Until she got married, she had no titles in her own right, and was therefore a commoner. Her Ladyship was only a courtesy as the daughter of an Earl. Technically speaking, Prince William is a commoner - his Princeness being because of his father, rather than being his in his own right.
Wrong thread!
Heh, random, dude!
Oh poo. Rumbled before I could edit.
But if longevity is in the genes, why wouldn’t Prince Charles also live to be 100 and outlive the current Queen?
Don’t forget he once finished second in a handicap chase at Ludlow (on a horse called Allibar).
Gosh. Actually the reason I don’t think he’s fit to be King is that he committed adultery before, during and after his marriage.
What this shows is that the Royal Family are pathetic. What sort of parents let their child get bullied because there would be ‘accusations of preferential treatment’? :rolleyes:
Do you have cites for these accusations?
Camilla is of course also an adultress.
One reason that Diana is regarded with affection is that she supported charities dealing with AIDS and land mines.
Ah, we’re all loonies? :smack:
Perhaps you should consider why Elizabeth does stay on. She knows Charles wants the job.
There has of course been a Royal press campaign for decades that:
- Diana was completely unsuitable for the job
- the country is lucky to have such a wonderful person as Camilla
I don’t mind a Constitutional Monarchy. I think the Queen has done a fine job as Monarch.
However I think her family have been starved of affection (which is why they have such marital problems, for example).
I also think the Duke of Edinburgh is a racist idiot and the Duchess of Kent is a greedy opportunist.
Given that people have been immigrating here for thousands of years and that the Royal family includes Greek, Danish, German etc ancestry, I fail to see why any inhabitants can’t say what they like.
Actually it wasn’t was addressed to you (except the dork part)as I’ve always assumed you were a Brit.
It was addressed to people reading this thread who were guilty of the above,I have a good many Irish friends who are great people but hypocrites on this subject.
Thank you. I appreciate a cove who can respect quality. 
Yes. Camilla has been an issue for decades.
Woah! I hope you mean Princess Michael of Kent. The Duchess is someone else, and someone very different in character.
But will she be “Queen”? Elizabeth’s husband isn’t King - he’s a Prince, right?
Quite right. But that’s because “Queen” is an overworked word - it means both “Female ruler” and “King’s wife”. “King” never means “(ruling) Queen’s husband”. (You can say “Queen Consort” or “Queen Regnant” if you like.)
…And of course it also means “late King’s widow”, of which we’ve had a couple in the last century alone.
Which leads to another question I’ve wondered about. Supposing the King (of Spain or the UK) dies, leaving a daughter and a pregnant wife. The daughter then accedes to the throne as Queen regnant. If the queen mother then gives birth to a son, does the Queen regnant get bumped, or what?
Presumably the question is less relevant in these days of amniocentesis and ultrasound, but then again, maybe it’s more. Did this question ever come up?
England has had two Kings Consort, both on very unique circumstances, and it’s unlikely that either circumstance would ever come up again. (Great Britain only had the second instance.)
First, Felipe II of Spain, son of Holy Roman Emperor Charles V (and hence grandnephew of Catherine of Aragon) was married to his first cousin once removed, Mary I Tudor, daughter of the aforementioned Catherine and Henry VIII. As King of Spain, the Lowlands, the Hispanic realms beyond the sea in America, and God-and-historical-geographers know what else, he was a King in his own right. He greatly influenced what his wife did while on the throne, and after her death claimed the throne of England for himself under the “crown matrimonial” – a claim duly ignored by all and sundry outside his own realms. But he was King Philip, consort to Queen Mary, for 5+ years.
Then William III. This one gets tricky. If James II and his Catholic infant son are excluded from the throne – the results of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 – then the three legitimate (Protestant) heirs are, in order, Princess Mary Stuart, elder daughter of James II; Princess Anne Stuart, younger daughter of James II; and William, Prince of Orange, Stadtholder van der Nederlands, son of Charles II and James II’s sister. But Mary is married to William, and he is the leader of the alliance against Louis XIV that England’s freedom depends on. Net result was that after negotiation, it was agreed that William and Mary would ascend the throne jointly, as co-monarchs, and that Anne would resign in William’s favor her right to succeed Mary – but only as regards him – so that either Mary or William will be unquestioned monarch if either outlives the other (as William in fact did) and Anne will be heir to the survivor (a child of the couple being unlikely). But while Mary was heiress of line, William became King in his own right as her consort and as next in line after her and her sister.
But yes, “Queen” may mean either “King’s wife” or “female monarch.” For a few months in 1952-53, England had three Queens: Mary, Queen Dowager since 1936, widow of George V; Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, widow of George VI; and Elizabeth II, granddaughter of Mary and daughter of Elizabeth, the reigning monarch.
Matt, I’ve never been able to get firm confirmation – or debunking – of this rather apocryphal assertion, but upon the death of George VI, the present Queen was Heiress Presumptive, and duly acceded to the throne. But, rumour hath it, the late Queen Mother, at that point a woman in middle age, had not yet in 1952 passed through menopause, and, so it’s said, some element of the formal accession proclamations and such was postponed for a few days until Her Majesty the Queen Mother was determined not to be pregnant – since, of course, if she were bearing a son, he would become King of the U.K., Canada, Australia, etc. at birth.
George VI died the night 5th/6th February (the exact time is uncertain), but Queen Elizabeth’s proclamation of accession wasn’t read out in the UK until the 7th (although Canada managed their proclamation on the 6th). My guess for the slight delay is that Elizabeth became Queen while up a tree in Kenya, and they waited until she got back home.
That probably wouldn’t matter. The law states that one cannot marry a Catholic, not that one cannot have a Catholic wife. Charles did not marry a Catholic regardless of whether Camilla subsequently converts.
That was a truly inspired bit of prose. Thank you.
When Victoria was proclaimed Queen the proclamation said something along the lines of “barring any issue of His Majesty by Queen Adelaide”.