That was simply Churchill’s suggestion; as far as I know, it’s not received any official sanction.
Hasn’t it? I thought it had been agreed but Wikipedia says you are correct:
So the king or queen can number themselves however they like, but precedent is to use the higher number.
Note that the issue may arise when William becomes king, as there haven’t been as many Scottish kings named William as English/British. William III of England was William II in Scotland, and then William IV of the United Kingdom. Some Scots might make the same argument they made about Elizabeth II.
The issue doesn’t arise with Charles, as Charles I and II were kings of both England and Scotland.
Lady Davina Lewis (since this publication, she’s dropped to 28th in line for the throne), with her husband Gary Lewis. He’s Maori, the son of a maid and a sheep-shearer; they’ve got two kids now, who are immediately behind their mother in the order of succession.
For that matter, Princess Angela of Liechtenstein, whose husband is a younger son of the reigning Prince. She’s Afro-Panamanian; her son is currently 6th in line for the Liechtensteiner throne.
Obama was raised by his mother’s family, the Dunhams; his 8th-great-grandfather, Jonathan Dunham, was born in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1639/40. Yes, there were Dunham kin in the Continental Army. While Obama’s grandparents didn’t come from money particularly, they came from old-line families and were part of the solidly established middle-class; Madelyn Dunham was a vice-president at the Bank of Hawaii.
Clinton has a better claim to being from an “outsider” family, but even there his stepfather owned a Buick dealership, and his family traces back to colonial Virginia and South Carolina.
William IV of the United Kingdom (reigned 1830-37) is a different bloke from William III of England and II of Scotland (reigned 1689-1702).
The monarch at the time of the English/Scottish Union was Anne and, conveniently, there had never been a monarch named Anne before in either England or Scotland, and there has never been anothe one sense. So the question of what regnal number she might bear does not arise. She was followed by Georges I, II, III and IV and, again, there were no previous Georges in England or Scotland. So in fact it wasn’t until William IV acceded in 1830 that, for the first time, you had a monarch over whose regnal number you might argue. He was the fourth William to rule over England, the third to rule over Scotland, the second to rule over Ireland (which by then was also a part of the United Kingdom) and the first to rule over Hanover .
Despite this, there doesn’t seem to have been any argument at all in the UK. He was proclaimed as William IV, and nobody seems to have taken any objection to this either in Scotland or in Ireland.
The issue arose again when Edward VII acceded. Again, the regnal number appropriate to England was used and there seems to have been no controversy, or even discussion, about this. Likewise Edward VIII, though perhaps he wasn’t around for long enough for anyone to pay much attention to the issue. It wasn’t until the present Queen acceded that anyone made an issue of the regnal numbering.
You can interpret the practice to date as either the higher regnal number always being used, or the regnal number appropriate to England always being used. We won’t really know which of these two conventions will be preferred until a David, Robert, Alexander, Margaret etc comes to the throne of the UK.
Sorry - typo in my original post. Meant to say “then eventually there was William IV”. I appreciate he was more than a century after William III/II.
I just thought I’d pop in a bit of historical trivia that some might find interesting, which is the fact that during the Princess Elizabeth’s early childhood, no one really thought that she was destined to be Queen. She was third in line to the throne, granted, but her uncle Edward, the Prince of Wales, was still a young man and everyone naturally believed that he would one day marry, and his children would of course have precedence over everyone else in the line of succession.
On the death of his father, the rather sternly formidable George V, Edward did indeed ascend to the throne as Edward VIII. The quirk of history here is that he got entangled with one Wallis Simpson, an American adventuress who was controversial to say the least, leading to a spectacular constitutional crisis and his abdication. Though Simpson was not wholly to blame – the fact is, his heart was never in the monarchy, and as Prince of Wales he would cynically decry his royal duties as “princing” and avoid them whenever he could.
But on his abdication, he was succeeded by Prince Albert, who took the regnal name George VI, and his wife became Queen Elizabeth, the Queen consort. These were the Princess Elizabeth’s parents, and since they had no sons – another historical quirk – she was first in line and on the King’s death in 1952, she ascended the throne as Queen Elizabeth II. The Queen consort then became simply the Queen Mother, the same thing that happened to Queen Mary on the death of George V. Of course the designation Elizabeth II is with reference to the first Queen Elizabeth of Shakespeare’s day, not her mother the Queen consort.
South Africa is a parliamentary republic, not a semi-presidential republic like France. What’s quirky about it is that there is no Prime Minister; the President of South Africa is head of state & government, but he’s chosen by the National Assembly (lower house of Parliament) and responsible to it in the same way a prime minister would be. Only a few other, much smaller, countries in Africa and the South Pacific have a similar set up.
Thanks - I knew it was a bit different but didn’t know the details.
Even so, the only way a Person of Color (Colour?)* (PoC, regardless) is going to become Acceptable is through the whim of a White person. That’s still horribly, horribly racist.
*(Yes, yes, dumb term. It is, however, the only broadly-acceptable term which captures the concept.)
My point is this: America’s demographics are changing. We’ve already had one non-White President, and more PoCs are going to be coming up into the halls of power. This is likely true for women and QUILTBAG people and whatever other minority you can name. However, the UK could become otherwise entirely non-White and non-Christian and the Royal Family, which does exert (at the very least) influence on the laws and the government, would still be just as White and Anglican as it is now if the mere fiat of the Royals from here to then doesn’t change that.
This is a ludicrous rationalization - the defining feature of the people who get to “pick” is their membership in a specific family, not their skin color. Otherwise you could also claim that it’s anti-Semitic (and anti-every other religion other than CoE), anti-non-Anglophone, and anti-everything else the current royal family isn’t. To characterize this as “racism” requires an extremely blinkered interpretation of the situation.
There are royal families in many counties, and they cover most if not all races. They all have rules of succession that limit the succession to descendants.
I might be a British citizen, I might be white, and I might be CofE, but I have close to zero chance that any of my descendants might appear on the throne in the foreseeable future. Eventually, given a steady state population, ancestor collapse will almost certainly bring it about, but this is at about the time that every other British citizen will also see a descendant on the throne. For the same reason.
The forces that make it so unlikely any of my descendants appearing on the throne are the same for all British citizens, regardless of race. In this respect it is illogical to suggest that the rules of succession are in and of themselves racist. The same is true for monarchs in other countries, regardless of their race. The royal family of Tonga is no different to that of the UK in this respect.
Queen Elizabeth II is queen of Fiji - a country composed of roughly half and half indigenous Fijians, and people of Indian descent. She is also commander in chief. (Given the two military coups that overthrew governments that were appointed under her authority, there must be some very curious questions about how this works.) She performs the same role as root of power in those other Commonwealth countries that have her as their monarch.
The thing about monarch of the UK, and thus of the other countries, is that is is, in the end, a job. A very specific job, with very very strict parameters, and a job that you can lose. But you can’t apply for the job, because the laws of succession are agreed upon by all the commonwealth countries, and they currently agree on descendants of Queen Victoria. The fact that no-one can apply is what makes the position so important. You can’t be appointed, voted to it, or steal it. Nobody can sensibly covet it. You can only be born to it. You can however turn it down. Once. This means it is impossible for anyone to subvert the succession mechanism, and get someone installed as monarch - with all that risks that would go with that. A stand-off between the monarch and the PM requires that the monarch abdicate. But once they do, the succession is defined, and not under the control of the PM. This is a remarkably powerful idea.
(I used to be a firm republican until I worked through an understanding of how this all works. I still dislike the ridiculous fawning over the royals that seems to pervade the UK, especially its press, and some of the attitudes that seem to filter down about rank and class, but that is more a problem for the UK citizens, than the royal family. The trick of having the root of power vested in a hereditary monarch from another country seems, on the face of it, insane. But it has some remarkable and subtle points in its favour.)
It is something of curious misunderstanding that the UK monarch has influence over the laws and the government. In fact, if there was any family that had more strictly limited influence, it would be hard to find. Look at the furore that surrounded the revealing of letters from Prince Charles to parts of the government recently. There was serious scrutiny of them, with alarm that even the slightest pressure was being applied, and the final answer was almost laughably pathetic. Prince Charles making only meekest points in areas of almost zero importance. The entire system in the UK has evolved to provide the monarch essentially no influence over laws or government. The monarch has traditionally been briefed regularly by the PM, and is free to offer advice. But the advice can be ignored, and goes no further than the PM. It has been noted that the queen’s depth of knowledge is likely second to none, having been briefed over so many decades. Sadly that knowledge will almost certainly die with her.
She hasn’t been the Queen of Fiji since 1987. One of those coups overthrew her too.
You obviously have no idea what “racist” means. But your apparent belief that traits inhere in races, and not individuals, is a classic example of racism. You have every right to be a racist, and you can judge people by the color of their skin all you like, but it’s still offensive.
The Royal Family, like the First Family, cannot change their skin color. Suggesting that either would be improved by attempting to is the very definition of racism.
Bah! Quite correct. 
Something of a senior moment.
IIRC she’s still the Paramount Chief of Fiji and her face is still on the money.
Yes, we were at cross-purposes, but I think what we’re concerned with here is whatever it is that expresses whatever is generally (or widely enough to be considered general) held to be “legitimacy”. Call it magical thinking rather than divine, if you like. In a sense, democratic elections are a ritualised form of war for possession of territory, only we just count the people who have turned up on the battlefield for one side or the other and leave it at that; and democratic referenda on whether a territory should join or leave a larger state a ritualised form of dynastic marriage or divorce. In the end, possession is nine-tenths of the law, and everything else is just the narrative we tell ourselves, and dress up in ceremonials of one sort or another, to make ourselves feel secure and justified in our possession.
She was, but the Great Council of Chiefs was abolished in 2012 and the coins were redesigned in 2013. The holiday for her official birthday also went away around that time.
Does anyone know how frequently she corresponds with the PM’s or GG’s of the Commonwealth countries? I know she meets weekly with the UK prime minister, but how much does she keep up with Australia or Canada? Or the Falklands, for that matter?
Any idea?