Succession to the Crown Act 2013
 

Of course if the couple were to only have daughters( like the Queen and Princess Margaret or like Beatrice and Eugenie) then the problem could be put off for another generation ... By which time some of the issues raised here may have abated

Impacts and ramifications of the proposed legislative changes
 

From the DM today - they are saying not only has primogeniture been abandoned - but so has the ban on marriage to a Roman Catholic based on meetings in the Commonwealth. Many of you in this thread know far more about this than those of us in the US.

Was there any news about this when the PM met with the Commonwealth leaders last? I thought there would need to be Constitutional Amendments in parts of the Commonwealth?

I understand this is the DM - but is there any truth in this report? They usually get much of it right and then spin the rest to suit sales.
Kate Middleton pregnant: Law on line to the throne to be backdated | Mail Online

Nothing has been legislated in any of the realms.

Sorry but that article mentions nothing about abandoning the changes set in motion last October. Do you mean something else?

At the October meeting it was decided that the British monarchy would have equal primogeniture and royals would be allowed to marry Catholics. So far these changes haven't been signed into law or discussed properly by any country in the commonwealth. Also if Catherine has a boy, it will all go away again.

I've got questions
 

From the press reports today (and the BBC) the question of primogeniture is "settled". According to the Deputy PRime minister (Nick Clegg), the 1st born child of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge will be 3rd in line to the throne regardless of gender. And (I'm paraphrasing) that will happen whether the legislation is in place at the time of birth or not.

Now I'm ok with all of that. But I think the question of being allowed to marry a Catholic is a whole different kettle of ball-games.

I'm not very knowledgeable about this but surely whilst we have an Established Church in the UK where the Monarch is Head of the Anglican Church, the children of a Monarch would need to be brought up in the Anglican faith.

Disestablishment of the Church will take YEARS to argue and get through parliament. Surely these 2 pieces of legislation need to be separated and discussed separately?

I don't currently have a view because I don't feel that I understand all the implications.

Also, if the monarchy brings in primogeniture - what happens with the nobility? Anyone seen anything about that?

[I agree - the news is reporting it as a done deal - but I am not sure that it will go so smoothly. The only bit I saw as a easy to do was reducing the degree to which the monarch gets to approve/not-allow royal marriages. I doubt anyone was double checking that lately! :previous:

The proposals still require the monarch to be CofE, they will however be allowed to marry an RC without losing their right of succession.
The PM, Deputy PM, Opposition Leader and Santa Claus can all say that the 1st born is heir no matter what but their words mean nothing if the legislation is not passed by the 16 realms.

But the Catholic spouse of a monarch/future monarch/potential monarch (thinking of "spares" on this) would have to agree that their children would be brought up in the Anglican faith. In the same way that Princess Michael of Kent has done?

Seems to me that these days we have a politicans who do not understand 1. the law; 2. religion; 3. workings of the monarchy and 4. don't have plain common sense.

But love a sound-bite.

This could go horribly wrong :sad:

Tell me about it, but W&C's children will all be raised in the CoE , so our next three sovereigns will be Anglican and as long as the Church is established , the couple's children will marry within the faith.

Coronation Oath, 2nd June 1953

This is the Oath they take :

Archbishop. Will you to the utmost of your power maintain the Laws of God and the true profession of the Gospel? Will you to the utmost of your power maintain in the United Kingdom the Protestant Reformed Religion established by law? Will you maintain and preserve inviolably the settlement of the Church of England, and the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government thereof, as by law established in England? And will you preserve unto the Bishops and Clergy of England, and to the Churches there committed to their charge, all such rights and privileges, as by law do or shall appertain to them or any of them?

Queen. All this I promise to do.

There can be no debate over the sovereign belonging to the CoE

^^^^^
Yes, but all that goes out the window once the CofE is disestablished which I have no doubt some future government will propose in order to remove the state from church problems (women bishops, same sex marriage). There really is no need in this century to involve the church with the state or the state with the church, especially with the dwindling membership of the church.

Didn't I read a while back that "The Monarch may be married to a Catholic, but the children must be raised Angelican? It would be a one generation consort and possible a spare who ends up a Catholic Duke at best.

REligion is a dangerous topic but a "strong" catholic would not (generally) agree to have their children brought up in a different faith and the RC church would not want it either.

There would still be an underlying pressure to avoid this situation. But today's simplistic response by politicans barely stratches the surface of the issues to be dealt with

Perhaps just one step at a time - its all the politicans could cope with!

The sovereign is the Supreme Governor of the Church of England, so he or she must be Anglican. That they cannot marry a Catholic is not discrimination, romanists require the children be raised Catholic, and to my first point, this isn't possible.

The Catholic church is not longer so strict when it comes to that and hasn't been for centuries when it comes to Royal marriages. In the 1800s eg Josephine of Leuchtenberg, a Catholic princess from Bavaria, married Crown Prince Oscar of Sweden. While she stayed a Catholic, her children were raised protestants.

The reason is another: when the Act of Settlement was passed, the pope supported the Stuarts who had tried to keep their absolute power against their peers and asked all Catholic monarchs of Europe to do the same - namely France and Spain supported the Stuarts, the last male-line Stuart pretender to the throne even was a Catholic cardinal.

So it was against the interest of parliament to allow a claimant of the throne to be married and thus influenced by a Catholic spouse. It had less to do with religion but with the question who was the real power in the UK. Of course, today, this is no longer a question but old traditions die hard.

As long as the Church of England is established by law, and for the foreseeable future it will be, the sovereign will be an Anglican.
Charles, William, and William's children are and will be raised Anglican, so this will not even be an issue for another generation or two.

Since no other other faith or religion is mentioned this way in the law, it is a form of discrimination. Like I said in my previous post, isn't it weird that a British prince or princess can marry a Jew, a Muslim, a Hindu etc, but still keep their place in the succession, when they lose it upon a marriage to a Catholic? Like I also said before, I know that there are historical reasons why this restriction exists, but that was three hundred years ago, and I don't understand why it still exists in 2012.

When the laws supporting male primogeniture are changed, will this also apply to inherited peerages in the UK - or will the rules apply only to future monarchs?

The proposed changes will not in any shape or form affect successions to peerages. They only deal with succession to the Throne and, in case of Equal Primogeniture, apply only to the descendants of the current Prince of Wales.

In Britain, succession to peerages is determined by the individual Letters Patent that had created the title in the first place. Only a complex legal process including an Act of Parliament and new Letters Patent could reform succession to peerages - and that's not happening any time soon.

Impacts and ramifications of the proposed legislative changes
 

The other impact of the proposed changes to the legislation is that when this child is born Eugenie will not need the Queen's permission to marry as the RMA is being modified to only apply to the first 6 in line (in a few years even Andrew will be able to remarry without needing the monarch's consent - will he then remarry Sarah???)

I can't see Andrew re-marrying Sarah until after Philip passes on, much like Charles waited to marry Camilla until after the Queen Mother had been deceased a few years. Heck, I'm not sure he'd re-marry her until after the Queen is no longer with us either.