Under the Royal Marriages Act of 1772, a member of the Royal Family who is under 25 needs the permission of the Queen to marry; such permission must be signified under the Great Seal and declared in Council.
Royals over 25 may marry without the Queen’s permission, provided they give a year’s notice to the Council, and provided that the two Houses of Parliament did not expressly declare their disapporbtion of the proposed marriage in the interval.
Most Royals (ours and others) are inter related.
Here’s Prince Michael of Kent. You can see the Romanov in him:
so they do all have at least a tenous claim on each others titles (The Queen is Duke of Burgundy for example)
As to the boys; They will be free to marry anyone they want (Harry more so as he has no obvious royal role).
However it is extremely unlikely that Prince William would marry the girl from the Windsor chip shop, that he met in Yates Wine Lodge Windsor.
The British class system ensures he will marry a Charlotte Emily or Fiona.
Incidentally it is pushing it a bit to say that the daughter of an Earl is a commoner. The Spencers are if anything “posher” than the Windsors.
Michael of Kent’s grandmother was a Russian Grand Duchess.
Are you sure?
Not if you know the correct definition in English law of ‘commoner’.
Really? That rather depends what you (or they) mean by ‘posher’. After all, they weren’t in the early sixteenth century, when the Spencers had only just risen from obscurity to become gentlemen and when the Windsors’ ancestors had already been dukes of Brunswick for four hundred years. By the early eighteenth century, the Spencers had become earls, but an electorship of the Holy Roman Empire, never mind the British throne, easily trumped a mere English earldom. The Spencers’ principal claim to royal blood depends on an illegitimate descent from the Stuarts, from whom, of course, the Windsors can claim legitimate descent. So, if you’re talking about ancestry, the Windsors can easily look down on the Spencers. If, on the other hand, you’re talking about social class, remember that the Windsors have employed generations of Spencers as their servants.
Duke of Burgundy? I’d be most surprised.
Duke of Normandy? Yes (and Duke, not Duchess, is her legal title, since Anglo-Normandy follows the “Salic Law with blinders” – since its Duke is ipso facto monarch of the U.K. and vice versa, when a woman inherits the throne of the U.K. it assumes her to be a man for purposes of complying with the Salic Law. (Yeah, bizarre, I know.) The difference between this and, say, Marina the pretender to the Russian throne or the claim of the Aga Khan to lead all Moslems is that the Channel Islands constitute the remaining portion of the Duchy of Normandy that has not been incorporated into the French Republic.
Actually, IIRC, the line of succession does include Philip in his own right as a heir of Queen Victoria, but he is way down on the list. King Harald of Norway is quite a ways further up (he comes immediately after the Gloucesters, Kents, and Harewoods).
There was once a National Geographic article on “England’s ‘French’ Channel Islands.” It described some men giving a toast to “The Queen, our Duke, God bless her!” Sounds odd, but there it is.
As long as she isn’t a Catholic, that is.
Look, I am really not intending to hijack this, but for goodness sake, why are so many U.S. people so interested in that lot? It is just a bit sort of mystifying to me. I mean, if you want them, I reckon we could export them quite happily.
(And gold star to RussellM re. the fact that “United Kingdom” appears to be intended here, rather than “England”.)
Burgundy/Normandy? It’s all abroad and full of French. What’s the difference?
And yes the daughter of an Earl is a commoner. But not exactly common.
There are quite a few families who would consider themselves to be of higher social cachet than the windors (who are quite middle class in many ways). The Norfolks and the Grovesnors for example, and the dukes of Atholl and Beuchleuch (SP?).
On the subject of THe Queen being Duke of ahem Normandy, which is clearly a nonsense; could she not claim to be any of her other old Titles, eg Empress of India, Queen of America and so on?
And the thing about the catholics is half right. They can marry anyone they want but would have to renounce their rights to sucession (as Prince Michael did).
The only way I am ever discriminated against in England is the daily refusal to allow me to be King because of my religion. The fact that I come from a long line of Baldricks is nothing to do with it. I may sue.