Cunctator said:
Wouldn’t that only be true if the King had no other male relatives (brothers, sons, nephews)?
Apparently not. Richard II and George III had living uncles when they succeeded, so it seems to be a depth-first algorithm.
"Not that there’s a whole lot of suspense–only one British ruler, Edward III, ***has taken the throne ***without the title since Edward I acquired it for the English royal family by killing the last Welsh Prince of Wales in 1282. "
This is true for very large values of one:
Richard III, Henry VII, Mary I, Elizabeth I, James I, James II, William III, Mary II, Anne, George I, William IV, Victoria, George VI, Elizabeth II.
(sorry, couldn’t help it)
Apparently, in April 2009, the average house price in Wales was £122,242. Does this help?
See this - http://www.britroyals.com/hanover.htm - George IV then William IV had no surviving descendants when they died. Victoria’s dad was the 3rd prince, but died before William. She was the only daughter.
Yet it lists surviving brothers of George and William being Ernst, Augustus and Adolphus - See? George III wasn’t that crazy! OTOH, look at the names - maybe he really was. Thank god they didn’t become kings.
I guess, yes, once you take the title it belongs to you unless you have no surviving fruit of your loins. Then it goes back up one to try for another heir, and you don’t lose your spot by being dead, like Victoria’s dad. Depth-first it is.
So Victoria was the presumptive.
Well, in her situation, no. But a woman can be the heiress apparent.
A only (or oldest) daughter to a deceased oldest son of a monarch is the heiress apparent, not presumptive. No one’s birth can displace her from her position as first in the line of succession.
Zev Steinhardt
Since there’s already a thread remarking on the point, I’ll merge RobNYNY’s thread into the earlier one.
ETA: The posts by picker and Daithi Lacha are in reference to the typo in RobNYNY’s former thread title. Resort to such wordplay should be severely pun-ished.
I’m sorry… I must have missed this post on the first reading of the thread.
Zev Steinhardt
No. Descendants of the monarch (male or female) always precede other relatives. A fourth daughter of a fourth daughter of a fourth daughter precedes a brother, uncle or nephew.
Zev Steinhardt
No. As others have noted, a monarch’s descendants, of either sex, always take precedence over collateral heirs.
The column could also be updated to recognise that Prince Andrew is now the Duke of York and Prince Edward the Earl of Wessex.
Hijack related to monarch’s reigns:
It’s my understanding, with the British monarchy, that the heir becomes the new monarch on the death or abdication of the previous monarch. So Elizabeth II became queen on February 6, 1952, the day her father Geroge VI died of cancer, not the day of her coronation.
If this is correct then she doesn’t have all that much longer to go to be the longest reigning British king or queen. The record holder is Queen Victoria, who reigned from June 20, 1837, to 22 January, 1901. To beat that Elizabeth needs to hang on until July 1, 2015. Considering she seems to be in pretty good shape for her age, that her mother lived to be over one hundred years old, and that the queen gets the best of medical care, I wonder if bets are yet being taken on this issue?
It wouldn’t surprise me, although it might strike some royalists as a bit ghoulish.
From Wikipedia:
*The Queen’s reign is longer than those of her four immediate predecessors combined (Edward VII, George V, Edward VIII, and George VI). She is the third-longest-reigning British or English monarch, the second-longest-serving current monarch of a sovereign state (after King Bhumibol of Thailand), and the oldest reigning British monarch ever.
Elizabeth could become the longest-lived British head of state (surpassing Richard Cromwell) on 29 January 2012, the longest-reigning monarch in British history (surpassing Queen Victoria) on 10 September 2015 at age 89, and the longest-reigning monarch in European history (surpassing King Louis XIV of France) on 26 May 2024, when she would be 98.*
In addition to the numerous examples of English monarchs who became Kings and Queens of England without being Prince of Wales, there is the other long line of British monarchs who ascended to their thone without being Prince of Wales: the kings and queens of Scotland. Cecil apparently does not understand that “English” and “British” are not synonyms.
Really, this column is one of the worst of Cecil’s efforts ever.
It’s extremely unlikely that, even if one of them had ascended the throne, they would have used their name. British monarchs choose what name to call themselves when their reign begins, just as Edward VIII’s brother Albert took the name George VI after Edward abdicated.
Prince Charles may well opt to be styled George VII if and when he ascends the throne, given his known fondness for George III and his grandfather George VI. (The name Charles is associated with the deposed Stuarts, another reason he may choose not to use it as his regnal name.)
One might also quibble over whether ‘the last Welsh Prince of Wales’ was the one killed in 1282. Owain Glyn Dŵr certainly thought otherwise.
But Ernst did become king.
[Spoiler]Of Hanover.
(And he kept his name, reigning as Ernst-August/Ernest Augustus.)[/Spoiler]
Well Cecil…you struck out this time…what a farrago of misinformation you gave us, fortunately corrected by those more knowledgeable than you are about British history. Any comment? Are you suitably abashed?
And their grandfather similarly took the title Edward VII instead of Albert, by which he had commonly been known.
But it seems to be a recent custom. Are there any other examples where a king chose to reign under a different name than he had used prior to becoming king? For that matter, when did the custom of having more than one baptismal name come into fashion for the British royals?
I believe she’s wearing the dress uniform of a Rear Admiral of HM Royal Navy, just one of a bewildering array of honrary military titles she holds. These include (deep breath):
Colonel-in-Chief, The King’s Royal Hussars
Colonel-in-Chief, The Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters Regiment (29/45 Foot)
Colonel-in-Chief, The Royal Corps of Signals
Colonel-in-Chief, The Royal Logistic Corps
Colonel-in-Chief, The Royal Army Veterinary Corps
Commandant-in-Chief, The First Aid Nursing Yeomanry (Princess Royal’s Volunteer Corps)
Colonel, The Blues and Royals
Royal Colonel, The Royal Scots Borderers, 1st Battalion Royal Regiment of Scotland
Royal Colonel, The 52nd Lowland Regiment, 6th Battalion Royal Regiment of Scotland
Rear Admiral and Chief Commandant for women, Royal Navy
Honorary Air Commodore, RAF Lyneham
Honorary Air Commodore, University of London Air Squadron
Royal Honorary Colonel, University of London OTC
Commodore-in-Chief, Portsmouth
“Commonwealth”
Colonel-in-Chief, of The Grey and Simcoe Foresters
Colonel-in-Chief, of the 8th Canadian Hussars (Princess Louise’s)
Colonel-in-Chief, of the Communications and Electronics Branch
Colonel-in-Chief, of the Canadian Forces Medical Service
Colonel-in-Chief, of The Royal Regina Rifles
Colonel-in-Chief, of The Royal Newfoundland Regiment
Colonel-in-Chief, of the Royal Australian Corps of Signals
Colonel-in-Chief, of the Royal New Zealand Corps of Signals
Colonel-in-Chief, of the Royal New Zealand Army Nursing Corps
Naval uniform tends to be the dress of choice for senior royals (perhaps to live up to the ‘Britannia Rules the Waves’ ditty) and traditionally senior male princes would choose the navy as their training ground (Prince Charles, Prince Andrew and Prince Phillip, plus Edward VIII, George V and VI and so on and so on).
The current crop of young princes broke this trend by joining the army, although during his military service William has done stints with the Navy and the RAF as well - I guess if you’re one day going to have troops dying in your name, it helps to be one of the boys.
Which doesn’t seem out of the question if you look at her mother. Poor Charlie.