can argue about how it ought to address them, and we can perhaps speculate about how it will address them, based on extending existing principles that apply in analogous situations, but those principles will differ from country to country.
Nava suggests, for example, that in Spain a man who marries a duchess becomes a duke consort for as long as the marriage subsists, and a woman marrying a duke likewise becomes a duchess consoort. It’s not difficult to suggest that, by analogy, a woman who marries a duchess should become a duchess consort, and a man marrying a duke should be come a duke consort.
But in the UK, a man marrying a duchess doesn’t acquire any title at all, whereas a woman marrying a duke becomes a duchess while the marriage subsists. So this makes it impossible to predict how a same-sex marriage would be handled; do we view the acquisition of the consort title as a right of the commoner marrying in (in which case the man marrying a duke should not get a consort title, because if he married a duchess he would get no title) or as a right of the ennobled person (in which case the man marrying a duke should get a consort title, because a woman marrying the duke would).
You can pick one rule or the other. Or you can not care.
In Germany, the noble title as such isn’t a real title at all but merely a part of your official, legal surname. As such, it can be acquired on by adoption, traditional marriage or same-sex marriage (which technically isn’t referred to as “marriage”, but otherwise is exactly the same).
For instance, Frédéric Prinz von Anhalt (the husband of Zsa Zsa Gabor) isn’t really a Prinz (i. e. a duke or a prince), he was adopted by an elderly noblewoman who had fallen on hard times and who needed money. “Prinz von Anhalt” is just a regular surname which happens to consist of three words. The real “Princes of Anhalt” (i. e. members of the House of Ascania) despise him.
Interesting info. I apparently knew even less about noble traditions than I thought.
Is there anything stopping from someone in Germany from just heading over to the local city hall and legally changing their name to one of those noble names?
In the UK, if a man who’s been knighted is married to a woman, his wife takes the title Lady. But if he’s married to a man, the spouse is out of luck.
Take Elton John for example. He used to be married to a woman named Renate. If he had still been married to her when he was knighted, then she would have become Lady John.
As it happened, Renate and Elton were long divorced when he ‘got his K’ (Britspeak for having a knighthood conferred) and John was in a civil partnership, later a marriage, with David Furnish. Furnish, per the newly-evolving custom, was not entitled to call himself Lady.
Just out of curiosity, is that his legal name now? If so, for how long? Or is he actually “Sir Reginald Dwight” better known by a more popular stage name? A quick skim of his enormous Wikipedia page was unfruitful.
His fellow showbiz knight, Sir Michael Caine, also had a different name at birth (Maurice Mickelwhite, if I recall correctly) but is always called by his adopted stage name. Caine is married to a woman so she gets to be Lady Caine. David Furnish, Sir Elton’s spouse, is simply Mr Furnish.
I don’t know if either Caine or John has changed his name.There is a process for that called deed poll Deed poll - Wikipedia
Under British common law you actually don’t have to take formal action to change your name; the new name is your legal identity providing you use it consistently, openly and without intent to defraud.
Well, that hasn’t happened so far. But it’s bound to sooner or later. Just as an untitled person making the change from male to female gets to call herself Ms or Mrs, I imagine a gender transitioned knight’s spouse would call herself Lady.
The male spouse of a knight has the same precedence as a knight’s lady I’m pretty sure.
But I’m neither Debrett’s nor a Pursuivant at Arms, so my opinion isn’t authoritative.
In the UK, there are a handful of hereditary peeresses in their own right. When they marry their husbands do not acquire a title. Two notable examples are:
Nina Countess of Seafield, who died, IIRC, in around 1970. She inherited the title from her father, the Earl of Seafield, who had no sons. When she married her husband did not become Earl.
Ditto Patricia Countess Mountbatten, who is still alive. Her father, the first Earl Mountbatten, had no sons. Her late husband was Lord Knatchbull. In her father’s lifetime, following her marriage she was Lady Knatchbull. After she succeeded she was known as Countess Mountbatten and her hubby continued to retain his own title. He did not become Earl Mountbatten. After her husband died, their son became Lord Knatchbull and the same son will be Earl Mountbatten on his mother’s death.
Not every British peerage is heritable by a daughter. Peerages are established through documents called letters patent. The title can only go to a girl if there is a specific provision in the letters patent allowing this. Few peerages have this provision and evry year in the UK three or four titles die out for lack of a male heir and for lack of authorisation for a woman to assume it.
If a British peer had a sex change I imagine the Queen would simply issue a Royal Warrant allowing her to use the feminine form of her title (without having any effect on the succession).
I am in the UK and used a name different to both my birth and married name (openly and without intention to defraud etc) for years. I finally got a deed poll as it was just the easiest way to get my name changed on all legal documents including my passport.
