Succession settles after meandering journey through the ages

Luck, religion, wars, illegitimacy and treachery have all played crucial roles in how the British monarchy meandered through time.

King Charles II. Picture: Supplied

Luck, religion, wars, illegitimacy and treachery have all played crucial roles in how the British monarchy – and its colonial handprints on Australia – have twisted and meandered through history.

The succession to the throne is regulated not only through descent, but also by parliamentary statute in Britain and in Australia’s written Constitution.

A portrait of King Henry VII. Picture: Supplied

Queen Victoria. Picture: Supplied

The convention stems from critical constitutional developments in England beginning with the Magna Carta in 1215 when the barons tried to force King John to limit his powers, and then in the 17th century with a Bill of Rights (1689) and the Act of Settlement (1701).

According to the royal family’s own website, when King James II fled the country for France in 1688, parliament held that he had “abdicated the government” and that the throne was vacant. His actions spelled the end of the Stuarts.

The throne was then offered, not to James’s young son, a Catholic, but to his Protestant daughter Mary and her husband William of Orange, as joint rulers. If James III had inherited the throne, genealogists have established the current King would be Franz, the Duke of Bavaria. Over the years other spurious Jacobite claims have come from various alleged descendants, including from a dog walker who lives in Milan.

The royal family website says: “It therefore came to be established not only that the sovereign rules through parliament, but that the succession to the throne can be regulated by parliament, and that a sovereign can be deprived of his/her title through misgovernment. The Act of Settlement confirmed that it was for parliament to determine the title to the throne. The Act laid down that only Protestant descendants of Princess Sophia – the Electress of Hanover and granddaughter of James I – are eligible to succeed.”

While it has had no bearing on Charles III’s accession to the throne, nor that of the line of succession being Prince William and then his first born, Prince George, The Succession to the Crown Act (2013) amended the legislation to end male primogeniture, for those born after October 2011. It also cancelled provisions which had previously disqualified Roman Catholics from the line of succession.

Over the centuries various wars and religious battles ended the rule of the Saxons, the Normans, then the Plantagenets, the Tudors and the Stuarts from the 10th century to the 17th century. In 1485, when Henry VII was usurped it was the Tudors rather than the Yorkist who emerged triumphant.

Then there was a constitutional upheaval during the House of Hanover in the 1700s and early 1800s when firstly George IV left no surviving legitimate children, leaving the throne to his younger hardworking brother King William IV. But he too had no children, so he was succeeded by his niece, Queen Victoria, the daughter of Prince Edward, the fourth son of King George III.

Queen Victoria then married her German cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, having nine children and their subsequent marriages into other royal courts of Europe has meant her descendants included Queen Margrethe of Denmark, Kings Harald V of Norway and Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden.

Queen Victoria granted Royal Assent to the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution Act in July 9, 1900 after the colonial states agreed to become a federated self governing colony nation and a dominion of the British Empire. Then three decades later, the Statute of Westminster 1931 was passed to remove most of the British parliament’s authority to legislate for dominions (now called realms) so that they became self governing, while also confirming joint approval for changes and the common line of succession.

Queen Elizabeth II was Queen Victoria’s great-great granddaughter. but she inherited the throne in 1952 only after her uncle King Edward VIII, who had no children, abdicated to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson and her father, King George VI died unexpectedly aged 56 after a short 16-year reign.

After a record setting stable reign of 70 years, Queen Elizabeth II’s death in September last year meant her first child, Charles became King.

Three days after her death, Australian Governor-General David Hurley and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese proclaimed “Prince Charles Philip Arthur George to be King Charles the Third, by the Grace of God King of Australia and his other Realms and Territories, Head of the Commonwealth, and, with hearty and humble affection, we promise him faith and obedience: May King Charles the Third have long and happy years to reign over us.”