All legal systems have rules about who gets property which becomes ownerless on the death of the present owner. In this context rights, titles, offices etc can be property just like land or cattle. These rules are generally referred to as the “law of succession” or something term like that.
In the common law world, there are common law rules, but these have been modified by statute. In some common law countries, they have codified the law of succession; that is to say, they have legislation which states comprehensively how property passes on the death of the current owner; in other countries, the common law rules still apply, subject to specific legislated modifications.
As regards successon to the crown in the UK, there is as you say legislation in place, but that legislation employs but does not define the concept of “heir”. So that’s a common law concept; common law rules applyt work out who is the “heir”, and then the statutory rules overlay that to change the outcome that would apply if just the common law rules apply. Most obviously, UK law on succession to the crown states that it must pass to the heir of Sophie, Electress of Hannover, being Protestant. So any non-Protestants who would inherit the crown under the standard common-law rules are simply skipped over.
For succession to more ordinary property, like land, say, common law rules still apply, but they are subject again to (different) statutory modifications. For example at common law, males would inherit in preference to femailes, and elder sons in preference to younger; statute has changed this, so that all sons and daughters rank equally. More importantly, statute has given property-owners the power to make wills under which they bequeath their land to people other than the heir or heirs at common law.
And a romantic legend was woven around Charles Edward Stuart, the last serious pretender to the inheritance of James VII/II and failed leader of the 1745 attempt to seize the throne back. If you bother about symbolism and historical overtones, “Charles” and “James” are a bit tainted.
Although Charles II became a very popular king, he was known as a rogue and a hedonist with many illegitimate offspring (but no legitimate ones). So that’s another association that might be undesirable.
The last relevant pieces of legislation, AFAIK, were the ones that removed the principle of male primogeniture and one or two other outdated rules (2013) and formalised the legal consequences of Edward VIII’s abdication (1936).
But there is no legal document that formally lists the relevant individuals in an order of succession at any one time: that’s obvious, and anyway it only has practical effect at the moment a monarch dies.
I believe that, formally speaking, the Privy Council would at that point meet as the Accession Council to acknowledge the new monarch, the proclamation ceremony would be held, Parliament would formally swear a new oath of allegiance, government would carry on, and plans for all the relevant ceremonials would swing into effect.
If you start cataloguing character flaws in previous monarchs as reasons to not have another one by that name, then they’d have stopped using Charles, Edward, George, Henry, William and the rest long ago.
And if ‘Charles’ was such a problem, then it would make it a pretty strange choice for the first name of the Queen’s first born son and heir.
It’s nto the character flaws; it’s the evocations and resonances that a particular name might have. The associaton of “Charles” in British history is not with wise, virtuous or successful monarchs, or with a particularly happy period of British history. Also it’s a name associated with a royal house that was controversially dispossed for reasons of, basically, religious bigotry. Hnce Charles might choose a different regnal name.
A number of years ago Prince Charles once mentioned that George might be a good regnal name, since his grandfather George VI was well regarded. There was an immediate and negative reaction from everyone, and he’s never mentioned it again. The idea is dead and buried.
Well I’m British, and don’t recognise your characterisation of the names Charles. Charles I was one distinct person from history, the name hasn’t been damned in his wake. And Charles II is held, when he’s discussed at all, in good regard - the monarch that oversaw the enlightenment. No one is particularly shocked or bothered that an old King drank and had affairs.
It’s a non issue in contemporary Britain.
You’d have a better argument if we’d never had Charles II, or if Charles’ first name was Henry. Or Oliver.
Which after all is how it works with any inheritance whose rules are clearly established. My will indicates that my heirs are my brothers, and if any of them predecease them his children, and if any of these predecease me their children. I don’t need to update the will every time I get another nephew, because it’s designed specifically as a set of rules and not a set of names.
25 years (1660-85). But apart from his not being able to produce a legitimate heir, Charles had a pretty good run for one of the tragedy-prone Stuarts.
The biographies I’ve read of Victoria – most recently the brick sized one by A.N. Wilson – suggest otherwise. Hers was the guiding influence here, elevating Albert almost to sainthood after his death and blaming Bertie for the typhoid that killed him. I can’t say about George VI, since that’s more than 30 years after her death, but she didn’t feel her profligate son was fit to carry on the blessed name of Albert.
Yes, I think she even had the idea that all future monarchs would be named Albert or Victoria. I think Edward VII was pretty tired of hearing his dead father’s name by 1901; they hadn’t been especially close and Victoria had run the court along the lines of a cult of personality after his death.
And the future George V hadn’t, IIRC, wanted to name any of his sons Albert (I’m not sure how he escaped that expectation for his eldest son), but was forced to give the name to his second son because he had the misfortune of being born on the anniversary of the Prince Consort’s death.
One notable difference between inheritance of property and inheritance of titles is that property can be divided among multiple heirs. When Bill Gates dies, he can leave his billions to any number of people, but when Lizzie dies, there can only be one Monarch of England.
Another difference is that we let people freely designate the heir or heirs of their property. You can leave a will that leaves everything to your next-door neighbor, completely skipping over all of your siblings, widow, children, and so on. The standard laws only kick in if someone dies intestate. But if a monarch thinks their second kid, or their niece, or their golfing buddy would be a better successor, all they can do is ask Parliament to change the inheritance laws (and will probably be told no).
Well, we know that now. After the birth of Princess Margaret in 1930, with her uncle not being anywhere close to producing an heir, the King’s private secretary was concerned enough about the possibility that Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret were co-equal in the line of succession that legal advice was sought to show that Elizabeth actually did come before Margaret. (When an English peerage descends to heirs general, women can inherit but they only inherit directly if they have no sisters, because of an old principle that all of a man’s daughters are of equal rank.)
No. Well, probably not. To start with, the only established procedure by which she can vacate the throne is by dying, in which case her displeasure and attempt to return would be miraculous. Presumably, if she wanted to abdicate, she would want to do so in a very orderly and dutiful way, and a law ratifying her abdication would surely foreclose any possibility of her return. The last time it happened, the law was explicit in stripping the exiting king of “any right, title or interest in or to the succession to the Throne.”
