# Princes/ses **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [August 23, 2003, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/princes-ses/197081 "2003-08-23T02:51:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![bronto](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/d78d45/32.png) [@bronto](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bronto)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2003, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/princes-ses/197081/1 "2003-08-23T02:51:04Z")
[This column from 1976](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_137b.html) contains an inaccuracy or two. > [@](#): > > - only one British ruler, Edward III, has taken the throne without the title [Prince of Wales] since … 1282. It is true that rarely has England’s _heir apparent_ succeeded to the throne without having previously been created Prince of Wales (other exceptions according to my source are Henry VI, 1422; Edward VI, 1547; and perhaps Charles II, 1649). But there have been numerous ``British rulers’’ (not even counting kings of Scotland before 1603!) who never were heirs apparent, and thus could not be PoW - including the present queen and her father. > [@](#): > > So far, though, Captain Mark Phillips, Princess Anne’s soulmate, hasn’t seen so much as a crummy barony–the pits of the peerage. Because Anne wanted her children to live as `normally’ as reasonably possible. > [@](#): > > Princess Anne has been shortshrifted herself: as Queen Elizabeth’s eldest daughter, she’s entitled to become the Princess Royal (the female equivalent, more or less, of the Prince of Wales), but the old lady hasn’t gotten around to it yet. That had to wait for the death of the previous Princess Royal (Elizabeth’s aunt Mary) in 1965. I don’t know when it was done, but I certainly have heard Anne referred to by that style. But I looked it up in the first place to see whether an inaccuracy in the book, supplied by a Teemer, is preserved on the website (happily it is not): the claim that if a PoW dies _vita patris_ the crown goes to his brother rather than his child; in other words, that the late king’s sons all come before any of his grandsons. The nearest I can find to an example of this `rule’ is the succession in 1199 of John (fourth son of Henry II) rather than his nephew Arthur of Brittany (son of Henry’s third son Geoffrey, who had died in a tournament in 1186; Arthur was murdered in 1203). In 1760 the crown went to George III, son of the dead first son of George II, rather than to the latter’s surviving son William Augustus duke of Cumberland. In 1837 it passed to Victoria, only child of George III’s fourth son (the first three having left no legitimate children), rather than to George’s fifth son Ernest Augustus duke of Cumberland & Teviotdale - though Ernest did get the crown of Hanover, where strictly male succession was the rule. ---
**Author:** ![Ice\_Wolf](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/dfb087/32.png) [@Ice\_Wolf](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ice_Wolf)\ **Post date:** [August 23, 2003, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/princes-ses/197081/2 "2003-08-23T19:29:52Z")
Just to say, there was a fair bit of discussion on this topic back in December 2002. Some good information can be found in this thread: [Prince of Wales](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=151196) ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [August 24, 2003, 7:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/princes-ses/197081/3 "2003-08-24T07:08:16Z")
Egads, I need a flowchart to figure out what **bronto** just said.