Now that it doesn’t really matter, you can be queen
History lesson! According to the current rules of succession in the Commonwealth realms (AKA, the House of Windsor, AKA, the British royal family), boys take precedence over girls.
I’ll explain how this works: say Prince William had had an older sister. Even though she was the first-born, according to the current rules of succession, she would have been skipped over in favor of her younger brother, Wills — and after William, the second in line would have been Harry, allowing the hypothetical older sister to become queen regnant (a woman who rules in her own right, as opposed to a “queen consort,” a woman who is the wife if a ruling king) only after. Meaning, probably never. Royal women have for centuries been seen as rulers in cases of emergency only, their thrones usually usurped because of their gender.
No longer. On Friday, the 16 nations over which Queen Elizabeth II rules (the UK, Australia, the Bahamas, Canada, Barbados, Belize, Jamaica, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, etc.), agreed unanimously that girls are to have equality with boys in terms of succession.
The British monarch has been around how many centuries? If we go back to Alfred the Great, we could argue it’s been one thousand years. That’s how long it took the monarchy to decide to allow women equal rights with men in the line of succession. Is this a victory? More than anything, it’s a reminder of how blatant gender inequality continues to be even contemporary society.
