Really? Prince Randy Andy? Wasn’t he the one dating porn stars? His mother must be very proud and smiling.
Alert John Goodman!
That would require his father, Prince William, to live to between the ages of 92 and 112. Your upper bound seems a little optimistic.
so basically the regent is like a legal guardian to a child…or is it more like a parent?
as for who would be the regent, harry is the guy who wears nazi outfits, andrew is the one who banged a porn star and edward is the one who’s supposedly gay…some choice…does it have to be a royal? can’t they give it to piers morgan or someone like that
The regent’s main duty is handling the affairs of state that would normally be handled by the monarch.
A regent can also be the monarch’s guardian, but only if there is no spouse or (when the monarch is under 18 and unmarried) mother available to do that.
It would be the smartest, handsomest monarch, ever. With the worst teeth.
Sort of. Per the precedent of Edward VIII (aka the Duke of Windsor) abdication would consist of Parliament passing a bill declaring that A is no longer the monarch & , and B is now king. That bill would then given royal assent by the monarch (or regent acting in the monarch’s name). The only difference from Edward VIII is it would be the regent sending the request to Parliament instead of the monarch. The really messy part is that each of the other 15 Commonwealth Realms would either need to pass their own acts, or give assent to for the British one to apply (just like any other changes to the succession).
His grandfather is 93 and still going. It’s entirely plausible for William to live past 100 (though unlike his father & grandmother I could imagine him abdicating into retirement).
The regency automatically goes to the next adult in the line of succession as like as they’re a British subject living in the UK.
I don’t think that a minor has succeeded to the throne of England, Great Britain or the United Kingdom since 1547. Queen Victoria succeeded at the age of 18, so just managed to avoid a regency.
In 1547 Edward VI became king of England at the age of 10. In 1483 Edward V became king of England at the age of 13. Neither lived long enough to outlive their regencies, but both are counted among the monarchs of England.
A sort-of-similar situation happened in Spain some years ago. Alfonso XIII and the rest of the royal family left Spain after the proclamation of the 2nd Spanish Republic in 1931. While in exile, the eldest son Infante Alfonso, a hemophiliac, renounced his claim to the throne to marry a commoner, and the second son Infante Jaime abandoned his claim because he was deaf. Consequently, the third surviving son Infante Juan, Count of Barcelona, became the designated heir. (Infante Juan’s son returned the Bourbons to the Spanish throne, becoming King Juan Carlos. )
Among the French pretenders: Henri Count of Paris, the current head of the Orleans branch of the Bourbons, has two sons. The elder, Prince François, is mentally disabled, so his younger brother Prince Jean has been designated the heir and Dauphin of France.
The two eldest sons of Duke Robert I of Parma were also mentally challenged; the third brother acted as their regent and head of the house during their lifetimes, although by then it was a title in pretense.
His symptoms sound a lot like Dravet syndrome, which is a genetic condition that causes problems with the sodium channels to the brain. The fact that his “development” seemed to deteriorate is what makes it sound not like autism, and autistic children do not usually have seizures. People with Dravet Syndrome usually live to middle age now, because their seizures can be well-controlled with medication, but epileptics, with or without other problems frequently died young before there were medicines to control the seizures.
Dravet syndrome is autosomal dominant, and a spontaneous mutation, so there is no reason to think that the royal family will produce another child with it (if that’s what Prince John did have).
Before Dravet syndrome was identified, people often wrongly blamed the symptoms on a reaction to the Pertussis vaccine, because it was given around the time many children had their first seizure, and the developmental problems are usually not apparent in an infant, so people assumed that the seizures themselves caused the developmental problems.
Sorry for the hijack, but I wanted to point out that not all problems are genetic, and the ones that are are sometimes spontaneous.
Apparently there were exceptions. The current regency law has an exception that if Elizabeth had died before Charles reached the age of eighteen (the law was enacted in 1953 when Charles was five) Prince Philip would have become regent.
**The really messy part is that each of the other 15 Commonwealth Realms would either need to pass their own acts, or give assent to for the British one to apply (just like any other changes to the succession). **
so some tiny little nothing country that’s a british possession, such as antigua, could block the ascension? sounds like the u.n.
No. There is a convention (the British Constitution is big on conventions) that all the united monarchies should try to move in lock step. If some did not want to follow, they would not be able to stop the sovereign British Parliament deciding on a future monarch- but the Parliament might decide to try to convince all to move together.
The case of Edward V being an example of the traditional problem with making the next in line to the throne regent.
Actually I think Princess Anne would be the more likely pick. She has a reputation for being sensible and strong minded, more so than either of her brothers. I don’t think Harry would care to be regent. He would have to give up his military career and then, once George took over the reins at 18 (or possibly once he graduated from university) he (Harry) would be just another spare royal.
Eta I didn’t see the bit about the regency automatically going to the next adult in the line of succession. I still think Harry would arrange to renounce it in favour of Anne or Andrew.
It’s a little bit more than a convention. The Statute of Westminster 1931, which is yer’ actual law, says that no UK statute “shall extend or be deemed to extend, to a Dominion as part of the law of that Dominion, unless it is expressly declared in that Act that that Dominion has requested, and consented to, the enactment thereof”. Plus, the preamble to the Statute explicit draws attention to the implications this has for the succession to the crown, pointing out that it would be in accordance with the already-established convention that “any alteration in the law touching the Succession to the Throne or the Royal Style and Titles shall hereafter require the assent as well of the Parliaments of all the Dominions as of the Parliament of the United Kingdom”.
The upshot of all this is that (a) the UK Parliament could pass legislation to give effect to the abdication of the monarch, but (b) that legislation would have no effect in the other 15 Commonwealth realms unless (c) they had requested the UK legislation, and (d) the UK legislation expressly says they have requested it.
So, suppose the present Queen wishes to abdicate and the UK parliament passes a law to give effect to the abdication. You could have a number of situations:
- Realm A has already requested the UK Parliament to pass the legislation, and the UK legislation says this; the abdication is effective in Realm A.
- Realm B has already requested the UK Parliament to pass the legislation, but the UK legislation does not say this; the abdication is not effective in Realm B, and the present Queen remains the monarch there.
- Realm C has not requested the UK Parliament to pass the legislation, but indicates after the event that it assents to the abdication; the abdication is not effective in Realm C.
- Realm D has not requested the UK Parliament to pass the legislation, but afterwards passes its own legislation giving effect to the abdication; the abdication is effective in Realm C, but only from whatever date the Realm C legislation provides for.
- Realm E says “sod this”, and declares itself to be a republic.
Realms B and C can remove the lacuna by passing their own legislation to give effect to the abdication.
The risk that Realms will react as the hypothetical Realm E does is a significant control on the freedom of action of the UK government. It may only be a convention that the UK won’t legislate on the succession to the crown without the assent of the other Commonwealth Realms, but it’s the law that if they do so their legislation will have no effect in the non-assenting Realms, when then get to legislate the matter for themselves - or not, if they can’t be bothered. That gives a powerful reason for adhering to the convention. The monarch almost certainly wants to abdicate all his or her responsibilities, the UK government wants a single monarch as a symbol of Commonwealth unity, and the various realms do not want to have to waste precious parliamentary time on this kind of stuff. On the one occasion when a British monarch did abdicate, this was done without the assent of what was then the Irish Free State, which chose to resolve the situation not by passing its own act to give effect to the abdication, but by amending its Constitution to remove all references to the crown.
The Regency Acts make no provision for a Regent who doesn’t want to serve; the person identified as regent under the rules of the Act can only be bypassed under the same conditions as a regency can be declared in the first place - illness, incapacity, etc. If Harry wants to “disclaim” he needs to get an Act of Parliament passed allowing him to do so. And since he would, in the circumstances we are discussing, be the heir presumptive to the throne, his disinclination to serve as regent would be viewed as . . . disquieting.
If he could get out of it, he would have no say in who gets the gig instead. Under the present rules the next in line would be the Duke of York and, after him, Princess Beatrice of York. Of the current members of the Royal Family, Anne would only get the gig if York, Beatrice, Eugenie, Wessex, Severn and Lady Louise Mountbatten-Windsor were all dead, still minors or otherwise disqualified.
Past the ability to smile and wave, read the occasional speech and sit through formal functions being the monarch isn’t a particularly demanding position. A bit of mental slowness might actually be a desirable trait.
As I said, it is a convention. The Statute merely stops British Law being imposed on the other realms. The convention is that they try to agree it, but if Parliament appointed a new Monarch and ignored the other realms, it would still make that person the new Monarch. But convention suggests that unanimity would be sought.
Only in the UK. The old monarch would still be monarch in the other 15 Commonwealth realms. And since the whole point of passing the UK legislation is to give effect to the monarch’s wish to abdicate, and that wish presumably extends to (and would be expressed in the instrument of abdication to extend to) all sixteen Commonwealth realms, there’s little point in passing the UK legislation if the other 15 realms aren’t on board.