Royal Baby and Succession Rules-Part II

In last week’s post I touched on the matter of succession to the Throne of the Commonwealth Realms and I wish to continue on that trajectory, I still maintain that changing the rules of succession is a bad initiative because it would open up an entire can up of worms that would be best left untouched, this post intends to point out some of the potential problems that might arise. 
                                                                                                                                                                      

In 1917 King George V drafted a set of letters patent that outlined the composition of the royal family, according to the letters patent the style and title of Royal Highness was limited to the Children of the Sovereign, the Agnatic Grandchildren of the Sovereign and  the eldest son of the eldest son of the Prince of Wales, hence the reason why there is no Prince Peter or Princess Zara as children cannot inherit royal titles from the feminine line unless their mother is the Queen even if their grandmother is.   

                                                                     
                                                                                                                                                                              

In relation to that same issue, we must also take into consideration what will happen a generation from now, something I’m sure today’s political leaders in the Commonwealth have not stopped to consider while making this judgment call since they will all  be either retired or dead by then. We all know perfectly well that whenever a Prince gets married outside the royal family then his wife automatically becomes a British Princess by marriage unless of course such a union contravenes the Royal Marriages Act of 1772, the reverse is not true there is no way a man can ever become a prince automatically by marriage to a princess. Some will no doubt raise the point that three Queens regnant had husbands that were made Princes this is only partially true,  first of all, the 3 Queens in question had married foreign princes not commoners so their husbands had the title of prince from birth anyway and the secondly none of them was made a British Prince automatically by marriage, Prince Albert and Prince Philip were created as British Princes by special letters patent which did not even come on the day the marriage but years after the wedding and only after they became the Queen’s official consort while Prince George of Denmark while given a peerage was never recognized as a Prince of the Realm. Given the trajectory of royal weddings for several decades it’s likely that the Duke of Edinburgh will be the last born foreign royal to marry into our royal family and so what if this hypothetical firstborn daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge is named heiress presumptive and then marries a non-royal will he then be named a Prince by marriage similar to what they did to Daniel Westling in Sweden? 

And let us not forget that according to tradition the heir apparent and only him has the right to the titles Duke of Cornwall and Duke of Rothesay both of which are automatic, he also has the sole right to use the style Prince of Wales this however is not automatic but rather is a gift of the sovereign bestowed to his (or her) heir apparent, note that an heir presumptive has no right to use either title hence there has never been a Princess of Wales or Duchess of Cornwall in her own right as she could have easily been displaced by the birth of a male heir apparent, I wonder if the Commonwealth leaders have taken time to iron out all these and many more grievances before they make a final decision.

         

                                        

Another thing that is of real concern is the origin of this mode of succession, equal primogeniture was first originated in Sweden in 1980 and as such I must take issue with that for two main reasons, the first one has to do with the fact that equal primogeniture was in fact an amendment to the 1974 instrument of government, the very same one is which the Riksdag stripped the King of all his power and consigned him to be a mere figurehead, of course there are many who also consider the Queen a figurehead mainly because elected politicians are the ones who conduct the daily business of government, while this is true the monarch is by no means a figurehead and still have a great many constitutional duties to perform most of which are done via letters patent, orders in council and the like, but it’s quite clear that the Queen is  still sovereign, the parliament, cabinet,  civil service, foreign service,  court system and  armed forces in every single Commonwealth realm are all merely acting in her name hence she is the State personified, this is not so in Sweden where the King is not even Commander-in-Chief anymore but is consigned to be a mere bystander in the entire governance process while all his powers are transferred to various officials like the Speaker of the House who appoints the Prime Minister who is in turn Commander in Chief of the armed forces, is that really the kind of system we want to adopt where the influence of the monarchy in government is so weak which could only strengthen republican movements especially in realms like Jamaica and Australia which both have openly republican Prime Ministers?, following Sweden’s trajectory will cause all the Commonwealth realms to become republics in all but name we must be careful not to go down that slippery slope.

And speaking of following Sweden’s tradition, whatever happened to “Rule Britannia”? (Britannia here meaning not only Britain but all nations with a strong British heritage), what happened to the good old days when we used to be the trendsetters, when we lead and others followed?  What happened to the pride we used to have as the greatest alliance of nations to ever exist of the face of the earth?  Why should we be following what countries like Sweden or Denmark or the Netherlands is doing when their political culture and realities is so very different from ours? , they should be following us not the other way around .Why do we need to import models used by other countries and then claim to make it our own, this is oddly similar to the pro-republican argument is some realms that the monarchy is colonial and antiquated and wail about the need to establish their “own form of government”when all they are really doing is copying republican models used by other countries and trying to pass it off as an original nationalistic invention.

As a conservative, a traditionalist and a true Jamaican monarchist I still think that tinkering with the rules of succession is a terrible idea (especially since while all other realm governments are debating succession changes, the Jamaican government is capitalizing on the opportunity to debate abolishing the monarchy instead), the Act of Settlement was put in place for a reason and contrary to the propaganda we are hearing, these reasons are still relevant today as they were centuries ago.

These are just a few thoughts for the Commonwealth Heads of Government to ponder under before making that drastic step which could only lead to a host of other unsolved problems.

 GOD SAVE THE QUEEN.