So discounting the Prince of Wales/Duchess of Cornwall & Rothsay/Duchess of York re: the heir presumptive v. apparent distinction the fact still remains that George VI could have created Royal duchies for his two girls like he did for his brother. So why not Elizabeth, Duchess of Clarence and Margaret, Duchess of Cumberland?
I would think that being born Royal Princesses as granddaughters of George V is somehow different than suddenly being heir apparent #1 and #2 and that a peerage could have been created to denote the change.
Because in all likelyhood their husbands would be made peers on or shortly before their wedding days and the princess would automatically take the feminine forms. Which is what happened (thought there was a bit of delay with Princess Margaret’s husband and he wasn’t made an HRH).
Well, it would have been possible that Queen Elizabeth died before King George VI, and that the King remarried and had a son with his second queen. You can almost never rule out the possibility of a king having a legitimate son in the future.
On the other hand, if the Prince of Wales, and his younger brothers, and all their children suddenly fell under buses and died, then there would be no possibility that the Princess Royal could be overtaken by a younger brother. In that case, there might be an argument for making her the Princess of Wales.
The law presumes a woman is fertile and capable of bearing a child regardless of her age. So even if every from Prince Charles to Lady Louise Mountbatten-Windsor died Princess Anne would still only be the heiress presumptive, not the heiress apparent.
You’re not going to get an answer based on logic. It simply has not been the tradition to grant dukedoms to daughters of a British sovereign. It was just not seen as necessary. They would be “married well” and take on whatever title that their husbands had. In the meantime, “princess” would do.
Based on the law as it was recently changed, would a female heir apparent become Duchess of Cornwall and Duchess of Rothsay or would the tradition remain that a princess has no title (other than Princess or Princess Royal) and takes her husband title?
No self-respecting royal dynasty is going to put up with the notion that any of its princes and princesses, heir or not, ennobled or not, could possibly be a commoner. The merest whispered suggestion would have to have been a good way to lose your head! There is bound to have been a workaround on that issue, if indeed it was ever considered an issue, such as that all the royal children occupy a Royal status ranking above the mere Noble status of Dukes, Counts, and other such riffraff.
Actually, no, the Romanov daughters were NOT given ducal titles. The daughters and granddaughters of the czars bore the Russian title Velikie knjagini (Великие княгини), conventionally translated into English as “grand duchess” but more accurately “grand princess” (in German, Grossfurstin). They were not created Duchess of SomePlaceOrOther.
However, over in Sweden the current crop of princesses have been given ducal titles. Princess Estelle, aged two and second in line for the Swedish throne, is Duchess of Östergötland; her aunt is Princess Madeline, Duchess of Hälsingland and Gästrikland. The present king’s sisters, however, were never given ducal titles, and in fact three of the four lost their royal status when they married commoners.
In the old days, females took their status from their fathers (if unmarried) or their husbands; they did not hold a status in and of themselves. In Sweden and in Russia, for example, females could not inherit the throne; only a handful of British titles permit female inheritance.
Also, in Britain, it has generally been the case that members of the royal family were created dukes as adults; George VI, e.g., was 24 when he became Duke of York. By that age, daughters were likely to be married, and so the title went to the husband.
The rules of succession to the Cornwall title are not merely tradition but are part of the royal charter creating the title, and so it would take a new charter to change the rules. A 1469 act of the Scottish Parliament similarly says the title of Duke of Rothesay belongs to “the first-born Prince of the King of Scots”; I’d think they’d have to change the law for a female heir apparent.
You are talking about a couple of different concepts of “commoner” there. In Britain, those accused of crimes are entitled to a jury of their peers. Those who actually WERE peers were, until 1948, entitled to be judged solely by a jury of other peers (the House of Lords would sit as the Court of the King in Parliament). The only people who held the “privilege of peerage” were the ones entitled to sit in the House of Lords themselves, so wives, children, and other family members were commoners in the eyes of the law. Any adult males in the royal family presumably had peerage titles, but the wives/minors did not.
The British royal family, in particular, have had a much looser interpretation of status than the continental monarchies (although most European monarchies today don’t have the rigid standards of yesteryear). Mary of Teck, e.g., was considered a suitable bride for the heir to the British Empire even though her father was the product of a morganatic marriage; such an alliance would have been utterly unthinkable in imperial Austria or Russia.
No, I am not talking about a couple of different concepts, I am talking about any and all concepts. Limiting the case to European monarchies, I do not believe any royal prince or princess has ever been considered a commoner in any sense of the word, except perhaps under the most extraordinary circumstances, such as demotion resulting from criminal behavior; Tsarevich Alexis Petrovich of Russia and Crown Prince Frederick of Prussia come to mind as possible examples. (Alexis eventually died in custody, Frederick survived to become “The Great”)
I don’t believe the part of the charter of the Duchy of Cornwall reserving it for the monarch’s eldest son and heir was changed. There’s now a workaround so that the funds go to any heir apparent (grandson, daughter, etc.), but AFAIK the duchy itself still can’t be held by anyone who isn’t both the heir apparent and the eldest son of the monarch.
There probably won’t be a female heir apparent for a long time, though, so who knows how things will change. Even in the 1940s, George VI considered making Elizabeth the Princess of Wales in her own right, but eventually decided against it, so if it was possible then it’s surely possible now.
No they have not, and that means not by you. You have merely asserted that absent a title of nobility one cannot be anything other than a commoner, including the son of the current Prince of Wales. I am quite confident that that assertion is ridiculous.
My expressed view is that royal birth itself probably confers a rank apart from and higher than that of any noble. As an alternate possibility there might be one hierarchy with the reigning monarch at the top, his children and/or siblings next, and Dukes, Counts and whatnot following on down to Barons (Baronets?), after which we finally reach the borderland of the commons.
Prince Michael of Kent, who does not hold a peerage title, is legally a commoner in the United Kingdom. His brother the Duke of Kent is a peer of the realm.
Until the House of Lords Act 1999, the Duke of Kent was legally barred from holding a seat in the House of Commons, or even voting for members of the Commons. His brother had the legal option to do both.
This is correct, in terms of precedence. Commoner is not a “rank”, though. Younger sons of dukes, most of whom who are also commoners, rank above viscounts, who are peers of the realm.
His godparents were a couple of his uncles, a great-uncle, assorted cousins, and a friend of the family. It’s not that he was an important baby, but that he’s related to people with titles. Yes, it’s fairly common for the godparents to show up for the ceremony; only the fact that there was a war on prevented all of them from being there. Like most infants christened in the Church of England, he was baptized at a church where his family regularly attended services; for his family, that meant one of the chapels at the royal residences.
And this highlights a basic confusion. “Commoner” doesn’t mean “not well-connected”; commoners can be very well connected indeed. It means not having the status of a peer, which (in the UK) is a legal status, having specific consequences. In most other countries the term has ceased to have any such meaning, and in those countries commoner/noble status is usually a matter purely of social convention, assigned by reference to the rules which used to be in force when it was a legal matter (which are usually different from the UK rules).
The UK rules are notably restrictive. In the UK, the eldest son of the Duke of Blackacre will inherit peerage status from his father, but the Duke’s remaining children will not. They will be commoners, unless they are created peers in their own right or, if female, they marry peers. In most continental European countries, by contrast, all of a Duke’s children would be considered nobles.