Guest post: Why Priss Choss is unlikely to say No
Originally a comment by Screechy Monkey on So what does a British person look like?
I’m not an expert in British constitutional law, but I’m fairly confident that the Queen does not have the power to decide who will or will not succeed her, without an Act of Parliament. So any rumor about some secret decision to disinherit Charles shouldn’t be taken seriously.
Of course Charles could refuse to accept the Throne when the time comes, or officially relinquish his place in the line of succession. I’ve heard it argued over the years that he ought to do so because of his unpopularity and/or unsuitability to the job. And occasionally there’s a rumor that he will do so, and I have no idea how much stock to put in those. My inclination is to doubt it very much, for at least four reasons I can think of:
1) It would take an extraordinary person to say, effectively, “I have been given an extremely privileged life with the understanding that I would eventually have one job, for which I was trained my entire life. But despite all of that training and support and preparation, it turns out that I would be so desperately bad at the job, or at least, my subjects all think that I would be so desperately bad at it, that I would jeopardize the very institution that it represents, and so I must decline and instead live out a life of privilege with no responsibility.” I’m not sure if I mean extraordinary in a positive sense here. Certainly it would require a great deal of humility. I don’t have any particular insight into Prince Charles, but he does not strike me as that sort of person.
2) I don’t know how seriously to take the series The Crown, but I have heard it remarked that one thing it gets right is the reaction of the Windsors to the Abdication, i.e. that they viewed Edward’s actions as the worst sort of selfishness and dereliction of duty. It seems unlikely to me that the Queen’s son would view passing on the job as any kind of noble or humble act, but rather as a fairly selfish one. Like it or not, it was Charles’s job from birth to prepare for the role, and to refuse to take it would be an admission of failure on a level I can’t imagine.
3) I don’t think it would help save the monarchy. It might do the opposite. If Charles is to pass on the job — the second man in three generations to do so — because William has better poll numbers and a younger, prettier, wife, then it seems to me that this precedent just invites more questions about the monarchy than Charles’s accession would. If it turns out that Princess Charlotte is smart and charming and popular but her older brother George is a bit of a dolt, then will there be clamoring for George to yield his place just like Grandpa did? And if you’re going to start choosing monarchs based on their popularity and public image or perceived ability, then why not just go the whole way and elect them, or have Parliament appoint them to fixed terms like Governors-General in Canada and Australia? Then at least you’d have an entire nation of talent to choose from rather than a single family.
4) If it was going to happen, I think it would have been done a long time ago. The time to do it — if at all — would have been when Charles got divorced and his popularity cratered, and there was the prospect that Charles might spend three or four decades on the throne. Or at least after William became of age. Now, my understanding is that Charles has bounced back a bit in popularity (although I agree with Ophelia that there’s still plenty to dislike) and the public has warmed to Camilla a bit, and it’s unlikely he’d be in for a long reign. No doubt there will be a ton of “abolish the monarchy” think pieces written when the Queen passes, but I think that would happen even if Charles was out of the picture.
I have very recently (a few Google searches ago) become an expert on British Constitutional law, and you are correct, the succession is unchangeable unless Charles abdicates or, hilariously, marries a Roman Catholic. Camilla’s former husband was a Catholic, and their kids were raised Catholic, but she apparently never formally converted, so Charles dodged that bullet.
I did come across a ton of articles, many in actual UK publications, claiming the queen had decided to skip Charles. There were even articles claiming a mock practice coronation had been held with William and Kate. I guess the queen could go old school and have Charles beheaded, but that’s probably unlikely (and possibly illegal now that the rabble have seized so much power in Britain).
Whatever these goofballs do, let’s hope the whole thing collapses before King Charles forces everyone to only use homeopathic medicine (or whatever garbage he’s into at the time).
I genuflect before your Google Degree. :)
I occasionally see tabloid headlines about secret coronations, too. The thing I find silly about it is, the entire point of a coronation is a public display of authority. Doing it in secret is useless. Coronation isn’t magic, and even the monarchy hasn’t pretended otherwise — there’s often a gap between a monarch’s formal accession to the throne and the actual coronation.
I know you’re being hyperbolic, but honestly, statements like this are why I don’t take most anti-monarchical arguments very seriously. They seem to be based on a fundamental misunderstanding of the institution. It’s like idiotic Americans who guffaw that we “worship the Queen” because she’s on our money.
As to your example — even Charles isn’t dumb enough to think he can do that. He can’t even require the government to fund homeopathy unless Parliament agrees — at worst, Parliament might be tempted to go along in an effort to curry favor with the monarch.
Monarch is a migratory butterfly, right? ;-)
I’ve seen some news stories to the effect that Prince Charles has been taking over some royal duties from Prince Philip because of the latter’s poor health. So could that be a reason for his recent prominence?
Yeah, there’s no way Charles will not be king unless he has the misfortune to die before his mum. Which could happen, her mother lived to be very old indeed and I see no sign of her stepping down. But he’s already chosen his coronation name. He’ll be George the VII if anyone cares, because apparently (and hilariously to my mind) he believes the name Charles is too tightly associated with beheadings. He’s desperate for the throne as far as I can tell. And Wills doesn’t seem to have that same desire, he assumes he’ll be king one day but it doesn’t seem to consume him the way it always has his father.
But I expect that even if he accedes the throne, he likely won’t be there for long. He’s 69 now and if the Queen lives another 10 years, he’d be almost 80, which I think would make him the oldest person to be crowned ever. He’ll be an utter disaster of course because he doesn’t understand our constitution or what it means to be a constitutional monarch. He’ll cause a constitutional crisis within a couple of years, I guarantee it, by trying to interfere with the duly elected Government of the day. Then maybe we can be rid of the whole sorry lot and switch to an elected head of state (preferably a non-political role, like the Irish have). We could do a version of Britain’s Got Talent to pick our new president. :-)
But beware bots bigly!
I agree that Prince Charles has been remarkably reckless. He ought to be aware of what has happened to monarchies over the last century or so — deposed, with the monarchs’ successors having no desire to create successor monarchies. He must be aware of what had happened to the Bourbons and Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns and Romanovs and Osmans and several others.