I like this phrase in the Disney board dispute with DeSantis as to the terms of a contract (what the declaration is doesn’t matter here)
That declaration is valid until “21 years after the death of the last survivor of the descendants of King Charles III, king of England,” if it is deemed to violate rules against perpetuity, according to the document.
Long live the King and his descendants!
yep, standard clause to get around the rule against perpetuities - except it should be a descendent of Charles who is alive at the moment the document comes into force: a life in being and 21 years.
At the moment, the youngest is Lillibet, but if more little princes and princesses are born before Charles shuffles off this mortal coil, the time line likely gets longer.
Yes. But she can let it be known what her preference is, and people will generally respect that. She can choose to be, e.g., “Baroness” in the way that an untitled woman can choose to be “Ms.”.
Given the Windsors’ longevity and their access to top medical care, it’s likely that at least one of William and Harry’s kids will live past 100, which means this declaration could remain in effect until the 2150s, by which time Florida will hopefully have been consumed by the sea.
Or if George marries young and has a child before Charles pops off, that extends it even more.
Prince George turns 10 this year. Where does the time go? If Charles is as long-lived as his parents he’s got a good 30 years or so to extend Disney’s power grab. 
The law of diminishing returns sets in quite quickly. All the member of the class must be alive when the instrument takes effect so, however large the class, all you’re talking about is one human lifespan plus 21 years. If you have only one or two members of the class, then adding a third does reduce the possibility of unexpected termination due to premature deaths of everyone in the class but once you have (as in fact you do in this instance) seven members of the class, five of whom are young children, then adding an eighth member is unlikely to result in the duration of the trust being materially longer than it would otherwise have been.
Suppose they contract with a Jacobite…?
Unless Charles lives long enough to be a great-grandfather, as I mentioned earlier. Then the duration of the class expands.
Not really. First of all, it doesn’t matter whether Charles is dead or alive. The class is the descendants of Charles III who are living at the date the instrument takes effect. Charles himself will never be a member of that class, dead or alive. He himself may not live to be a great-grandfather, but if he has any great-grandchildren living when the instrument take effect, they will be members of the class.
But that just make the class more numerous; it doesn’t make the perpetuity period materially longer. Every member of the class has to be someone who is alive when the instrument takes effect, and the resulting period is still one human lifetime, plus 21 years.
Suppose, instead of specifying the descendants now living of Charles III (seven people), the instrument had stipulated the descendants now living of George V (a mighty tribe — eighty? a hundred?). We’d still be thinking that, statistically, using standard life expectancy tables, even the youngest member of that group is likely to be dead in 90 or 95 years. And even if you stipulated the descendants now living of Sophia, Electress of Hanover, a cast of thousands, that wouldn’t change. Maybe one of the people in that group who is now an infant might live to 96 or 97, but maybe not. Either way, it’s not really material.
62 living heirs, according to Wikipedia, with Princess Beatrice’s daughter Sienna being the youngest.
65, I think, since only those in line for succession to the throne are numbered. Descendants excluded from succession to the throne (e.g. for being Catholic) would still be counted for the purposes of a “royal lives” clause.
The table in the Wikipedia article kind of makes my point, though. Although the class contains 65 living members, only nine of them have been born in the last 10 years, and the last survivor of the class is highly likely to be one of that nine.
Nitpick: he’s not the King of England; he’s the King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Double nitpick: his title isn’t “King of England,” but he certainly is the king of England, as well as of Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales. England is still a country (for some values of “country”), and still reigned over by a king. I think William III was the last individual to bear the title “King of England.”
So Biden is the President of New Mexico, then?
Not the President of New Mexico, but he is the president of New Mexico.
I disagree. You are not king (or president) of a geographical entity. King/president is an office forming part of a political structure — a state, a kingdom, a republic. There is no kingdom of England; therefore there is no king of England. By the same reasoning there is no king of Wessex, no king of Oxfordshire, no king of the parish of St Mary Mead. There is a state of New Mexico, but no office of president forms part of that state, so Joe Biden is not the president of New Mexico, or of any county or municipality of New Mexico.
Does the use of an obsolete royal title have any effect on Disney’s contract?
They could have picked a random person from the telephone book. The UK monarch and his family are just easier to keep track of, that’s all There is no ambiguity about who they were talking about so the mistake in his title is of no consequence.
Do they even have telephone books anymore?
I’m fairly sure the “Charles III” is the important part of the clause, not the semantic quibbling about what he may or may not be king of.