Royal_Eagle
Aristocracy
- Joined
- Feb 14, 2011
- Messages
- 176
- City
- Alexandria
- Country
- United States
As far as I know, a fetus cannot become the monarch and is not legally classified as a person capable of holding any position until birth. Harry would become the King immediately upon such a mass death. However, what would happen upon the birth of the child is much less clear. It's entirely possible that Harry would immediately cease to be the King and the throne would pass to the newly-born child. Under the terms of the Regency Acts, Harry would be the regent for such a child monarch.
In the 1830s, this is what was planned in the event that King William IV had died leaving behind a pregnant Queen Adelaide. Victoria would have immediately become Queen, and she would have stopped being the Queen upon the birth of the child. The only question is whether the law passed to deal with the possibility was simply clarifying what would have happened anyways or if the law created a special exception to the normal rules of succession.
I thought I read somewhere that a fetus didn't have any claim to the Throne, and that once a King/Queen always a King/Queen (except for abdication, which is to be done extremely rarely), so if Prince Harry becomes King, he's stuck there until either he abdicate (which in that case, the Throne should go to the next in line of succession, which the baby may not be in) or dies (which in that case also goes to next in line of succession). It seems just weird to go "backward", so to speak.
You're right about Queen Victoria's situation, but I thought that was one-time exception and that normally a fetus can't become a monarch, not even later at birth.
In any case, this is very interesting question, but a question that we hope will never come up in a practical sense.