Caught a bit on an entertainment news show which said that in some new book Prince Harry said he wanted a paternity test to quash the rumors.
I’ve no opinion on who sired him, but I wondered if it mattered, in any practical sense, who his biological father is?
Here in America the rule seems to be that a man is legally the father of any children his wife bears. It’s come up several times when a man seeking to avoid paying child support has obtained genetic proof that he didn’t father the child – and he is still ordered to pay support anyway. Are the rules the same in England?
Even if so generally, maybe the rules are different with royalty?
Or–does it only matter if Prince William were to die before having children?
Whether it matters for legal paternity in an ordinary sense is a separate issue. It’s my impression that to be eligible to inherit the throne, you have to be a legitimate, genetic, blood descendant of the monarch.
So it’s possible that if Charles is not Henry’s genetic parent, even if Charles is considered the legal father in all other repects, Harry and his descendants would not be eligible to inherit the throne.
That’s probably an academic question, since in real life, if a person close to the throne (e.g., the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall) adopted a child, there would doubtless be legislation drafted to removed any doubts.
No. If Charles acknowledges Harry as his son that’s all that matters. Remember DNA testing is a modern invention. For most of history there was no reliable way to prove paternity.
The law of succession cannot rely on paternity tests that simply did not exist at the time that law came into being.
You also need to look at it from the other side - if Charles isn’t the father but Diana was the mother, if she was somewhere in the line of succession then Harry would just be moved further down the list. She’s isn’t, though, as far as I can tell, because while she did have royal ancestry it seems to be of the illegitimate kind.
Not necessarily true at all. For one thing, Parliament could simply pass a new bill establishing whether or not Harry has standing in the line of succession, and if so, where. Great thing about England’s constitution is that it’s mutable.
Secondly, it would depend upon the language of the law currently in force. Without reading what the current law says, it’s not really possible to say.
Thirdly, it would depend upon prior precedent. If there have been any prior cases of demonstrable bastardy, where the son is born to the queen, but fathered by someone other than the husband, they would look to the resolution of those cases to determine how to proceed.
Perhaps someone has information about the text of the current Act of Succession and any precedents?
But Charles could, upon seeing the result of the paternity tests, declare “No, Harry is not my son.” Then wouldn’t that be a repudiation of paternity that would effectively remove Harry from the line of succession, even if it isn’t enough to relieve Charles of his duties under the law as the legal father?
This admission may have been what sparked the new interest. I’m not aware of anything he’s said more recently, so I don’t know what he’d say while actually awake.
A few articles I read state pretty clearly that if this is true Harry will be out of the line of succession. There’s nothing in any of those articles that makes me think that such statements are anything more than the presumption of the writer, though.
Questions about parentage are as old as monarchy. In most Christian European countries, inheritance has been only through legitimate blood descent, with no provision for adoption. (How much easier it would have been for Henry VIII if he could have adopted a son instead of marrying six times!) In other times and places, practices have been different; Roman emperors often adopted sons as successors.
Establishing parentage in the female line, in Europe, has always been relatively straightforward. Queens and princesses would give birth in public, before scores of witnesses, who would swear to the authenticity of their progeny. Even so, there was controversy—the partisans of William of Orange insisted that the son of James II of England was a changeling smuggled into the royal nursery, and that the witnesses who swore otherwise were dupes or liars.
Male parentage, of course, has always been trickier. Men don’t like to admit that they’ve been cuckolded, and some have accepted dubious children as their heirs. The youngest son of Charles IV of Spain, for example, was probably sired by his first minister (Godoy) who was a long-time lover of the queen, but Charles accepted the boy as his son.
In general, before DNA testing, the father’s word was enough. The alternative was to accuse the queen of being a slut.
So there really are no precedents for a person accepted as an heir, suddenly proving otherwise. I refuse to predict how either the royal family, Parliament, or the public would react.
An interesting thing to note is that the Act of Settlement of 1701, which governs who has the right to the crown, uses the phrase “heirs of the body”
“Heirs of the body” sounds, to me anyway, to mean purely biological heirs. That being said, if it could be proved that Harry is not Charles’ son, then he wouldn’t be in the line of succession.
He also wouldn’t be in the line based on Diana because she is not a descendant of Sophia as well.
As noted, Parliament could pass an Act inserting him in the line at any point that they wish (just as they passed an act to remove Edward VIII’s descendants [who never ended up existing anyway]).
British titles generally do not descent either to adoptive children or to children born out of wedlock. The heir to Viscount Lascelles, for example, is his second son Alexander, and not his first son Benjamin, because Benjamin was born before his parents were married. (The fact that they married subsequently is no help to him.) It would surprise me if the rules of succession to the crown were different. This would suggest that, if Harry is not Wales’s son, he cannot inherit the throne.
On the other hand, there is a strong presumption in English law that a child born to a married woman is the child of her husband, and this is not rebutted simply by the husband asserting that it ain’t so (which, in this case, he hasn’t done anyway). In theory a challenge to Harry’s right to inherit the crown could be thrashed out in the High Court if necessary; on the basis of DNA evidence or similar. In practice the question is of such political and constitutional significance that if the issue were seriously pushed Parliament would intervene to settle it one way or the other.
The person with the strongest interest in objecting to Harry’s place in the line of succession is York, who would take Harry’s place as second in line if Harry were ruled out. If Wales does not raise the issue, and York does not raise the issue, it is hard to see that it could ever be asserted strongly enough to force Parliament to take any action.
Interesting. This would be different if they were Catholics. As far as the RCC is concerned, the subsequent marriage would make the older son legitimate.
Interesting. I wonder if this would be different in Spain or Portugal. Under Catholic law, the parents’ subsequent marriage would make Benjamin legitimate.
