The News of an impending Royal arrival in the United Kingdom has thrown the country’s somewhat complicated succession laws back into the spotlight.
The laws governing who gets to be the monarch, and when, go back to the 17th century – while the throne itself, barring the 11-year interruption of Oliver and Richard Cromwell, has existed since the year 927.
The forthcoming royal birth has, however, caused some confusion among some – which is understandable, given the complexity of the line of succession as it currently stands, and plans to change it.
So – how does it all work?
What all of this means is that if a King dies, the throne goes to their oldest son. If they don’t a son, it goes to their oldest daughter.
If they don’t have any children at all, it goes to their next eldest male sibling (who, presumably, was the second-eldest son of the previous monarch) – or, if they did not have any brothers, to their eldest sister, and so on.
If a deceased monarch doesn’t have any siblings or children, the crown goes back up a generation – to their uncles and aunts (again, with those uncles having been the children of another previous monarch).
This all means that nobody can ever be knocked off the list (unless they renounce their Protestant faith or marry a Catholic, of course). They can only be pushed down the list.
Queen Elizabeth II, for example, only had one sister – Margaret – and no brothers. (This is why she inherited the throne when her father, George VI, died. George’s two daughters were entitled to the throne before his two younger brothers could get there.)
Margaret died in 2002, but her two children and four grandchildren are the closest in line to the sitting Queen – so if the current Queen had never had any children of their own, the throne would fall to them.
If the Queen was an only child and had never married, the next in line would be her cousin Richard, the Duke of Gloucester. Richard’s father Henry, and the Queen’s father King George VI, were brothers.
