If anything happens to William, it will matter to a great many in the UK.
But even if something happened to William, who could actually do something? Okay Charles and Harry could easily enough decide on a paternity-test but if they don't, could eg Andrew ask for one?
Has there been a similar case in the nobility for example?
As an aside: the technique of paternity tests is so advanced that you can do the collecting of the samples yourself at home and then send the samples in - results are sent back to a lawyer if wished or can be picked up anonymously... So it's not that these test cannot be handled discreetly, if chosen. I bet Charles has some friends and aides who would keep quiet about anything, so it could easily be arranged, I guess.
I checked a bit about cases like that in the nobility and found three cases so far - The Banbury Claim, the Aylesbury Case and the Poulett Case. In all three cases a son was declared illegitimate by the highest jurisdictional authorities, even though he was born to the wife during the marriage. Interesting is the Banbury claim - even though the descendants of the disputed legitime heir to the title were high in Royal favour and were knighted or received peerages, they were not reinstalled into the title itself: From Wiki:
The Earl of Banbury's wife, who was nearly forty years her husband's junior, was the mother of two sons,
Edward (
1627–
1645) and
Nicholas (
1631–
1674), whose paternity has given rise to much dispute. Neither is mentioned in the earl's will, but in 1641 the law courts decided that Edward was Earl of Banbury, and when he was killed in June 1645 his brother Nicholas took the title. In the
Convention Parliament of 1660 some objection was taken to the earl sitting in the
House of Lords, and in 1661 he was not summoned to parliament; he had not succeeded in obtaining his
writ of summons when he died on 14 March 1674. Nicholas's son
Charles (
1662–
1740), the 4th earl, had not been summoned to parliament when in 1692 he killed Captain Philip Lawson in a duel. This raised the question of his rank in a new form. Was he, or was he not, entitled to trial by the peers? The House of Lords declared that he was not a peer and therefore not so entitled, but the
Court of King's Bench released him from his imprisonment on the ground that he was the Earl of Banbury and not Charles Knollys, a commoner. Nevertheless, the House of Lords refused to move from its position, and Knollys had not received a writ of summons when he died in April 1740. His son
Charles (
1703–
1771),
vicar of
Burford, Oxfordshire, and his grandsons,
William (
1726–
1776) and Thomas Woods (
1727–
1793), were successively titular Earls of Banbury, but they took no steps to prove their title.
However, in 1806, Thomas Woods's son
William (
1763–
1834), who attained the rank of general in the British army, asked for a writ of summons as Earl of Banbury, but in 1813 the House of Lords decided against the claim. Several peers, including the great
Lord Erskine, protested against this decision, but General Knollys himself accepted it and ceased to call himself Earl of Banbury. He died in Paris on 20 March 1834. His eldest son, Sir
William Thomas Knollys (
1797–
1883), entered the army and served with the Guards during the
Peninsular War. Remaining in the army after the conclusion of the peace of 1815 he won a good reputation and rose high in his profession. From 1855 to 1860 he was in charge of the military camp at
Aldershot, then in its infancy, and in 1861 he was made president of the council of military education. From 1862 to 1877 he was
comptroller of the household of the
Prince of Wales, afterwards King
Edward VII. From 1877 until his death on 23 June 1883, he was
Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod; he was also a privy councillor and colonel of the
Scots Guards. His son
Francis Knollys, 1st Viscount Knollys (b. 1837), private secretary to Edward VII and
George V, was created Baron Knollys in 1902 and
Viscount Knollys in 1911; another son, Sir
Henry Knollys (b. 1840), became private secretary to King Edward's daughter
Maud, Queen of Norway. Knollys's daughter,
Charlotte, became the
Private Secretary and close friend to the
Princess of Wales, later
Queen Alexandra. She died unmarried in 1930.
End of quote.
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In both the Aylesbury Case and the Poulett Case the courts did not believe a son to be fathered by the holder of the respective title, so the title passed into another branch of the family. The decision were based in the Common Law about legitimacy and the relative who thought had the senior right to the title had the right to question the legitimacy. As Common Law applies to the members of the RF as well (or at least I believe it does, except where special laws exist), Andrew could well act if something happened to William before he is married and father of a child.
Equally interesting the Moynihan-case, who was decided on the basis of DNa-testings in 1997. The third Lord Moynihan had a son from his fourth marriage, but the child was conceived through IVF and it could be proved that he was not the father. He fathered a son in his fifth marriage, though, but because the fourth marriage had not legally been disolved, this son was declared illegitimate as he was born to a bigamous marriage. Thus the brother of the third Lord became the fourth Baron. Interesting legal argumentation.
We have new members showing up all the time, and then we're hearing about what a shame it is that such and such a thread has been closed because they were looking forward to contributing. Plus, you never know what embarrassing new headline James Hewitt might come up with next week.
