How would English royal succession be affected by the posthumous birth of an heir?
For example, what if a sitting King, who as yet had no children, died while his wife, the queen, was 3 months pregnant? Would the succession still devolve to the unborn prince/ess, or would it skip to the next heir?
It would devolve to the as-yet-unborn heir(ess).
Two cases in point, both real:
In Spain, whose rules of succession are similar to Britain’s, King Alfonso XII died (was assassinated, I think) leaving a pregnant wife. She was delivered of a boy, who became Alfonso XIII from birth (he was the king deposed in 1931, and Juan Carlos’s grandfather).
There was a bit of scuttlebutt, IIRC denied by Buckingham Palace but with a source close to the Royal Family at the time, that the formal announcement of the present Queen’s accession back in 1952 was delayed because the Queen Mother had not yet reached menopause and there was the possibility that she might be pregnant – and under British law a son born posthumously to George VI would rank before Princess-becoming-Queen-Regnant Elizabeth and hence become King.
The succession would pass to the unborn child. This has happened twice in European history: in 1316, when John I, posthumous son of King Louis X, was born as King of France (but died seven days later), and in 1885, when Alfonso XIII, the posthumous son of Alfonso XII, was born as King of Spain.
There was one similar instance in English history, when Geoffrey of Brittany, son of King Henry II, died but left a pregnant wife who gave birth to Prince Arthur of Brittany. Sixteen years later, when Henry died, his younger son John usurped the throne from nephew Arthur. But the rules of hereditary primogeniture were not universally followed in that era, and this was a simple might-makes-right usurpation. Arthur’s posthumous birth was not a factor in John’s succession.
(Yes, this was Bad King John of Magna Charta fame.)
Correction, the contest between John and Arthur occurred after John’s older brother Richard the Lion Hearted died, not his father Henry. And Alfonso XII died in 1885, but Alfonso XIII wasn’t born until 1886. Other than that there was nothing wrong with my post.
If I may take this thread a little further…
… Now that we have the technology to freeze sperm and embroys for later implantation, can a childless king have his sperm frozen to insure that his “son” or “daughter” gets the throne by having the sperm implanted into a woman posthomously?
What about an actual embryo? (I.e., young widower king, has embryos from wife, but doesn’t have them implanted until after his death.)
Zev Steinhardt
No. Most (all?) European monarchies require that royal offspring be legitimate, and in this case the mother and father wouldn’t be married.
It sounds like a stretch, but I don’t suppose we’ll know until it happens!
What if they were married? The king’s widow, for example…
Zev Steinhardt
I believe - although I can’t find a source for a cite - that once someone has been officially crowned, then that is final, and the rules of succession are now only applied to their descendants. Thus, if the king’s widow became pregnant by artificial means after his death, the child would have no claim at all.
Unless it were done before the throne was occupied again…
The question was addressed in the UK during the reign of King William IV. He had no children, and his heir presumptive (i.e. the person who would succeed if he died without having any children) was Princess Victoria (who did, in the event, succeeed him). He was, however, married and could conceive a child at any time, and might therefore die leaving his widow pregnant. As there can be no vacancy in the crown (i.e. there must always be a king or queen) and as an unborn person cannot be king or queen, the view was taken that, on the death of King William, Princess Victoria would immediately succeed him but, if a posthumous child were of King William were then to be born alive, Victoria would cease to be queen and that child would succeed. This was all reflected in a Regency Act passed at the time.
They didn’t have to grapple with modern techniques of assisted reproduction, obviously!
William IV had several bastards, and he and his wife, Queen Adelaide, had three daughters, but all died as infants.
As UDS points out, the problem arises because of the ancient common law principle that the Crown never dies. This however conflicts with another ancient common law principle, namely that a posthumous child is entitled to whatever inheritance would have been due to them if they had been living at the time of their father’s death. If this particular problem ever arose, any uncertainty would doubtless be remedied by statute, almost certainly along the same lines as in the Regency Act mentioned by UDS. (I’ve tried to locate a comparable case involving a peerage - the nearest example I can find is that of the 2nd Duke of Albany who was born posthumously in 1884 but, in that case, there was no other possible claimant.)
The idea that the announcement of the present Queen’s accession was delayed in 1952 until after it was certain that her mother was not pregnant is obviously nonsense. Although it is true that the public reading of the Accession Proclamation was delayed for two days, the Accession Council had already approved it less than twelve hours after George VI had been found dead and its public reading took place as soon as the new Queen reached London. There seems general agreement that the possibility of a posthumous heir was not an issue because, then as now, the assumption was that the Queen Mother, at the age of 51, had already undergone the menopause.
The answer to the question about artificial insemination is actually very simple, as the current UK laws on artificial insemination prevent any child born after the time period traditionally used to define the legitimacy of posthumous children from inheriting anything from their father. This provision was introduced specificially to prevent inheritance disputes. Admittedly, there is some pressure, led by Diane Blood, to have this rule changed and such cases are only likely to increase in the future, but any legislation to bring about that change would doubtless make special provisions concerning successions to royal or noble titles.
APB, when I reported that business about the delay in Queen Elizabeth II’s Accession Proclamation, I did say that it was denied by spokesmen for the Crown but had been attributed to (vague, unspecified) “usually reliable sources close to the Crown.”