Miscellaneous monarchy-related topics of interest

"kate photographed hunting and killing peasants which annoyed her fan base..."

I bet it did!

Fasan und bauer!

The law concerning succession - "born of the body"

With various rumours of surrogate babies, this is an interesting look at the law of succession from skippyv20.


Mary of Modena

First a history lesson……
In 1687, when Maria of Modena, Queen Consort of England who was married to the unpopular James II gave birth to a son who would be raised a catholic, a rumour was started that the child was not her natural born son, but a changling smuggled into the Palace in a warming pan. This rumour was spread far and wide and accepted as fact despite many witnesses to the birth of her son.

There were many reasons for this rumour to be spread and for the public to believe it because James was not a popular King and he favoured his catholic colleagues and subjects over the mostly protestant country he ruled. You could say it was a convenient rumour to spread for his enemies because it formented the fear of another catholic ruler who might turn out like Mary I, daughter of Henry 8, who is better known to history as Bloody Mary for the high number of protestants she was alleged to have killed during her very short 5yr reign.

This rumour gave James II’s enemies the perfect excuse to get rid of him and they invited William of Orange to “invade” England under the guise of intervening to rescue the English from this horrible fate. William, who was married to James II’s eldest daughter Mary, accepted the invitation and duly arrived in England for what is known as the Glorious revolution. James and his family were driven into exile in France and eventually Italy.

As you know, the British constitution is not written down like the American one which allows for laws to be written and ammended as required, but also for laws to be written that affect one part of society without affecting rest of society. In Britain we have regular laws that govern all of society and we have what are known as peerage laws that only affect the aristocracy. Some peerage laws affect only the royal family.

One of these peerage laws is the one about Surrogacy. There is are general laws that govern surrogacy as submitted by a previous anon and then there are peerage laws about surrogacy that affect the aristocracy and or the royal family.

As a direct consequence of James II’s warming pan baby story, a constitutional peerage law was written that governs ONLY the royal family which makes surrogacy or adoption a non starter for them. This law was written to prevent anyone who wasn’t born within the conditions of the law from taking the throne of England. Before this law, there are a few Kings and Queens of England that would have been disqualified if it had existed during their time eg nearly every Tudor monarch except for Henry 8, Mary 1 and Lady Jane Grey.

Without wishing to bore you with the full wording of the constitutional part of this particular law, the most important phrases therein are ..“born of the body”…..“in legitimate marriage”. The two are applied together in assessing a surrogacy and or adoption. The two phases are describing two situations that have to apply at the same time in order for the child to be considered legitimate and able to inherit the throne and or to be included in the line of succession.

1. The child’s parents have to be married and that marriage has to be a legitimate, legally binding marriage. A loophole exists here because the parents may be separated when child is conceived and born. As long as they remain legally married, child is legitimate.
2. The child has to be born from the body of the female married to the male in the legitimate marriage of part 1.

A surrogate and or an adoption is outside the criteria of these two phrases and the peerage law surrounding this is ironclad.
Due to the changeling rumour, James Francis Edward the new baby, was considered illegitimate.
This law still exists and still governs the babies born to the royal family and to a certain extent the aristocracy.

In 2016, it was tested. Without naming names, a highly visible member of the aristocracy used a surrogate to have their 2nd son. The pregnancy that gave them their 1st son was so difficult that the mother nearly died. For their 2nd son, they used a surrogate as a gestation carrier ie the genetic material was 100% their own. However, as they are hereditary aristocracy and very wealthy as well, their second son was automatically illegitimate. By the terms of our regular laws about surrogacy, they could apply to formally adopt their own child, but the child remained illegitimate in peerage law. This meant that should his older brother die, the family title and wealth could not pass to the 2nd son. The couple had to ask parliament to make a judgement to allow the 2nd son some rights to the family wealth in that eventuality. 2nd son will not get the title because of that peerage law regarding ‘born of the body’…'in legitimate marriage’ which the 2nd son’s birth did not meet.

There are lots of peerage laws that don’t apply and are frequently outside the laws that govern regular Britons, but that’s another discussion.

Weymouth the town

You mentioned a visit by the Cambridges to Mustique magpiejack .

I think it was Princess Margaret who made it a popular place for the royals to go. The days are long gone when the monarch could bring prosperity to a British town just by spending some time there. We have mentioned Bognor Regis and Brighton and a few other seaside towns with royal connections in the Sussex thread.

Bill Bryson’s Notes from a Small Island mentions George III and Weymouth:

“I liked Weymouth a good deal more than I'd expected to. It has two claims to fame. In 1348 it was the place where the Black Death was introduced into England and in 1789 it became the world's first seaside resort when that tedious lunatic George III started a fashion for sea-bathing there.

Today the town tries to maintain an air of Georgian elegance and generally nearly succeeds, though like most seaside resorts it had about it a whiff of terminal decline, at least as far as tourism goes.”

George III was much more than a ‘tedious lunatic’, but I agree that Weymouth’s glory days are in the distant past despite several - routine not residential - visits by the Windsors.

The Golden Jubilee Clock was installed to mark Queen Victoria’s 50th year on the throne; the sand sculpture on Weymouth beach celebrates the Queen’s 90th birthday:

Weymouth again

They obviously need holidaymakers’ money. I remember asking for a small portion of fish and chips and being given a huge one for the same price. The man in the chip shop also told me hopefully that there was a good show on at the theatre.

The connection with Viscount Weymouth is that members of the Thynne family of Longleat used to represent the constituency in Parliament.

Another Viscount Weymouth and the royal corgis

The Windsors started keeping corgis around 1933, and the then Viscount Weymouth was responsible:

“Princess Elizabeth, then only seven, had fallen in love with a corgi she had played with in Hyde Park. It belonged to the family of Viscount Weymouth, a future Marquess of Bath.

The breed was little known outside South Wales, but the young princess and her sister Margaret pleaded with their parents for one of their own.

The Duke and Duchess of York needed little persuading and Mrs Thelma Gray, breeder of the Weymouths' dog and a pioneer of the breed, supplied the first royal corgi…”

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5631639/The-torching-rituals-reveal-just-Queen-loved-corgis.html

When Napoleon applied to Prinny for asylum in the UK

There is a story about Napoleon that was new to me. It is a good topic for alternative history and ‘what ifs’.

It concerns the efforts he made not to be exiled to the back of beyond after his final defeat.

The background story in summary: Napoleon was exiled to the Mediterranean island of Elba after his abdication in 1814. He escaped in March 1815, returned to Paris and regained much that he had lost. He was captured after his final defeat in June 1815 at the Battle of Waterloo. He had hoped to escape to America as he knew that he would be tracked down in Europe. His capture raised the question of what to do with him. He would always be a focus for trouble if he stayed in Europe. As we know, he was exiled to the remote island of St. Helena in the south Atlantic, where he died a few years later.

Napoleon did not go quietly. In July 1815, he wrote to the Prince Regent and begged for mercy:

“Signed by the emperor himself, the letter pleads for the ‘hospitality of the British people’ and calls on the prince as the ‘most powerful, the most constant, and the most generous of my enemies’ for protection. Seeking refuge, the emperor compares himself to Themistocles, a Greek statesman who threw himself on the mercy of the Persian ruler Artaxerxes and was subsequently received with honour.

On receiving the letter, the prince reportedly declared: ‘Upon my word, a very proper letter: much more so, I must say, than any I ever received from Louis XVIII’. Despite this, Napoleon’s request for protection was refused…”

www.historyextra.com/period/georgian/napoleons-surrender-letter-begging-prince-regent-for-mercy-after-waterloo-defeat-to-go-on-show-in-windsor/

Part of Napoleon’s letter to the Prince Regent:

Napoleon and the loss of all hope

Napoleon died in 1821 on the remote island of St. Helena.

The official cause was given as stomach cancer, but he may have been poisoned by the arsenic in the wallpaper. The living conditions were not good and harsh treatment may have hastened his end.

It is possible that loss of hope was a factor too. George III died in 1820; George IV was no friend to Napoleon and a possible saviour had died a few years earlier. Napoleon wrote this:

“When Louis XVIII dies, great events may take place; and if Lord Holland should then be Prime Minister of England, they may bring me back to Europe. But what I most hope for is the death of the Prince Regent, which will place the young Princess Charlotte on the English throne. She will bring me back to Europe.”

Princess Charlotte would indeed have become Queen on the death of George IV if she had not predeceased him. She was only 21 years old when she died in 1817.

The idea that she would have been sympathetic towards him sounds like wishful thinking on Napoleon’s part.

The strange wedding of Prince Albert of Monaco and Charlene Wittstock

I was reminded of this when posting the photo of Harry and Prince Albert meeting in Japan. Albert's marriage to Charlene, a former Olympic swimmer, in 2011 was surrounded by scandal that she had "tried to flee home to South Africa three times" in order to get out of the wedding.

"Sources cited by the French press on Sunday said the former Charlene Wittstock, 33, had even tried to take refuge in her country's embassy in Paris in an attempt to get out of the wedding.
Instead senior Palace officials confiscated her passport and then persuaded her to take part in the weekend's nuptials."
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/monaco/8614215/Princess-Charlene-of-Monaco-tried-to-flee-three-times.html

The happy couple (she sobbed throughout the ceremony):

Spiralling helixes

The name ‘helicopter’ is derived from Greek words helico meaning spiralling or whirling and pteron meaning wing.

This reminds me of Mercury/Hermes, his short flying trips and the symbols associated with him:

Budgie the Plagiarised Helicopter

There were allegations that she plagiarised Budgie from author Arthur W Baldwin:

"An observant reader was struck by several similarities between Budgie .... and Hector the Helicopter by Arthur W. Baldwin, who had died several years before."

Kitty Kelley, The Royals: books.google.co.uk/books?id=0Y03AQAAQBAJ&pg=PT335&lpg=PT335&dq=budgie+the+little+helicopter+%22plagiarism%22&source=bl&ots=oiKgByjV8D&sig=ACfU3U14CsxVXsuQW85u4j4hu32s6lAHug&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjjn7fl9ajmAhXNqlkKHeuvBvIQ6AEwBXoECAsQAQ#v=onepage&q=budgie%20the%20little%20helicopter%20%22plagiarism%22&f=false

That page on Google Books also quotes some of the earnings from it. Kelley wrote that Sarah resisted the suggestion from Robert Fellowes that she donate part of the profits to charity, until she learnt that the suggestion had come from the Queen.

Helicopters, mega rich friends and voices in her head

I've just been reading more about Sarah on the Google Books preview pages of The Royals. I must get another copy of that, I had it years ago. There may be plenty of royal scandal going around now, but there was also a good deal of it in the past.

Sarah was friends with the Wyatts, a very wealthy Texan family with a villa in the south of France, Lynn Wyatt was a department store heiress. Sarah is said to have had an affair with their son Steve, and she was overwhelmed with the extent of their extravagance. The book relates a helicopter flight; "(Oscar Wyatt) flew in his private helicopter and allowed her to take over the controls. Steve marvelled at her flying skill. 'Did your husband teach you to do that?' he asked.
'My husband doesn't have much time to teach me anything', she said."

It also says how Sarah and Steve shared New Age interests, and that she regularly consulted astrologers.
"Steve and Sarah spoke the same New Age language of mystics and channellers and crystals full of electromagnetic fields that they fancied as healing and restorative. She told him about the voices she heard in her head and the spirits that protected her from harm."

Steve Wyatt with Beatrice:

Two fatal helicopter crashes

There are some interesting connections and conspiracy theories involving two fatal helicopter crashes.

First, some facts and figures:

The Vauxhall crash of January 16th 2013 in which the pilot and a pedestrian died has been mentioned in the London thread.

The Leicester crash happened on 27th October 2018. The helicopter crashed shortly after taking off from the King Power Stadium. The pilot and his four passengers, who included Leicester City football club owner Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, died.

The helicopter involved in the Vauxhall crash was an AgustaWestland AW109; the helicopter involved in the Leicester crash was an AgustaWestland AW169.

The Vauxhall crash happened when the helicopter hit a very tall crane that was invisible because of fog and low clouds; the Leicester crash happened when a pin became disconnected in the tail rotor causing the helicopter to go into an uncontrollable spin. These are the official explanations.

Pete Barnes was the pilot in the Vauxhall crash; the Leicester pilot was Eric Swaffer.

The two pilots were friends: Eric Swaffer was one of the coffin bearers at Pete Barnes’s funeral.

Eric Swaffer was also friends with Prince William.

Pete Barnes exchanged text messages about the weather with the Queen’s cousin George Mountbatten, Marquess of Milford Haven, who is also a very experienced helicopter pilot, moments before the fatal collision

Tributes to the Leicester dead:

Polo, princes and King Power

Leicester’s King Power Stadium, the scene of the fatal helicopter crash, is named after Thailand’s leading travel retail group.

Prince William is President of the Football Association. He counted King Power’s Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, owner of Leicester City football team as a personal friend. VS was a fellow polo player.

Harry and William have both played polo in King Power charity matches:

“The RFU Injured Players Foundation was honoured to be one of the beneficiary charities of the King Power Royal Charity Polo Cup 2016, staged this year at Billingbear Park.

RFU Injured Players Foundation Patron HRH Prince Henry of Wales played as part of a King Power Foxes team representing both the IPF and the Irish Guards Appeal against a rival King Power Polo team.”

Prince Harry with boss Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, who was killed two years later in the helicopter crash:

The double life of pilot Pete Barnes

The helicopter pilot who died in the Vauxhall crash acted as an aerial chauffeur to many VIPs, billionaires and celebrities. Pete Barnes was responsible for ferrying world leaders to and from the G8 conference in Scotland in 2005 for example. Then there was his showbiz career: Barnes worked on adverts, TV programmes and films.

He also flew air ambulances. He was a hugely skilled and experienced former HEMS (Helicopter Emergency Medical Service) pilot:



Their striking logo is relevant here: