Subtitles section Play video
-
How to become the British Monarch:
-
Historically, the crown sat upon your head mostly because you had the biggest army. When
-
you died usually your eldest son kept control over that army and so the crown relocated
-
to his head, though, of course, someone with a bigger army could change the political landscape
-
quite abruptly.
-
As time marched on and the world grew less violent eventually in 1701 Parliament established
-
a set of rules to transfer the crown from one head to another -- hopefully with less
-
turmoil than before.
-
So here's how the 1701 rules work:
-
Frist: don't be Catholic.
-
The British Monarch is also the head of the Church of England to which the monarch much
-
convert if not already a member. Except that if you're Catholic, no crown for you.
-
The history of the royal family and how this rule came to be is a story for another time,
-
but suffice it to say that bigger-army diplomacy was involved.
-
And, BTW, no you can't cleverly get around this rule by converting from Catholicism to
-
something else then to Church of England. In the eyes of the crown, Catholicism is transitive.
-
Second: don't be a bastard.
-
Sometimes it's good to be the king, but it's never good to be the illegitimate children
-
of the king -- who are out of line for the crown literally from the moment of their conception.
-
If you're related to the monarch but are either a Catholic or a bastard or both, the crown
-
has the delightful term 'Naturally Dead' to refer to you and your lack of right to succession.
-
Third spouses don't count.
-
While people often think of kings and queens as a pair: that's not the way it works here.
-
Spouses of Monarchs are known as Royal Consorts. They may be called 'prince' or 'queen' but
-
as far as the crown is concerned, they're not in line for the thrown, they're just the
-
matching 23 Chromosomes needed for the creation of the real heir.
-
Fourth and Finally: Male Primogeniture (whatever).
-
This is the algorithm of inheritance. When the Monarch dies -- or abdicates -- but usually
-
dies -- the crown goes to the eldest son who isn't 'naturally dead'. If there happens to
-
be an elder daughter tough luck to her: baby brother gets the crown.
-
It's Simple enough, but there are non-obvious cases: take a king with two sons: if the eldest
-
dies before the king does, obviously the crown goes to the youngest (now oldest) brother.
-
But what if the eldest son gave the king a grandson before death? Where does the crown
-
go then?
-
Well, the crown basically pretends that everyone -- except the naturally dead -- is alive:
-
so upon the death of the king the crown goes to his eldest son -- who is now sort of the
-
king who just really happens to be dead -- so the rule kicks in again, and the crown goes
-
to *his* son, not as seems obvious now, his brother.
-
But if this 1701 rule means that eldest sons get the crown, how did queens ever come to
-
be? Basically, daughters were the last choice of the crown, which is why there have been
-
so few.
-
To get the crown, a daughter had to be either the only child of the monarch or the eldest
-
child without competing brothers.
-
So pregnant mothers must have made any daughters with queenly aspirations quite nervous.
-
Now sometimes the branch of a family tree die out: be it from war or plague or whatever
-
so the crown's contingency plan if it's at a dead end is to back up one level, and then
-
apply the rules forward again looking for a living head to sit upon. If no luck, back
-
up again, and repeat and repeat until a living heir is found.
-
And there will always be an heir. The first king of England was over a thousand years
-
ago and the mathematics of human reproduction backed up by DNA evidence reveals that just
-
about every European alive is distantly related to him. So the crown will eventually find
-
a way.
-
So from the first king through the new millennium, the various rules when along, making monarchs,
-
though with a gender biased result, that no one seemed too bothered about until suddenly,
-
in 2013 for no particular reason at all, everyone decided that the rules needed to be updated
-
*right now*.
-
So, Parliament and the Monarchy got together and made some changes: most notably striking
-
the male part of rule #4.
-
From 2013 on the crown views all royal sons and daughters with equal favor. The only thing
-
that matters is the order of their birth.
-
So prior to 2013 the boy in a set of fraternal twins in development could sit back and relax
-
-- secure that the crown would be his no matter what happened on delivery day, but in the
-
post 2013 gender-equal world it's now a race for the door to win the crown.