A historic blow

[dr_whom]

So, I read that the Commonwealth Realms are moving toward eliminating male preference in the line of succession to the throne. Good for them! But a New York Times article describes this move as "a historic blow for women’s rights". And I'm like... is it really? I mean, the number of women whose rights will be advanced by this move is really small. It's certainly the right thing to do, and it's symbolic and all, but "historic blow" seems a little strong to me.

They're also eliminating the prohibition on the monarch marrying a Catholic, and the article says "Some experts said the change could lead to constitutional problems if a future monarch married a Catholic and the couple decided to bring up their children as Catholics, something the Vatican encourages." I think I read that last phrase there as having a much more specific meaning than the author presumably intended.

Comments

[dr_whom]

I guess the only fair thing they could do with peers in general would be to just make it take effect immediately when the law is passed, but only for potential heirs born afterward and not rearranging any existing succession lines?

[midnight-sidhe.livejournal.com]

Right; but what do you do when the potential female heir is already born when the law is passed but doesn't have a younger brother until, say, four years later - does she count? Also, there's a bit of a mess because most peerages, unlike the throne, cannot pass to female heirs, so you have cousins involved who probably don't want to get cut out... I mean, there always is an heir presumptive if not an heir apparent unless the title is in danger of reverting to the Crown.

[dr_whom]

Hmm. I'd say in that case, yes, she's definitely the heir—surely younger brothers born after the law goes into effect shouldn't be able to supersede older sisters in any case. But I don't know what kind of wrangling it would take to deal with the second thing you mention—I didn't know that most peerages can't pass to female heirs in general.

[midnight-sidhe.livejournal.com]

In the first case, it's probably easy to legislate but hard to avoid ill feelings. Suppose you have two families of cousins, each with two children, the elder a girl and the younger a boy; suppose that one family's children is about five years older than the others. In the family with the older kids, the boy gets to inherit because he was born before the passing of the law; in the family with the younger kids, the girl gets to inherit because her brother was born later. The daughter in the first family and the son in the second family are both likely to feel slighted.

But yeah, it's the second thing that strikes me as the one most likely to cause trouble. My understanding is that there are very few peeresses in their own right, and that most of them are life peers or Scottish. Now, I guess you could argue that okay, if you're the heir presumptive, there's always a chance that the current peer will suddenly have a legitimate son to become the heir apparent, so it's not that different; except what about cases where you have a family of grown daughters? Should they still be passed over in favour of their second cousins? That doesn't seem right, no?

...I clearly know both far too much and far too little about the British class system.